For a Jew from NY it's as much of a no-go area as Baghdad or Alexandria with its library with the Protocols of the Elders of Zion on display in the lobby.

I go nowhere where I can't use the 1st amendment and speak freely in safety.

Italy, Spain, Portugal and Latvia are just as scenic, if not more so.

If you'd told my grandparents from Rivne, Chmelnik and Vinnitsya that 100 years after they came to NY Latvia and Ukraine were safer for Jews than the Pittsburgh, Jersey City and Poway, California, they'd have said, "what are ya, meshuggeneh?!"

History throws at us stuff no novelist could ever invent.