(Jewish Group) Leo Frank's ghost still haunts American Jews

[Behind the Aegis]

As Thunderclap Newman would have put it: “There’s something in the air.”

For Jews, that “something” is the pandemic of antisemitism — a pandemic that has gotten so palpable that it earned itself a front page article in the Sunday New York Times.

Antisemitism has a starring role in two hot Broadway plays — “Leopoldstadt,” by Tom Stoppard, and the revival of the musical “Parade,” with a dramatization by Alfred Uhry, music by Jason Robert Brown, and starring Ben Platt.

“Parade” is a tragedy — the story of Leo Frank, the first American Jew to die in antisemitic violence, and the only white person in America to be the victim of lynching.

Several years ago, I spent an evening with a group of Jews in Atlanta, Georgia. I raised the topic of the murder of Leo Frank.

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I doubt many even know who he is, even among Jewish people.