Dozens of lawmakers and foreign ambassadors gathered on Capitol Hill on Tuesday to celebrate Jewish American Heritage Month.
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), who introduced the first resolution to mark May as a month to honor Jewish contributions to American society in 2005, told the audience in the Russell Senate Office Building that all Americans should know Jewish-American history.
“We need to make sure that we’re lifting all those up, and we teach all Americans about our contributions, about who we are as people,” Wasserman Schultz said.
She cited the examples of Hedy Lamarr, the Hollywood actress whose wartime work on radio frequencies was a predecessor to modern WiFi technology, and Irving Naxon, who invented the slow cooker.
Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) told the audience about her family’s contribution to America’s love of kosher-style cuisine.
“My great-grandfather invented the all-beef frankfurter, so a Jew could eat a hot dog,” Slotkin said. “My great-grandfather met Nathan Handwerker in Brooklyn in 1913, and they got together and my great-grandfather said, ‘I’ll do the meat, you do the front end.’”
“That started Nathan’s hot dogs on Coney Island,” she said.
Sens. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), John Hickenlooper (D-Colo) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) also spoke. Many of the speakers decried the rise of Jew-hatred in America.
“Jewish people have been threatened. We’ve been verbally accosted. We’ve been viciously beaten. We have been killed,” said Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.), who is Jewish.
“Antisemitism has no place in our society and no damn place anywhere,” she said.