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A Florida bill attacking ‘critical theory’ in higher education has the state’s Jewish academics worried
(JTA) — The University of Florida has more Jewish students than any other public college in the United States — and last week, one of them reached out to a professor, fearing that it would no longer be possible to study Jewish topics there.
Citing a graphic that had been making the rounds on social media, the student asked if it was true that a new bill working its way through the state legislature would remove all “Jewish Studies courses, majors and minors” in the state. The graphic was shared by several people with large online followings, including comedian D.L. Hughley, who has more than 750,000 followers on Twitter.
“I love my major and I can’t imagine switching to anything else,” the student wrote, according to Norman Goda, director of the university’s Center for Jewish Studies.
Goda wasn’t able to console the student. Like other Jewish academics in Florida who spoke to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, he doesn’t know whether H.B. 999 would affect Jewish studies on the state’s college campuses. Though the bill’s author — a Republican state representative — says that won’t be the case, the bill’s language is much less clear.
That’s because the bill’s current wording would forbid the state’s public higher education institutions from teaching or offering any major or minor based in “methodology associated with Critical Theory.” That prohibition, say academics and other critics of the bill, would make teaching courses in Jewish studies impossible — and would also outlaw many other fields in higher education.
Exactly what the bill means by “critical theory” is unclear. To academics, the term refers to a tool for analyzing society and culture, created in the 1930s by German Jewish academics, that encourages people to view the world through power structures, and to consider why they fall short. To political conservatives, it’s a relative of “critical race theory,” a watchword for those who want to inhibit classroom instruction about racism. An earlier version of H.B. 999 mentioned only critical race theory, not the umbrella theory.
“These people don’t know what they’re talking about,” said a Jewish faculty member at a Florida university, who requested anonymity due to fear of retaliation from the state government, regarding the lawmakers behind H.B. 999. “You’re putting people who don’t know what critical theory is, but have heard the words — and now you’re putting them in charge of universities.”
A university that completely purged such ideas from its classrooms, the anonymous faculty member said, “would be non-existent.”
The bill in question is the latest example of conservative-led state efforts to snuff out culture-war modes of thought like critical race theory and gender studies, often referred to euphemistically by lawmakers as “divisive concepts” in education. Such efforts have occasionally ensnared efforts to teach Jewish history and the Holocaust.
Attempts to legislate the classroom are particularly potent in Florida, where Republican governor Ron DeSantis, a likely presidential candidate, has frequently stated his desire to ban “woke” concepts from being taught in the state. (DeSantis has stated he will wait to see H.B. 999’s final form before he decides whether to sign it, but in a discussion with college administrators last week he continued to rail against what he called the “ideological agenda” of campus diversity, equity and inclusion programs.)
The state recently rejected the curriculum for a new Advanced Placement African-American Studies course in high schools, forcing the College Board to rework the class. Florida is also home to several active conservative “parents’ rights” groups that have lobbied to remove objectionable books and clubs from public schools.
While most legislation in this realm to date has targeted what’s taught in K-12 public schools, this bill and other efforts in Florida have gone a step further by seeking to regulate the world of state-funded higher education — creating what critics say are new and dangerous threats to academic freedom, with broad and vague wording that leaves efforts to research and teach a variety of disciplines in doubt.
“This bill would cripple the long-standing freedom universities have to design and teach a curriculum based on the development of academic disciplines,” Cary Nelson, an emeritus professor at the University of Illinois and past president of the American Association of University Professors ,who has taught multiple courses on Jewish issues, told JTA.
In a recent subcommittee hearing on the bill, Republican state Rep. Alex Andrade, who co-authored the legislation, said, “I believe that state universities should be focused on teaching students how to think, not what to think.” He said the bill’s banning of “radical” ideologies referred to “a system meant to direct and promote certain activism to achieve a specific viewpoint.”
Efforts to limit the material taught to children and college students are underway in several states. But Florida has an especially large population of Jewish students. The University of Florida stands atop Hillel International’s ranking of public colleges with the highest proportion of Jewish students, and the University of Central Florida has the third-largest. Florida State University, Florida International University, Florida Atlantic University and the University of South Florida also rank in the top 60.
H.B. 999 would affect education at those schools in other ways, too. The bill, which recently advanced to committee, would overhaul the state’s post-tenure review process, so that instead of checking on a faculty member’s research productivity every five years, as is currently the case in the state, tenured professors could face reviews “at any time for cause” including “violation of any applicable law or rule.”
