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<\/a><\/p>\nHistorian and host Henry Louis Gates Jr. attends a seder in \u201cBlack and Jewish America: An Interwoven History.\u201d (McGee Media)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
The meal can be seen in \u201cBlack and Jewish America: An Interwoven History,\u201d which begins airing on Tuesday evening, and it features a diverse set of Jews \u2014 including many who are Black \u2014 discussing the role that the Exodus story plays in both Black and Jewish traditions.<\/p>\n
The conversation does not avoid difficult topics that challenge the conventional wisdom that having gained freedom from slavery represents a clear parallel for Jews and Black Americans.<\/p>\n
\u201cSomething that I often think about during Passover is every year we commemorate our freedom as Jews,\u201d says Nate Looney, director of community safety and belonging at the Jewish Federations of North America, in a clip shared exclusively with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. \u201cBut as Black Americans, we\u2019re often told to \u2018get over slavery,\u2019 and \u2018forget about it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
The four-episode docuseries explores the historical rifts and alliances between Jewish and Black Americans and is hosted by Harvard University historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. It comes at the start of this year\u2019s Black History Month \u2014 and as questions have simmered about whether the last several years have irreparably harmed the historic kinship between Jewish and Black Americans.<\/p>\n
It argues that the relationship between Black and Jewish Americans wasn\u2019t set in stone during the civil rights movement when Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel marched in Selma with Martin Luther King Jr., but was shaped by centuries of history, and continues to be shaped by oppression and white supremacy.<\/p>\n
Among those at the table with Looney are Angela Buchdahl, senior rabbi of New York\u2019s Central Synagogue; cookbook author and culinary historian Michael Twitty; writer Jamaica Kincaid; editor of The New Yorker David Remnick; and Rabbi Shais Rishon, also known as MaNishtana.<\/p>\n
The series explores key moments in the histories of Black and Jewish Americans, and how those moments ran parallel and crossed paths over the past five centuries. It covers the transatlantic slave trade, the overlaps between the Great Migration and Jewish immigration from Europe, the lynching of Leo Frank, the civil rights movement, the Crown Heights riots, the 2017 Unite the Right rally, and post-Oct. 7 activism.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of previous conversations about [Black and Jewish relations] really just look at that golden era or just look at the divisions that have come in the last decades, but we\u2019re trying to take a holistic view about how race and caste [were] established in America,\u201d Sara Wolitzky, co-executive producer and director of the docuseries told eJewishPhilanthropy.<\/p>\n
\u201cBlack and Jewish America\u201d features a variety of academics, activists, writers, and celebrities, including Rev. Al Sharpton, Jewish studies professor Susannah Heschel (the rabbi\u2019s daughter), actor Billy Crystal, activist and professor Cornel West, and playwright Tony Kushner.<\/p>\n
The episodes will run every Tuesday at 9 p.m. ET until Feb. 24.<\/p>\n