Colin Powell's Life Steeped in Jewish Culture, Yiddish

Colin Powell, the former U.S. Secretary of State and first Black person to hold the job, lived on the same South Bronx block as Norman and Amy Brash, friends "so close they were considered relatives," and Powell called them "Mammele and Papelle." "Don't ask me why the Jewish diminutives," Powell, who died Monday at 84, wrote in "My American Journey," his 1995 autobiography, "since they were also Jamaican." But, growing up in the 1940s and 1950s in what he called the "heavily Jewish neighborhood" of Hunts Point, Powell, whose parents immigrated from Jamaica, had many Jewish friends. In fact, his life was filled with Yiddishkeit.