The result, one academic in the state said, would be “open season on faculty,” who could be out of a job if their university’s board — which, in public schools, is beholden to the governor — disagrees with their syllabus.
Andrade rejected the idea that H.B. 999 would undercut Jewish studies in Florida.
“Outsiders are wrong. Ethnic studies are not affected by the bill either by the bill’s intent or the bill’s language,” Andrade wrote in an email to JTA, accusing the bill’s critics of “lying and claiming that Florida’s leaders have tried to ban teaching black history in schools.”
The state’s only Jewish Republican legislator, state Rep. Randy Fine, did not return a JTA request for comment on whether he supports the bill. Fine has promoted similar culture-war legislation in the past, including a bill he co-authored in February that would prohibit all K-12 schools in the state from referring to either students or employees by pronouns that do not correspond to the sex they were assigned at birth.
With a Republican-dominated House and Senate, some form of H.B. 999 seems likely to reach DeSantis’ desk. (A parallel bill in the state Senate does not contain wording on critical theory.) But there is strong opposition from the academic community. Groups including the American Historical Association, the American Association of University Professors and Florida’s statewide faculty union have harshly condemned the bill and urged lawmakers to oppose it.
The American Historical Association’s statement on the bill this month calls it a “blatant and frontal attack on principles of academic freedom and shared governance central to higher education in the United States.” More than 70 academic, historical and activist organizations co-signed the statement.
The executive committee of the Association for Jewish Studies signed a different statement authored by the American Council of Learned Societies, decrying the bill as an “effort to undermine academic freedom in Florida.”
“If it passes, it ends academic freedom in the state’s public colleges and universities, with dire consequences for their teaching, research, and financial well-being,” the statement said of the bill. “Academic freedom means freedom of thought, not the state-mandated production of histories edited to suit one party’s agenda in the current culture wars.”
Asked for comment on the bill, Warren Hoffman, the executive director of the Association for Jewish Studies, pointed to the statement.
Rachel Harris, director and endowed chair at Florida Atlantic University’s Jewish Studies program, is in her first semester at the university, having just arrived from the University of Illinois. “I’m now wondering if that was a terrible mistake,” she joked. (Harris is spending this term in Israel, researching on a Fulbright fellowship.)
Still, Harris said she was “confident” that legislators would “continue to support educational commitments in the state,” noting that Florida has a Holocaust education mandate for K-12 public schools. Her Boca Raton university is currently building an expanded center for Jewish and Holocaust studies, funded by private donors. H.B. 999 in its current form would prohibit universities from teaching critical theory concepts even when such programs are privately funded.
Despite what he described as a few students at the Jewish Studies center who are concerned about the new bill, Goda said he did not think the legislation would change the experience of Jewish students on his campus.
“Jewish kids these days are really choosing universities based on whether or not Jewish kids feel comfortable there,” he said. “And I would argue that [the University of Florida] is a very welcoming campus for Jewish kids overall. There are strong Jewish institutions associated with the campus.”
Instead, he feels the bill’s real effects would be felt in the state’s ability to recruit faculty and staff while its legislators jeopardize academic freedom, tenure and other lodestars of the humanities. He said, “The real question to me is how and in what way it’s going to be enforced.”
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The post A Florida bill attacking ‘critical theory’ in higher education has the state’s Jewish academics worried appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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How Christian Zionism explains Mike Huckabee’s expansive view of Israel’s borders
In a recent interview with Tucker Carlson, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee went viral for claiming that Israel has the right to control much of the Middle East based on the Bible — what may have been one of the clearest expressions of Christian Zionism by an American diplomat.
In the interview, which took place during Carlson’s recent visit to Israel, Carlson, who has routinely questioned the U.S.-Israel dynamic, asked Huckabee about whether he believes Israel has the right to all the land God promised the Jews in the Bible. Citing scripture, Carlson described the territory as stretching from the Nile to the Euphrates, “essentially the entire Middle East.”
Huckabee replied, “it would be fine if it took it all,” but clarified several times that Israel is not seeking to do so, stating: “They’re not asking to go back to take all of that, but they are now asking to at least take the land that they now live in, they now occupy, they now own legitimately, and it is a safe haven for them.”
Later in the interview, Huckabee referred to his remarks as “somewhat of a hyperbolic statement” and subsequently took to X to say that his comments were edited and taken out of context by Carlson. He said that Carlson had asked him “as a former Baptist minister about the theology of Christian Zionism.”
