Black Jews Rising
Sunday, Jun 22, 2008

The AJC says the number is at 150,000 in the U.S. alone -- and rising. The paper profiles a former evangelical couple who are making the conversion. "For a black male to put on a kipah and go wandering around in a predominately black community, you get the strangest looks," said Pamela Harris.

Highland, where Pamela Harris works as the senior nonclerical staff member, at least eight of the roughly 20 people learning about Judaism with Rabbi Hillel Norry are black.

At the Marcus Jewish Community Center in Dunwoody, roughly 20 percent of the nearly two dozen people enrolled in Steven Chervin's introduction to Judaism classes are black.

Although there are no sound statistics on the subject, anecdotal evidence suggests that, in the past 15 years, increasing numbers of black Americans are exploring Judaism, said Gary Tobin, president of the Institute for Jewish & Community Research in San Francisco.

"Ten years ago, it was almost unheard of that a black person would come in and want to convert," said Rabbi Ilan Feldman, who is working with the Harrises and two other black people pursuing conversion.

The numbers here seem a little large. I've been to dozens of synaogues in the last few years and I can count the number of black Jews I've seen on one hand. Am I missing something?

Posted by Bruce Feiler comments

From Beliefnet
Wednesday, Jun 11, 2008

Dear Readers--

Due to a planned technical upgrade taking place on Wednesday June 11th, the Beliefnet Blogs will not display any new content, and commenting will be disabled.

We aim to be back up and running by the end of the day, and thank you in advance for your understanding.

Best,

The Beliefnet Team

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"Another Chapter Should Be Added to the Bible"
Thursday, Jun 05, 2008

Jesse Jackson on Barack Obama: "I cried all night. I'm going to be crying for the next four years," he said. "What Barack Obama has accomplished is the single most extraordinary event that has occurred in the 232 years of the nation's political history. .. The event itself is so extraordinary that another chapter could be added to the Bible to chronicle its significance."

John Lewis, the only living person to have spoken at the lectern the day the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his "I Have a Dream" speech, on what King would have thought: "He would have been very, very pleased. He probably would have said, ‘Hallelujah!'"

Jim Clyburn: "I thought this day would come, but I didn't think I'd live to see it. I got home, and I was so emotional I couldn't feel myself. I was numb." He poured himself a Jack Daniels and Diet Coke and watched Obama speak.

And my favorite line, from a reader of Andrew Sullivan: "Tomorrow I will go to the African American cemetery outside of Chicago where my great-grandparents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, friends, neighbors, and my mother and father are buried. And I will tell them that they were right -- that if we studied hard, worked hard, kept the faith, fought for justice, prayed, that this day would come.

And it has."

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Joshua at AIPAC
Wednesday, Jun 04, 2008

No Moses at AIPAC this morning, but Joshua! "Together, we can join our voices together, and in doing so make even the mightiest of walls fall down."

And a life narrative that aligns his story with the great Jewish story -- and the great American story -- the search for the Promised Land.

I first became familiar with the story of Israel when I was eleven years old. I learned of the long journey and steady determination of the Jewish people to preserve their identity through faith, family and culture. Year after year, century after century, Jews carried on their traditions, and their dream of a homeland, in the face of impossible odds.

The story made a powerful impression on me. I had grown up without a sense of roots. My father was black, he was from Kenya, and he left us when I was two. My mother was white, she was from Kansas, and I'd moved with her to Indonesia and then back to Hawaii. In many ways, I didn't know where I came from. So I was drawn to the belief that you could sustain a spiritual, emotional and cultural identity. And I deeply understood the Zionist idea - that there is always a homeland at the center of our story.

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