Political Quotes

On the recordMay 26, 2010
Thank you so much, Mr. Polis. Your comments are such a perfect example of the unique contributions that American Jews have made in our history, and you specifically highlighted examples that most people would not have been familiar with. I would bet that Coloradans are not familiar with that history. So thank you very much for coming down and sharing that with us this evening. Mr. Speaker, I want to share a story that was an experience that I lived through. For me as a young Jewish woman growing up in a predominantly Jewish community in New York, on Long Island, growing up, and then moving to south Florida and spending my adult life in a significant, large Jewish community, one would think that I had spent most of my life without experiencing anti-Semitism, and I have not experienced much in the way of overt anti-Semitism. But I want to share a story with my colleagues from when I was in college at the University of Florida. I was standing in the hallway of my dorm the first week of school and talking to another young woman who I had just met, and she saw my last name on the door, because there are signs on the doors with your names on them at the beginning of each semester in most college dorms. Somehow the subject of religion came up. I shared with her that I was Jewish, and her response, she was from a tiny town in north Florida, and it was evident after her comments that she had never met a Jewish person before, because she said to me, "You're Jewish?...
Said by
Debbie Wasserman Schultz
Democratic · Florida
Source
govinfo.gov
May 26, 2010

Editor's note · Context

Wasserman Schultz shares a personal experience about encountering anti-Semitism during her college years.

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