While Huckabee’s statements on Tucker Carlson may not have aligned with official U.S. policy, they were consistent with the theological worldview he has articulated for years — one rooted in Christian Zionism, a movement that sees the modern state of Israel as the fulfillment of biblical prophecy. For some believers, the modern state of Israel is viewed as a prerequisite for the second coming of Jesus. Many adherents cite the Abrahamic covenant in Genesis — “I will bless those who bless you” — as a theological mandate to support Israel. Others frame their support less in apocalyptic terms and more in the language of shared “Judeo-Christian” heritage.
While Huckabee is the first evangelical Christian to serve as U.S. ambassador to Israel, the Christian Zionist movement he is part of has a formidable political and financial infrastructure within the United States and has become a major force in the U.S.–Israel relationship.
Growing Groups
Christian Zionism has been one of the most reliable pillars of pro-Israel sentiment in American politics for decades. A 2025 survey by the Pew Research Center found that seven in ten white evangelical Christians has a favorable view of Israel, compared with approximately half of Americans who have an unfavorable view. Another study found that U.S. evangelicals are as supportive of Israel as they were before the Gaza war.
Israeli leaders have openly acknowledged that support. Ron Dermer, former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. and a close advisor of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, once called evangelicals “the backbone of Israel’s support in the United States.”
That support goes far beyond positive sentiment. The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, which Huckabee has been affiliated with, says it has raised $3.6 billion for Israel since 1983, with 92% of its donors identifying as Christian. In 2023, the organization raised more money than AIPAC or the ADL. Another major organization, Christians United for Israel, founded in 2006 by Texas pastor John Hagee, claims 10 million members, a figure larger than the total Jewish population of the United States.
A 2018 investigation by Haaretz estimated that evangelical organizations raised between $50 million and $65 million from 2008 to 2018 for projects in the West Bank.
The movement has also maintained a physical presence in Jerusalem. The International Christian Embassy Jerusalem was founded in 1980 after several foreign embassies left the city in protest of Israel’s declaration of Jerusalem as its capital. The embassy hosts annual gatherings during the Jewish holiday of Sukkot that draw thousands of evangelical pilgrims, and it funds assistance programs for Jews who wish to immigrate to Israel, emergency aid, housing for Holocaust survivors, and other initiatives.
The Christian Broadcasting Network, an evangelical news network that reaches millions of viewers worldwide, operates a dedicated Jerusalem bureau that “offers a biblical and prophetic perspective to the daily news events that shape our world.”
Huckabee, a former Baptist minister and Arkansas governor, has long existed within this ecosystem and is one of Christian Zionism’s most visible public figures. He has said that he has visited Israel over 100 times and was among the evangelical leaders who advocated for President Donald Trump to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in 2018, a decision widely celebrated within Christian Zionist circles. In 2018, Huckabee laid ceremonial bricks in the settlement of Efrat as a symbol of support.
He has also made controversial statements regarding the West Bank, stating in 2017, “There is no such thing as a West Bank. It’s Judea and Samaria. There’s no such thing as a settlement. They’re communities, they’re neighborhoods, they’re cities. There’s no such thing as an occupation.”
Personal theology vs. diplomacy
During Huckabee’s Senate confirmation hearing, Huckabee described the U.S.–Israel relationship as “not geopolitical” but “also spiritual,” stating that “to deny that would be to make it very difficult for us to ever understand how to go forward in a relationship with them.” He also acknowledged that while he had previously supported the possibility of Israeli annexation of the West Bank, his duty as ambassador would be to carry out the president’s policy rather than set it.
His interview with Carlson hearkened back to that moment and the tension between Huckabee’s role as an ambassador and his personal convictions.
The Trump administration has repeatedly stated that the United States does not support formal Israeli annexation of the West Bank. That position is tied in part to Trump’s effort to expand the Abraham Accords, the normalization agreements between Israel and several Arab and Muslim-majority states. Potential future participants — most notably Saudi Arabia — have explicitly conditioned normalization on credible steps toward a two-state solution, a framework that annexation would almost certainly undermine.
In response to Huckabee’s interview, more than a dozen Arab and Muslim-majority governments, joined by major regional bodies including the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the Arab League, and the Gulf Cooperation Council, issued a joint statement condemning Huckabee’s remarks. The statement described his comments as “dangerous and inflammatory” and said they “directly contradict the vision put forward by U.S. President Donald J. Trump” and the Comprehensive Plan to End the Gaza Conflict. Just three days before the statement’s release, many of those same governments had met in Washington for the inaugural meeting of the Board of Peace and pledged significant funding to the initiative.
