Tolerant Nation

Today marks the official launch of Tolerant Nation. This new blog, which will feature posts from a wide variety of guest bloggers in this inaugural year, celebrates multiculturalism and cross-cultural dialogue. It was inspired by the inauguration of now President Obama.

We’ve formed a coalition of artists, comedians, rockers, actors, writers, thinkers and organizations who will collaborate on Tolerant Nation (tolerantnation.wordpress.com). This includes Jewlicious, Shemspeed, ModernJewishMom.com, ModernTribe, Bookopolis, some awesome bi-racial, multicultural, and passionate thinkers on the subject and much more.

To mark the inauguration, multiculturalism in America and the launch of Tolerant Nation, we’re celebrating with a week of giveaways of Cool Jew: The Ultimate Guide for Every Member of the Tribe. Yes, that loving, irreverent and inclusive celebration of Jewish culture. Cool Jew, the only humor book named among the 2008 National Jewish Book Awards, honors the diversity of the Jewish people with information on Ashkenazim, Sephardim, Hasidim, Reform, and Orthodox Jews and much more. The book also highlights and celebrates Jewish commonalities with other ethnic groups, including Japanese, Native Americans, and Rastafarians, to name a few.

If you’re wondering what else Cool Jew has to do with multiculturalism, my family survived the most extreme attempts to wipe out the Jewish people: the Holocaust and the Spanish Inquisition. My father is a German Jew born in Poland and liberated from Buchenwald by General Patton’s troops in 1945. And my mother was born in Central America to Israelis who spoke the now-rarely heard Judeo-Spanish language known as Ladino. The way I see it, we, the Jewish people, are a proud part of the multicultural fabric of the United States. And the inaugural year of the first person of color to hold the country’s highest office is THE opportune time to promote cross-cultural understanding.

As I write this, it’s almost the end of this historic day here in Washington, D.C. and that means it’s time to announce the first winner of this week’s giveaway of a signed copy of Cool Jew. And just because it’s inauguration day, today’s winner also receives an Obama t-shirt from Rotem Gear with the new prez’s name spelled out in Hebrew. It’s freezing here in D.C. In fact, it’s below freezing. So we’re happy to say this awesome prize package goes to the person registered as “A Little Warmth.” Mazal tov to the Obamas, the Bidens, “A Little Warmth” and all around!

To register to win, sign up at CoolJewBook.com and to join the discussion about tolerance and multiculturalism in North America visit TolerantNation. And if you’d like to guest blog or have suggestions for the site, e-me at tolerantnation (at) gmail (dot) com. Here’s to a new era!