a whole sweet potato

"That night the entire Rudd family sat at the round kitchen table, and while we talked of hurt and guilt and war, the chicken soup and matzoh balls appeared, plus a steady stream of Jewish appetizers—pickles, chopped liver, coleslaw. (A few days later a reporter for The New York Post got through to my mother and obtained her recipe for chicken soup, including her secret ingredient—a whole sweet potato.)"

~~ from Underground: My Life with SDS and the Weathermen by Mark Rudd

afraid of violence

"A few days later, back in New York, I got a call from Walter, an acquaintance in the black high-school movement in the city, who said that he had watched me during the demonstration and that I had 'just been running with the girl' and done nothing violent at all. I had seen him and a partner throw a garbage can through a bank window. He said he now knew I was a phony and couldn't be relied on in the coming revolutionary struggle.

"I was devastated . . . because his criticism was true. Since I was a little kid, I'd been (and still am) afraid of violence. I was always ashamed of not standing up to bullies, even when they directly challenged me. In my family, violence was for the goyim or the trombeniks (hoodlums). I knew no one who hit another person. I did not play football. I had never lost my fear of violence."

~~ from Underground: My Life with SDS and the Weathermen by Mark Rudd