According to reports, members of the Trump administration sought to reassure those governments that Huckabee’s comments reflected his personal views rather than official U.S. policy.
For his part, far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich — a supporter of West Bank annexation — posted Saturday on X, riffing on a movie title: “I (heart) Huckabee.” And no wonder: last year the ambassador had declined to oppose plans for a large West Bank settlement Smotrich had declared “will bury the idea of a Palestinian state,” with Huckabee declaring it “incumbent on all of us to recognise that Israelis have a right to live in Israel.”
Trump, however, has said he opposes annexation of the West Bank, reflecting growing rifts in the U.S. and even his own supporters, with the rise of a Christian Nationalist movement that includes many at odds with Christian Zionism.
At the same time, generational shifts within the republican party suggests an uncertain future for Christian Zionism. A recent study found that 20% of Republicans overall believe the United States is providing too much military aid to Israel. The generational divide is pronounced: 27% of Gen Z Republicans say the U.S. is giving too much aid, compared with 16% among Republicans in the Silent, Baby Boomer, and Generation X cohorts. Influential figures within this camp — including Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson, and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, and on the more extreme fringe, Nick Fuentes — have gained prominence in part by criticizing the scope of U.S. support for Israel.
For now, however, the evangelical Christian Zionist movement remains deeply embedded in American politics. With Huckabee in the ambassador’s residence, that worldview occupies an official diplomatic post.
The post How Christian Zionism explains Mike Huckabee’s expansive view of Israel’s borders appeared first on The Forward.
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Trump has no vision for what comes next in the Middle East
Buried within the long, maudlin, combative, occasionally moving and never modest verbiage of President Donald Trump’s Tuesday State of the Union address was this uncomfortable truth: Trump has no idea what comes next in the Middle East.
In discussing two conflicts that have drawn intense attention over the past year — those in Gaza and Iran — he offered a downright confusing picture of what the future has to offer.
When the president finally touched on foreign policy, after he had already been speaking for nearly an hour and a half, he credited himself with ending eight wars — a figure that’s worth questioning.
“The war in Gaza, which proceeds at a very low level, it’s just about there,” he said.
The Gaza war is over, maybe
There is no doubt Gaza is closer to peace than it was when Trump took office. The deal he forged between Israel and Hamas is so far the greatest foreign policy accomplishment of his second term.
But “just about there?”
Israel has killed about 600 Palestinians, including many civilians, since the ceasefire. Meanwhile, Hamas has not disarmed, and in fact, according to the Times of Israel, has begun inserting itself in new Trump-backed governing bodies in Gaza.
More than 80% of the structures in the Strip were destroyed in the conflict that began when Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Rebuilding will take many years, and billions of dollars. Of the 200,000 temporary housing units humanitarian agencies estimate the enclave needs, only 4,000 have been delivered or on their way.
The much-heralded Trump peace plan, in other words, is on shaky ground.
That explains why Trump thanked Hamas, as he has done in previous speeches this month, for helping to find the bodies of dead hostages.
“Believe it or not, Hamas worked along with Israel,” Trump said, “and they dug and they dug and they dug. It’s a tough, tough thing to do, going through bodies all over, passing up 100 bodies, sometimes for each one that they found.”
Why not mention that Hamas wouldn’t have had to do such hard, noble work if it hadn’t attacked and killed Israelis in the first place? Because the odd compliment — thanking murderers for returning their victims’ bodies — was Trump playing to reality. If his signature diplomatic initiative is to succeed, he needs Hamas and its patrons to go along. So far, the group is stalling when it comes to disarmament. If he can’t persuade them to take that step, his signature peace effort is done for.
An awareness of just how treacherous this situation is explains why Trump’s Gaza comments focused largely on his success at negotiating the return of Israel’s hostages, both living and dead.
“And those parents who had a dead son,” Trump said, “they always told me that boy, they wanted him as much as though he were living.”
Trump didn’t offer a vision, as he has in the past, of a prosperous Gaza; of Saudi Arabia joining the Abraham Accords; and of Israel at peace with its neighbors. He didn’t even mention his pet initiative, the Board of Peace — surprising, given that the body met for the first time just last week. The Middle East has a way of lowering expectations, and in the State of the Union, Trump wasn’t selling anything but the successful return of the dead.
The Iran war that isn’t, yet
On Iran, Trump was, if possible, even more confusing.
The United States has sent its largest military force in decades to the Middle East, which means we are once again — maybe — on the verge of a Middle East war. But Trump’s case for conflict — and explanation of how things got to this point — was lackluster.
He claimed that Operation Midnight Hammer, the June 2025 U.S. strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, “obliterated Iran’s nuclear weapons program.”
But evidently, a program that was “obliterated” is somehow, less than a year later, an imminent threat. In the very next sentence, Trump said Tehran is now trying to rebuild its nuclear facilities and develop missiles that could reach the United States. (The simpler and more factual explanation: actually, nothing got obliterated in the first place.)
While claiming that the Iranian regime recently killed 32,000 of its own people during nationwide protests — an exact death toll is still elusive — he offered the country a path to survival: give up nuclear weapons.
But what sounds like a clear demand really isn’t. Nuclear diplomacy takes a long time and great delicacy. Trump, who favors swift resolutions, has backed himself into a corner: The military is already there, and the world is waiting with baited breath.
Plus, Americans don’t want to go to war. Some 49% of Americans oppose an attack on Iran, with just 27% in support of one, according to a YouGov poll this month. Independents oppose the idea by 54%, and Republicans support it by only 58%.
What’s a president who has staked his second-term reputation on his ability to win big and make peace supposed to do?
For now, the lack of specificity gives Trump room to waffle on whether or not to go to war — and try to make a case for what specific, achievable aims he would have in doing so.
In a clear sign that he doesn’t yet have answers for those questions, Trump’s language on Tuesday sounded awfully familiar. “I will never allow the world’s number one sponsor of terror to have a nuclear weapon,“ he said. “My preference is to solve this problem through diplomacy.”
Compare that to former President Barack Obama’s 2012 State of the Union.
“Let there be no doubt: America is determined to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon,” Obama said, “and I will take no options off the table to achieve that goal. But a peaceful resolution of this issue is still possible, and far better.”
Maybe Trump has a clear idea of what comes next for Gaza and Iran. Or maybe we’ve just gone back to the future.
The post Trump has no vision for what comes next in the Middle East appeared first on The Forward.
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Memories of a subway passenger
דערצויגן געוואָרן אין דער שטאָט ניו־יאָרק, בײַ אַ משפּחה וואָס האָט נישט פֿאַרמאָגט קיין אויטאָ, האָב איך אַ גרויסן חלק פֿון מײַן לעבן „אויסגעלעבט“ אויף דער אונטערבאַן („סאָבוויי“). הגם הײַנט פֿאָר איך בדרך־כּלל מיט מיט דער מחוץ־שטאָטישער באַן „מעטראָ־נאָרט“, מוז איך מודה זײַן, אַז מײַנע יאָרן אויף דער אונטערבאַן האָבן זיכער געהאָלפֿן צו אַנטוויקלען בײַ מיר דאָס געפֿיל פֿון אַן עכטן ניו־יאָרקער.
אין עלטער פֿון 11 יאָר, למשל, זענען איך און מײַן 10־יאָריקע שוועסטער, גיטל, יעדע וואָך, נאָך די קלאַסן, געפֿאָרן מיט דער אונטערבאַן פֿינף סטאַנציעס צו אונדזער פּיאַנע־לעקציע. וואָס איז דער חידוש, פֿרעגט איר? איר קענט זיך אויסמאָלן, אַז צוויי אומשולדיקע מיידלעך, טראָגנדיק קליידלעך און צעפּלעך, זאָלן הײַנט פֿאָרן, אָן שום באַגלייטונג פֿון אַ דערוואַקסענעם — אויף דער אונטערבאַן? איך — נישט. פֿונדעסטוועגן, מיין איך, אַז דאָס האָט אונדז געגעבן אַ געוויסן נישט־באַוווּסטזיניקן קוראַזש, וואָס פֿעלט הײַנט די קינדער, וואָס זייערע עלטערן מוזן זיי פֿירן אינעם אויטאָ פֿון איין אָרט צום צווייטן.
