Irish / Jewish May 27, 2015May 26, 2015 IRISH Next to the clip about there’s no one as Irish as Barack O’bama, this is the best Irish YouTube ever. Hats off to a country that voted 62.1% to 37.9% for love and kindness and mutual respect. The first clip is three minutes . . . joyful . . . and — fair warning — you won’t be able to get it out of your head. The second clip is two minutes . . . joyful . . . and — fair warning — you just might get a wee bit choked oop. JEWISH Did you watch or read the President speaking about Jewish American History Month? In tiny part: . . . Earlier this year, when we marked the 50th anniversary of the march in Selma, we remembered the iconic images of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel marching with Dr. King, praying with his feet. To some, it must have seemed strange that a rabbi from Warsaw would take such great risks to stand with a Baptist preacher from Atlanta. But Heschel explained that their cause was one and the same. In his essay, “No Religion is an Island,” he wrote, “We must choose between interfaith and inter-nihilism.” Between a shared hope that says together we can shape a brighter future, or a shared cynicism that says our world is simply beyond repair. . . Read or watch it all! It’s so clear that the Irish thing (Irish need not apply) — and the gay thing (“married Sunday, fired Monday”) — and the Jewish thing (a timeline of persecution) — and the black thing (strange fruit) — and all the other “things” (misogyny!) — are pretty much the same thing humanity’s been struggling with forever. In which struggle, it should be noted with some pride — at least in most of the First World these last few decades — we’ve made great, albeit incomplete, progress.