Jeff Winkowski is a Philosophy and Comparative Study of Religion graduate of The University of Wisconsin who has worked for the last 16 years as an author, activist, and musician within the Ecumenical Christian community. Today he shepherds In The Garden Ministries and House Church in the Humboldt Park neighborhood of Chicago along with his wife, Malissa, and his son Abraham.
Posts By This Author
Gypsy History, Culture and Gospel Community
Gyspy church. Image courtesy of Jeff Winkowski.
When I was a kid my summer job was to sell Kool-Aid to people at my mom’s rummage sales, which she and her girlfriends held several times each summer.
I remember overhearing one of mom’s customers complaining, saying something about being able to “Jew down” at our neighbor’s yard sale. I wasn’t sure why but I knew at age six that this kind of talk was very wrong and it was very offensive. Yet I would have thought nothing about hearing someone say that they got “gypped” at a rummage sale, car dealership, or a candy store. In fact it was not for another twelve years before I learned that Gypsies were a race of people with over 1,000,000 people in the US, and 10,000,000 in Europe, making them Europe’s largest ethnic minority.