The best Purim party of the 19th century

The Purim Ball at New York's Academy of Music in 1865 was one of the most extravagant events of the year - and the reviewer in the New York Herald found it extraordinary.You can expand the illustration above from Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper to get an idea of the revelry.It had jokes and merriment, political spoofs and newspaper parodies, costumes and music, so much...

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Were the Afro-Palestinians slaves?

Last week one of the most famous black Palestinians, Fatima Bernawi - who was imprisoned for trying to explode a bomb in a Jerusalem movie theater - died. She was buried in a large ceremony in Gaza.Most articles about "Afro-Palestinians" say a version of this legend of how they arrived:Devout Muslims, Africans from countries such as Chad, Sudan, Nigeria and Senegal, trekked...

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