One of the beautiful things about walking around the streets of America with my beard, kippah, and tzitzit visibly showing is that people know who I am – a proud Jew. Sometimes, without any introduction, they come over and begin to speak.

Yesterday, while I was pumping gas at the Shell station on Putnam Ave in Greenwich, a man approached me and started a conversation.

He told me that back in the 1970s, he worked for a printer on Mason Street who was producing material for the UJA, much of it Holocaust-related.

“I remember asking him,” the man told me, “why do we need to keep coming back to this?”

“And my boss told me, ‘Because we need to remember’. I look around today, and I wonder: Have we remembered?”

I said to him, “Don’t worry. We have.”

He looked at me and asked, “Do you really think so? Are there enough of us who will use our minds not to fight with each other, but to find common cause?”

I said, “Absolutely.”

He smiled and walked away.

When this country was founded, one of the great challenges of the time was not only about moving from the intolerance of the English Crown to a more tolerant society on the new continent, but also to a respectful........

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