Now ninety-nine years old, Frank Cohn fled Nazi Germany with his family not long after his bar mitzvah, and arrived in the U.S. shortly after Kristallnacht. When World War II began, he enlisted in the military and, thanks to his knowledge of German, was placed in an intelligence unit operating in Western Europe. He spent the following three decades in the military police, serving in Vietnam and retiring with the rank of colonel. He recounts his remarkable life story in conversation with Aaron MacLean. (Video, 93 minutes. Available in podcast form at the link below.)

In October, a young Mauritanian national murdered an Orthodox Jewish man on his way to synagogue in Chicago. This alone should be sufficient sign of the rising dangers of anti-Semitism. Nathan Diament explains how the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act (AAA) can, if passed, make American Jews safer:

We were off to a promising start when the AAA sailed through the House of Representatives in the spring by a generous vote of 320 to 91, and 30 senators from both sides of the aisle jumped to sponsor the Senate version. Then the bill ground to a halt.

Fearful of antagonizing their left-wing activist base and putting vulnerable senators on the record, especially right before the November election, Democrats delayed bringing the AAA to the Senate floor for a vote. Now, the election is over, but the political games continue.

You can’t combat anti-Semitism if you can’t—or won’t—define it. Modern anti-Semites hide their hate behind virulent anti-Zionism. . . . The Anti-Semitism Awareness Act targets this loophole by codifying that the Department of Education must use the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of anti-Semitism in its application of Title VI.