While it is hardly a secret that the so-called “King of Rock-and-Roll” had a very close relationship with an Orthodox Jewish family as a teenager, and that Jews penned the majority of his songs, it is less well known that he was himself of Jewish ancestry. He was, in fact, Jewish by halakhic standards. In a new book, Roselle Kline Chartock provides documentation for this claim, which Seth Rogovoy sums up in his review:

If there is to be a resolution to the conflict between the Jewish state and a putative Palestinian one, writes Jonathan Michanie, it won’t start with drawing lines on maps or restrictions on where Jews can build houses, but with the Palestinian Authority (PA) abandoning its official anti-Semitism. The PA can, in this regard, learn much from those Arab nations that have recently made peace with Israel: