Uncategorized
When a Jewish paperboy played Santa — and the journalist who never forgot him
On a blizzardy Chicago night in December 1967, a reporter named Leonard Fisher happened upon a 10-year-old boy dragging a newspaper sack and buying an item at a Magnificent Mile gift shop.
“Looks like you’re playing Santa Claus this Christmas,” Fisher said to the youngster.
“No, this is for my mom,” the boy replied. “She’s Jewish — it’s a Hanukkah present. I’m Jewish too. See, if your mom is Jewish, you are too.”
The boy went on to explain that his father wasn’t Jewish, so he bought him a Christmas present, as well as gifts for other members of his interfaith family. He also had a present from a customer on his newspaper route, and a pocketful of holiday tips.
I know that story well because I was that kid.
I also know details I may have otherwise forgotten because of the article Fisher wrote about our encounter for United Press International. It ran in newspapers nationwide, under headlines like “Jewish Boy Becomes 10-Year-Old Santa Claus.”
The response was overwhelming, with readers across the country sending me cards and checks. I picked them up at the UPI office, and visited Fisher a few times after that.
Eventually, however, we lost touch — until 2017, 50 years later.
While searching online, I came across my name in The East Hampton Star, a community paper near Fisher’s Long Island home. After retirement, he’d rewritten the story, calling it one of the most memorable of his career.
By then, I too had become a journalist, and Fisher’s son, Ari, found my byline in The Boston Globe.
There weren’t many Lenny Fishers listed on Long Island. I called the first one I found.
“Hello, I’m looking for Leonard Fisher,” I said.
“This is he.”
“This is Robin Washington.”
“Oh, you’re kidding! I’ve been meaning to call you to see if you were the same guy. You fit all the descriptions and that kind of stuff. You’re the same guy, yes?”
“I’m the same guy.”
“Incredible. Fifty years later!”
Fisher recalled our first meeting.
“I watched you walk down the street that day,” he said, recalling my 4-foot-4 frame braving the elements. “The wind was howling. And I said to myself, you know, ‘If ever” — and I’m Jewish — “if ever there was a Santa Claus, man, there he goes, right there.”
He also said he was blown away by the mail that came in. “I’ve never seen such a response. For people to send money in on a story, you know, a lot of people were moved by it.”
A large part of that was in the way Fisher told it: Describing every detail, capturing me perfectly, as in this exchange:
“Is there anything special you want Santa to bring you?” the man asked.
The boy smiled: “I’m Jewish, remember?”
“Well, is there any one thing you wish for, or do you want a lot of things?”
“I wish people would stop having wars.”
That had to strike a nerve in 1967.
Fisher’s wife Susanna said the story stayed with him because it broke from the corruption and calamity more typical of his career, most of it at the Newark Star-Ledger.
“He covered 9-11, but he was really kind of shell-shocked by that. Couldn’t stand loud noises and stuff,” she said. “The story about you was a really positive thing. And, as you know, in the news business, there aren’t a lot of really positive stories.”
He framed a copy, which his daughter Rachel has on her apartment wall.
“He had particular stories that he would tell us as kids over and over again,” Rachel said. “It was like a holiday movie. I could really just picture it.”
Fisher asked if he influenced me in going into the business. I usually answer that I had few mentors, but if there was anyone, it was him. Those visits to the UPI office were formative, and as paperboys, I said, “we always felt we were in the newspaper business. You didn’t disabuse me of that notion.”
And making up for a half-century, we swapped journalism tales, including stories we both covered and people we both knew in the business. Most importantly, we planned to meet in person.
We never did.
Lenny Fisher died in 2024. A tree-planting and celebration at his favorite restaurant in the Village was planned for his yahrtzeit last June, but postponed; I’m sure it’ll happen in due time.
Because we were both journalists, we knew to record the call, by the way.
“Go ahead, record,” he said. “This is the perfect Christmas/Hanukkah story,” he said. “You can’t make this up.”
The post When a Jewish paperboy played Santa — and the journalist who never forgot him appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Xi Tells Trump That Mishandling of Taiwan Could Lead to ‘Dangerous’ Place
Chinese President Xi Jinping inspects an honor guard with US President Donald Trump during a welcome ceremony at the Great Hall of the People, in Beijing, China, May 14, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov/Pool
China’s President Xi Jinping warned US President Donald Trump on Thursday that mishandling the countries’ disagreements over Taiwan could push China-US relations to a “dangerous place,” as the two leaders met for a closely watched summit.
Xi‘s remarks on Taiwan, the democratically governed island claimed by Beijing, came in a closed-door meeting of the leaders of the world’s two largest economies that ran more than two hours, China’s foreign ministry said.
They represented a stark – if not unprecedented – warning during a pomp-filled occasion that was otherwise friendly and relaxed, although the US summary of the talks made no mention of Taiwan.
According to Chinese state media Xinhua, Xi, referring to Taiwan, told Trump: “If handled poorly, the two countries could collide or even enter into conflict, pushing the entire China-US relationship into an extremely dangerous place.”
Taiwan has long been a flashpoint in the US-China relationship, with Beijing refusing to rule out the use of military force to gain control of the island and the United States bound by law to provide Taipei with the means to defend itself.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is with Trump in China, confirmed to NBC News that the issue of Taiwan was discussed, saying the Chinese “always raise it on their side, we always make clear our position and we move on to the other topics.”
The US summary of the talks focused on the leaders’ shared desire to reopen the key waterway of the Strait of Hormuz, effectively closed due to the Iran war, and Xi‘s apparent interest in buying American oil to reduce China’s dependence on Middle East supplies.
With Trump‘s approval ratings dented by a war with Iran that shows no signs of abating, the first visit by a US president to China in nearly a decade has taken on added significance as he searches for economic wins.
“There are those who say this may be the biggest summit ever,” Trump told Xi in brief opening remarks, after a ceremony that featured an honor guard and throngs of children waving flowers and flags at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People.
Xi told Trump that preparatory negotiations between US and Chinese economic and trade teams in South Korea on Wednesday had reached “balanced and positive outcomes,” China’s foreign ministry said in a summary.
The talks aimed to maintain a fragile trade truce struck when the leaders last met in October, where Trump suspended triple-digit tariffs on Chinese goods and Xi backed away from choking global supplies of vital rare earths.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who led Wednesday’s talks, said he expected progress on establishing mechanisms to support future bilateral trade and investment, and an announcement about large Chinese orders for Boeing aircraft.
CHINA’S RED LINES
Trump expected Xi to raise the thorny issue of US arms sales to Taiwan, he said earlier this week. With the status of a $14 billion package awaiting Trump‘s approval still unclear, China has reiterated its strong opposition to the sales.
“US policy on the issue of Taiwan is unchanged as of today,” Rubio told NBC.
Trump did not respond to a reporter’s shouted question whether the leaders had discussed Taiwan as he posed with Xi later for photos at the Temple of Heaven, a UNESCO World Heritage Site where emperors once prayed for good harvests.
Taipei said there was nothing surprising from the summit and that China’s military pressure is the real threat to peace.
Underscoring its outsized importance to the US economy, Taiwan, an island of 23 million people, is the United States’ fourth-largest trading partner, behind China, which has about 1.4 billion people.
LOBSTER SOUP AND BEIJING DUCK
At a lavish state banquet attended by senior officials and business executives, Xi told the audience that the China-US relationship was the most important in the world.
“We must make it work and never mess it up,” Xi said, before guests tucked into a 10-course dinner that included lobster soup, Beijing roast duck and tiramisu.
The leaders will take tea and lunch together on Friday before Trump departs.
Joining Trump on his visit are a group of CEOs looking to resolve issues with China, from Elon Musk, viewed in China as a visionary and occasional villain, to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, a late addition to the delegation.
The United States has cleared around 10 Chinese firms to buy Nvidia’s powerful H200 AI chip, but not a single delivery has been made so far, Reuters exclusively reported.
TRUMP INVITES XI TO WASHINGTON
Trump entered the talks with a weakened hand.
US courts have hemmed in his ability to levy tariffs at will on exports from China and other countries, while the Iran war has boosted inflation at home and elevated the risk that Trump‘s Republican Party will lose control of one or both legislative branches in November’s midterm elections.
Though the Chinese economy has faltered, Xi does not face comparable economic or political pressure inside China, where he rules an authoritarian regime that, unlike the US, has little tolerance for dissent.
As well as Boeing jets, Washington is looking to sell farm goods and energy to China to cut a trade deficit that has long irked Trump. Beijing, for its part, wants US curbs eased on exports of chip-making equipment and advanced semiconductors, officials involved in the planning said.
Trump is expected to encourage China to convince Iran to make a deal with Washington to end the conflict, as a fifth of global supplies of oil and natural gas travel through the Strait of Hormuz in normal times.
But analysts doubt Xi will be willing to push Tehran hard or end support for its military, given Iran’s value to Beijing as a strategic counterweight to the United States.
Rubio told Fox News that it was in China’s interest to help resolve the crisis as many of its ships are stuck in the Gulf and a slowdown in the global economy would hurt its exporters.
Iran’s Fars news agency reported on Thursday that an agreement had been reached to let some Chinese ships pass.
Trump on Thursday invited Xi for a reciprocal trip to the White House on Sept. 24, in what would be his first visit to Washington since 2015 and his first to the United States in the US president’s second term.
Uncategorized
US Senate Blocks Latest Bid to Rein in Trump Iran War Powers, Support Grows
An American flag flies outside the US Capitol building at sunset, on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, US, Jan. 30, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Kylie Cooper
US Senate Republicans on Wednesday blocked the latest Democratic-led effort to end the Iran war until it is authorized by Congress, but the measure edged closer to passage as a third Republican voted to advance the bill.
The Senate voted 50-49 not to advance the war powers resolution, nearly along party lines. Three Republicans joined every Democrat but one in backing the measure sponsored by Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon.
It was the seventh time this year that President Donald Trump‘s fellow Republicans in the Senate had blocked similar resolutions.
Republicans Rand Paul of Kentucky, Susan Collins of Maine, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska voted in favor of moving ahead, while Democrat John Fetterman of Pennsylvania voted with Republicans to block it.
The vote was the first in the Senate since the conflict hit a 60-day deadline on May 1 for Trump to come to Congress about the war. Trump declared then that a ceasefire had “terminated” hostilities against Iran.
Under a 1973 US war powers law passed in response to the Vietnam War, a US president can wage military action for only 60 days before ending it, asking Congress for authorization or seeking a 30-day extension due to “unavoidable military necessity regarding the safety of United States Armed Forces” while withdrawing forces.
Democrats disputed Trump‘s assertion that the deadline did not apply because of a ceasefire, saying the conflict is ongoing.
“There’s not a cessation of war hostilities,” Merkley told reporters before the vote, citing the US blockade of Iranian ports and strikes on Iranian ships and Iran‘s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and attacks on US ships and tankers.
“Both sides are still engaged in hostilities, and so I don’t accept that the 60-day clock is suspended,” he said.
Merkley and other Senate Democrats said they planned to bring up another war powers resolution next week, and every week until the war ends or Trump comes to lawmakers for authorization.
Democrats in the House have also introduced war powers resolutions, also blocked by Republicans.
Democrats have called on Trump to come to Congress for authorization to use military force, noting that the US Constitution says that Congress, not the president, can declare war. They have warned that Trump may have pulled the country into a long conflict without setting out a clear strategy.
Republicans – and the White House – say Trump‘s actions are legal and within his rights as commander-in-chief to protect the US by ordering limited military operations.
Some congressional Republicans have accused Democrats of filing the war powers resolutions only because of their partisan opposition to Trump.
Uncategorized
King Charles Visits Jewish Area of London Hit by Antisemitic Attacks
Britain’s King Charles III greets residents in Golders Green in North London following the attack on Jewish residents, Britain, May 14, 2026. Photo: Richard Pohle/Pool via REUTERS
King Charles was greeted by cheering crowds on Thursday when he visited an area of London which has suffered a spate of antisemitic attacks in recent weeks, in a show of support for Britain’s fearful Jewish communities.
The monarch met two victims of a recent stabbing attack when he made the unannounced visit to Golders Green, which is home to a sizeable Jewish population and has borne the brunt of the recent antisemitic incidents across the British capital.
“Thank you, your majesty, for coming today to Golders Green to bring comfort and encouragement to our Jewish community!” Britain’s Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, who was there to greet the king, said on X.
Last month, two Jewish men were stabbed in the area in an attack being treated by police as terrorism, while in other incidents in Golders Green, four Jewish community ambulances were torched and a memorial wall targeted.
During his trip, Charles met the two stabbing victims at a Jewish Care charity center as well as other religious and civic leaders.
The visit was Charles‘ latest demonstration of backing for the Jewish community, after he visited a synagogue in northern England following an attack last year that left two worshippers dead and agreeing in March to become the patron of a charity that provides security for Britain’s estimated 290,000 Jews.
The recent attacks have led Mirvis to say the Jewish community was facing a sustained campaign of violence and intimidation.
The government has also raised its national terrorism threat level to “severe” from “substantial” with Prime Minister Keir Starmer saying Jewish people were living in fear.
The king‘s visit comes on the same day that an article written by his younger son Prince Harry was published in which he said a rise in antisemitism in Britain was deeply troubling, and that any anger over events in the Middle East should not spill over into hatred.