Passover should still be months away, however PBS is seating a various set of Jews down for a seder this week — casting the communal storytelling meal as a really perfect entry level for exploring the difficult historical past of Black-Jewish relations in the USA.
The meal might be seen in “Black and Jewish America: An Interwoven Historical past,” which begins airing on Tuesday night, and it contains a various set of Jews — together with many who’re Black — discussing the function that the Exodus story performs in each Black and Jewish traditions.
The dialog doesn’t keep away from troublesome subjects that problem the traditional knowledge that having gained freedom from slavery represents a transparent parallel for Jews and Black Individuals.
“One thing that I typically take into consideration throughout Passover is yearly we commemorate our freedom as Jews,” says Nate Looney, director of group security and belonging on the Jewish Federations of North America, in a clip shared solely with the Jewish Telegraphic Company. “However as Black Individuals, we’re typically advised to ‘recover from slavery,’ and ‘overlook about it.’”
The four-episode docuseries explores the historic rifts and alliances between Jewish and Black Individuals and is hosted by Harvard College historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. It comes at the beginning of this yr’s Black Historical past Month — and as questions have simmered about whether or not the final a number of years have irreparably harmed the historic kinship between Jewish and Black Individuals.
It argues that the connection between Black and Jewish Individuals wasn’t set in stone in the course of the civil rights motion when Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel marched in Selma with Martin Luther King Jr., however was formed by centuries of historical past, and continues to be formed by oppression and white supremacy.
Amongst these on the desk with Looney are Angela Buchdahl, senior rabbi of New York’s Central Synagogue; cookbook writer and culinary historian Michael Twitty; author Jamaica Kincaid; editor of The New Yorker David Remnick; and Rabbi Shais Rishon, also referred to as MaNishtana.
The sequence explores key moments within the histories of Black and Jewish Individuals, and the way these moments ran parallel and crossed paths over the previous 5 centuries. It covers the transatlantic slave commerce, the overlaps between the Nice Migration and Jewish immigration from Europe, the lynching of Leo Frank, the civil rights motion, the Crown Heights riots, the 2017 Unite the Proper rally, and post-Oct. 7 activism.
“A variety of earlier conversations about [Black and Jewish relations] actually simply have a look at that golden period or simply have a look at the divisions which have come within the final many years, however we’re attempting to take a holistic view about how race and caste [were] established in America,” Sara Wolitzky, co-executive producer and director of the docuseries advised eJewishPhilanthropy.
“Black and Jewish America” options quite a lot of lecturers, activists, writers, and celebrities, together with Rev. Al Sharpton, Jewish research professor Susannah Heschel (the rabbi’s daughter), actor Billy Crystal, activist and professor Cornel West, and playwright Tony Kushner.
The episodes will run each Tuesday at 9 p.m. ET till Feb. 24.
