Journalist Robin Washington to address King/Heschel program Sunday at B'nai Brith

by Susie Davidson

Advocate Correspondent

SOMERVILLE - Boston Herald journalist Robin Washington, who helped organize the Alliance of Black Jews in 1995, will speak at "Identity Crises: Politics of Perception Among Blacks and Jews,” a program to be held at Temple B’nai Brith in Somerville this Sunday at 2 p.m.

The event, originally scheduled for Feb. 1 but delayed due to Washington’s assignment to cover the shuttle disaster, will mark the birthday of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as well as the Yahrzeit of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, who marched with him in the civil rights era. It is presented by Temple B’nai Brith’s Social Action Committee.

“The Social Action Committee at Temple Bnai Brith puts on educational programs about issues of Social Justice, here and abroad, such as Economic Injustice, and current events in the Middle East,” said B’nai Brith spokesperson Ellen Stone. “We are a member of GBIO, the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization, and support Family Table and similar programs.”

Washington was raised a Reform Jew in 1950s and 1960s Chicago by a Black father and white and Jewish mother, an NAACP officer who took he and his brother to sit-ins and freedom marches. Previously managing editor of the weekly Bay State Banner and reporter for Black Entertainment Television News, he has covered the crisis in the Catholic Church for the Herald over the past year. At B’nai Brith, he will discuss its effect upon Black-Jewish relations as well as address his survey, which measured self-identification and mutual perception among non-Jewish African-Americans and non-Black Jews. He will also discuss experiences of African-American Jews, whom, according to a 1990 Council of Jewish Federations survey, number 200,000 in the U.S.

Prominent Black Jews include actor Yaphet Kotto of the "Homicide" television series, "Devil in a Blue Dress" author Walter Mosley, actress Lisa Bonet, recently-departed actress and singer Nell Carter, late actor Sammy Davis Jr., rock singer Lenny Kravitz and academic Julius Lester.

Stating that he is “100 percent of both heritages,” Washington was elected the first chair of the Alliance of Black Jews, which seeks to "unite people of African American descent who believe in the Torah or the practice of Judaism."

"To be Black and to be Jewish are not mutually exclusive," says Washington, who considers himself a Conservative Jew today.

Heschel(1907-1972)’s works include The Prophets, Torah min ha-Shamayim ba-Aspaklaryah shel ha-Dorot, Man is Not Alone, God in Search of Man, The Earth is the Lord's, Man's Quest for God, The Sabbath, Who is Man? and Israel: An Echo of Eternity.

Heschel earned his doctorate from the Hochschule fuer die Wissenschaft des Judentums in Berlin, where he taught Talmud; he later succeeded Martin Buber in Frankfort on the Main. As the Nazis rose to power, he was deported to Poland, went to England and then the U.S. in 1940, where he taught at the Hebrew Union College and became a professor of Jewish ethics and philosophy at the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1945.

He marched with King at a voting rights march in Selma, Alabama in 1963, stating: "For many of us the march from Selma to Montgomery was both protest and prayer. Legs are not lips, and walking is not kneeling. And yet our legs uttered songs. Even without words, our march was worship. I felt my legs were praying." Ten days before King’s assassination, Heschel stood with him before a group of northeastern-U.S. rabbis who were skeptical of the movement. "I call upon every Jew to hearken to his voice, to share his vision, to follow in his way. The whole future of America will depend on the impact and influence of Dr. King.''

At a 1963 National Conference of Religion and Race in Chicago, he said, "One hundred years ago, the emancipation was proclaimed. It is time for the white man to strive for self-emancipation, to set himself free of bigotry."

He helped organize, and co-chaired Clergy and Laity Concerned about Vietnam; he invited an anti-Vietnam war hero to one of his JTS seminars.

An early champion of Soviet Jewry, he stated in 1963, “East European Jewry vanished. Russian Jewry is the last remnant of a people destroyed in extermination camps, the last remnant of spiritual glory that is no more. We ask for no privilege; all we demand is an end to the massive and systematic liquidation of the religious and cultural heritage of an entire community, and equality with all the other cultural and religious minorities.”

He addressed the White House Conference on Children and Youth, the White House Conference on Aging, the American Medical Association, and the 28th World Zionist Congress in Jerusalem, where he declared "Judaism is not a matter of blood or race, but a spiritual dimension of existence, a dimension of holiness. We are messengers; let us not forget our message."

"Who is a Jew? he asked in 1972. "A person who knows how to recall and to keep alive what is holy in our people's past, and to cherish the promise and the vision of redemption in the days to come."

“We invited Robin Washington to speak to honor the teaching of Heschel and King, in that they acted out in this world their convictions, based on their profound religious beliefs, in working for Civil Rights (and in opposing the war in Vietnam),” said Stone. “We are aiming to improve connections between the Jewish and Black communities, and to raise awareness of the diversity of the Jewish people, in terms of race, class and cultures.”

Stone first heard Washington speak five years ago at a Black-Jewish friendship dinner, in an effort to convert the old Mishkan Tefilla, which had moved from West Roxbury to Chestnut Hill, to a community arts center seeking to preserve the culture of the original Jewish community which had built the shul. “They had also hoped to reflect the culture of the current Caribbean and Afro-American community,” she said. “I found him a compelling speaker, exposing my mind to new viewpoints.”

For further information, please call Ellen Stone at 617-776-2829, or Ruby Poltarak at 617-969-9389.