First published in 1951, Sydney Taylor’s All-of-a-Kind Family depicts the life of a bustling Jewish family—two parents and five children—living on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. The book and its sequels were popular when they first appeared, and remain so today. Reviewing a new biography of Taylor, Rebecca Klempner writes:

When Sydney Taylor wrote the semiautobiographical All-of-a-Kind Family, it was the first mass-market children’s book to focus on Jewish characters and their lives. Her older peer Sadie Rose Weilerstein had published books with Jewish presses for Jewish audiences, but Taylor’s books also found many eager non-Jewish readers despite their casual Jewish references—“You’ll have to make up with her when Yom Kippur [Day of Atonement] comes,” Ella reminds her sister—and stories of sitting around the Sabbath table.

The Follett Publishing Company accepted Taylor’s very Jewish manuscript, with its all-American immigrant kids who relished their mother’s gefilte fish and spoke in Yiddish to the butcher, but they also had some suggestions. Taylor struggled to get her editor, Esther Meeks, to stop expecting Jewish customs to mimic Christian ones. To a woman used to the solemnity of church, for example, the raucous celebration of Purim or Simḥat Torah seemed impossible. Meeks also urged Taylor to add more non-Jewish characters to her books. So Taylor created the kind, elegant “library lady,” from whom the children check out their books every Friday afternoon, and Charlie, the peddler who hangs out at Papa’s junk shop down by the East River but “was different from the others, . . . handsome, blond, and blue-eyed, and a good deal younger than most of the peddlers.”

Meeks also encouraged Taylor to work in elements that made the Americanness of her characters indisputable, including a chapter about Independence Day in the first volume of the series. Moreover, Meeks insisted that Taylor play down Judaism in her press appearances. This queasiness about being “too Jewish” is, of course, part of the story of midcentury American popular culture, but the success of the All-of-a-Kind Family books is also part of the story of the postwar acceptance of Jews into the American mainstream.

For some time, opponents of U.S support for Israel have been urging the White House to end the war in Gaza, or simply calling for a ceasefire. Douglas Feith and Lewis Libby consider what such a result would actually entail:

Ending the war immediately would allow Hamas to survive and retain military and governing power. Leaving it in the area containing the Sinai-Gaza smuggling routes would ensure that Hamas can rearm. This is why Hamas leaders now plead for a ceasefire. A ceasefire will provide some relief for Gazans today, but a prolonged ceasefire will preserve Hamas’s bloody oppression of Gaza and make future wars with Israel inevitable.

For most Gazans, even when there is no hot war, Hamas’s dictatorship is a nightmarish tyranny. Hamas rule features the torture and murder of regime opponents, official corruption, extremist indoctrination of children, and misery for the population in general. Hamas diverts foreign aid and other resources from proper uses; instead of improving life for the mass of the people, it uses the funds to fight against Palestinians and Israelis.

Moreover, a Hamas-affiliated website warned Gazans last month against cooperating with Israel in securing and delivering the truckloads of aid flowing into the Strip. It promised to deal with those who do with “an iron fist.” In other words, if Hamas remains in power, it will begin torturing, imprisoning, or murdering those it deems collaborators the moment the war ends. Thereafter, Hamas will begin planning its next attack on Israel:

Hamas’s goals are to overshadow the Palestinian Authority, win control of the West Bank, and establish Hamas leadership over the Palestinian revolution. Hamas’s ultimate aim is to spark a regional war to obliterate Israel and, as Hamas leaders steadfastly maintain, fulfill a Quranic vision of killing all Jews.

Hamas planned for corpses of Palestinian babies and mothers to serve as the mainspring of its October 7 war plan. Hamas calculated it could survive a war against a superior Israeli force and energize enemies of Israel around the world. The key to both aims was arranging for grievous Palestinian civilian losses. . . . That element of Hamas’s war plan is working impressively.