איך האָב ליב געהאַט צו לייענען די רעקלאַמעס אין וואַגאָן. איך געדענק, למשל, די מעלדונגען וועגן דעם יערלעכן שיינקייט־קאָנקורס, „מיס סאָבווייס“. עטלעכע וואָכן פֿאַרן קאָנקורס, איז אין יעדן וואַגאָן געהאָנגען אַ בילד פֿון די זעקס פֿינאַליסטקעס. פֿלעג איך מיט גיטלען איבערלייענען זייערע קליינע ביאָגראַפֿיעס — בדרך־כּלל, סטודענטקעס, סעקרעטאַרשעס, זינגערינס, און טענצערינס — און דיסקוטירן מיט איר, ווער ס׳וואָלט געדאַרפֿט געווינען די „אונטערערדישע קרוין“. איך פֿלעג זיך אָפֿט מאָל חידושן, ווי אַזוי איינע מיט אַ גרויסער נאָז אָדער געדיכטע ברעמען האָט דערגרייכט אַזאַ מדרגה, אַז איר פּנים זאָל באַצירן יעדן וואַגאָן פֿון דער ניו־יאָרקער באַן־סיסטעם.
איך האָב זיך אויך געלערנט מײַנע ערשטע שפּאַנישע זאַצן אויף דער אונטערבאַן. אין יעדן וואַגאָן איז געהאָנגען אַ וואָרענונג אויף ענגליש און אויף שפּאַניש: „די רעלסן פֿון דער אונטערבאַן זענען געפֿערלעך. אויב די באַן שטעלט זיך אָפּ צווישן די סטאַנציעס, בלײַבט אינעווייניק. גייט נישט אַרויס. וואַרט אויף די אינסטרוקציעס פֿון די קאָנדוקטאָרן אָדער דער פּאָליציי“. גיטל און איך האָבן זיך אויסגעלערנט אויף אויסנווייניק די שפּאַנישע שורות, און זיי איבערגעחזרט אַזוי פֿיל מאָל, ביז די ווערטער האָבן זיך בײַ אונדז אַראָפּגעקײַקלט פֿון דער צונג ווי בײַ אמתע פּוערטאָ־ריקאַנער. און ס׳איז אונדז צו ניץ געקומען: אַז מיר זענען געשטאַנען ערגעץ צווישן מענטשן, און געוואָלט אויסזען ווי אמתע שפּאַניש־רעדער, האָבן מיר אויסגעשאָסן די שפּאַנישע שורות מיט אַזאַ טראַסק, אַז אַ נישט־שפּאַניש רעדער וואָלט געקענט מיינען, מיר טיילן זיך מיט עפּעס אַ זאַפֿטיקער פּליאָטקע.
מײַנע דרײַ בנים האָבן שטאַרק ליב געהאַט צו פֿאָרן אויף דער אונטערבאַן. קינדווײַז פֿלעגן זיי צודריקן די פּנימלעך צו די פֿענצטער, סײַ ווען די באַן איז געפֿאָרן אין דרויסן, סײַ אינעם פֿינצטערן טונעל. מײַן עלטסטער, יאַנקל, האָט צוויי מאָל געפּרוּווט צו פֿאַרווירקלעכן זײַנס אַ חלום: צו פֿאָרן, במשך פֿון איין טאָג, אויף יעדער ליניע פֿון דער גאַנצער סיסטעם, פֿון דער #1 ביז דער #7; פֿון דער A־באַן ביז דער Z. (מע דאַרף האָבן אַ מאַטעמאַטישן קאָפּ דאָס אויסצופּלאָנטערן.) ביידע מאָל האָט יאַנקל באַוויזן צו פֿאָרן אויף אַלע ליניעס… אַחוץ איינער. נישט קיין חידוש, אַז בײַ אונדז אין דער היים איז יאָרן לאַנג געהאָנגען אינעם שפּריץ אַ פֿירהאַנג מיט אַ ריזיקע מאַפּע פֿון דער אונטערבאַן.
הײַנט האָב איך אַ ספּעציעלע הנאה צו פֿאָרן אויף דער אונטערבאַן מיט מײַנע אייניקלעך. פּונקט ווי עס האָבן קינדווײַז געטאָן זייערע טאַטעס, קוקן זיי אויך אַרויס פֿון פֿענצטער און קאָמענטירן וועגן אַלץ וואָס פֿליט פֿאַרבײַ. ווער ווייסט? אפֿשר וועלן זיי אויך מיט דער צײַט זיך אויסלערנען די ציפֿערן און אותיות פֿון יעדער באַנליניע און דערבײַ אַליין פֿאַרוואַנדלט ווערן אין עכטע ניו־יאָרקער.
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