Israel Zangwill was an Anglo-Jewish playwright, an early supporter of Zionism, and probably responsible for popularizing the word ghetto in English. Naftali Herz Imber was the author of “Hatikvah,” which became Israel’s national anthem. What they shared, besides literary aspirations and a belief in Jewish self-determination, were surnames that mean “ginger.” (Another common Jewish name, Ingber, is another variant.) Though this spice is not mentioned in the Hebrew Bible, Jews have cared about it for a long time, as Paola Gavin writes:

These days, you may use ginger to add a little kick to your lekakh, a traditional Ashkenazi honey cake. But Jews have been eating ginger—as a food and as a medicine—for thousands of years. The Talmud states that the spice benefits the entire body (P’sahim 42b). In the past, ginger was said to be a beneficial treatment for all kinds of ailments from nausea to rheumatism. The Jews of Cochin, India, liked to soak a cloth in ginger juice and use it to treat headaches, and muscle or joint pain. Yemeni Jews, on the other hand, used ginger and honey to relieve coughs or hoarseness, and claimed a mix of cinnamon and ginger improved your eyesight.

Ginger was also known to the ancient Greeks and Romans, who imported it from the East via the Red Sea or overland through present-day Iran, Syria, Jordan, and Israel.

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.