Charlotte Observer Logo

Jews, blacks, and what binds all of us | Charlotte Observer

×
  • E-edition
  • Customer Service
  • Advertise
  • Newsletters

    • News
    • Local
    • Crime
    • Databases
    • Education
    • Election
    • Politics
    • Nation/World
    • Special Reports
    • North Carolina
    • South Carolina
    • Corrections
    • Columnists
    • Retro Charlotte
    • Your Schools
    • All Blogs & Columns
    • Sports
    • Carolina Panthers
    • Charlotte Hornets
    • That's Racin'
    • High Schools
    • College Sports
    • Charlotte Knights/MLB
    • Other Sports
    • Blogs & Columnists
    • Inside the Panthers
    • Inside the NBA
    • Prep Insiders
    • Scott Fowler
    • Tom Sorensen
    • All Blogs & Columns
    • Politics
    • Elections
    • The North Carolina Influencer Series
    • RNC 2020
    • Business
    • Banking
    • Stocks Center
    • Top Workplaces
    • National Business
    • What's in Store
    • Development
    • All Blogs & Columns
    • Living
    • Religion
    • Food & Drink
    • Health & Family
    • Home & Garden
    • CLT Style
    • Travel
    • Living Here Guide
    • Blogs & Columnists
    • I'll Bite
    • Kathleen Purvis
    • All Blogs & Columns
    • Arts/Culture
    • Events
    • Movie News & Reviews
    • Restaurants
    • Music/Nightlife
    • Television
    • Books
    • Comics
    • Puzzles & Games
    • Rewards
    • Blogs & Columnists
    • All Blogs & Columns
    • Opinion
    • Editorials
    • Influencers Opinion
    • Kevin Siers
    • Letters
    • Submit an Op-ed
    • Submit a Letter
    • Viewpoint
    • All Blogs & Columns
    • Blogs & Columnists
    • O-Pinion
    • You Write The Caption
    • Taylor Batten
    • Peter St. Onge
  • Celebrations
  • Obituaries
  • TV Listings

  • Public Notices
  • Cars
  • Jobs
  • Moonlighting
  • Virtual Career Fair
  • Homes
  • Classifieds
  • Place an ad
  • Mobile & Apps

  • MomsCharlotte
  • Carolina Bride Magazine
  • South Park Magazine

Opinion Columns & Blogs

Jews, blacks, and what binds all of us

By Fannie Flono - Associate Editor

    ORDER REPRINT →

August 21, 2014 05:26 PM

As I sat in the audience Wednesday night at the Levine Museum of the New South, listening to an intriguing discussion about the bond between blacks and Jews, a friend leaned over to show me something on her smartphone. It was a story about 90-year-old Holocaust survivor Hedy Epstein. On Monday, Epstein was one of nine demonstrators arrested in St. Louis, MO, for failing to disperse after a protest of the shooting of an unarmed black man in nearby Ferguson.

In an interview with Newsweek magazine, Epstein was frank about her involvement: “I’m deeply, deeply troubled by what’s going on in Ferguson,” she said. “It’s a matter of racism and injustice, and it’s not only in Ferguson…. Racism is alive and well in the United States. The power structure looks at anyone who’s different as the other, as less worthy, and so you treat the other as someone who is less human.”

She added: “I’m Jewish and I was born in Germany, so I think I can understand what it feels like to be African American in this country. I was a child living under the Nazi regime. I remember feeling uncomfortable walking down the street, seeing people cross to the other side of the street.”

That shared experience of persecution gave birth to symbiotic relationship that has spanned decades. It is a refreshing reminder – especially when the protests and confrontations in Ferguson starkly spotlight a lot of what still divides Americans – that hands can and do reach across differences to lift each other up.

Sign Up and Save

Get six months of free digital access to The Charlotte Observer

SUBSCRIBE WITH GOOGLE

#ReadLocal

The backdrop for the talk at the Levine was an exhibit that showcases the little-known story of how black colleges opened their doors to Jewish professors who fled Nazi Germany following the rise of Adolf Hitler. Called “Beyond Swastika and Jim Crow: Jewish Refugee Scholars at Black Colleges,” the exhibit explores the lives of these refugee scholars as they taught and interacted with black students at historically black schools, and came to understand and deal with the injustices and persecution blacks experienced in the segregated South. And like Hedy Epstein, the professors felt a kinship, given the persecution they endured in Germany.

Rabbi Judy Schindler, sharing the stage with Ron Carter, president of historically black Johnson C. Smith University, spoke of that kinship Wednesday: Blacks and Jews share a “common history of slavery and of unfathomable persecution.”

That history is an imperative for Jews and blacks to be “vigilantes against hatred” and not stay silent about persecution and injustice: “We must speak out for one another .”

That speaking out was evident during the civil rights era. Jews held visible leadership roles in black organizations: Kivie Kaplan was president of the NAACP from 1966 to his death in 1975. Schindler’s father, Alexander Schindler, influential in modern Reform Judaism before he died in 2000, marched with the Rev. Martin Luther King. He fled the Nazis with his family in 1937 at age 12 but returned as a U.S. solider at 17 to fight the Nazis. The evil he saw in Germany’s concentration camps reportedly spurred him to return to the states and fight racism here.

Both Schindler and Carter acknowledged though that there have been conflicts as well as kinship in the relationship between blacks and Jews. The conflicts have played out foremost in differing views about the Israeli-Palestinian situation, and anti-Semitism expressed by some blacks, particularly Black Muslim leader Louis Farrakhan, and racism by some conservative Jews.

But those differences and conflicts haven’t unraveled the bond, as evidenced by Jewish participation in the Moral Monday protests of N.C. legislative acts, protests led by the Rev. Barber of the NAACP. “Our partnership has power,” Schindler noted.

Carter, who studied and learned Hebrew, said the conflicts are evidence of the continuing struggle to find a way to “speak a common language, to live out our common values, to transcend difference.”

But he said blacks have a “kindred spirit with Hebrew people – a cosmic kinship, and that’s not by accident.”

Hedy Epstein recognized the kinship on Monday. As she was being escorted to police van after her arrest, she reportedly said of her protest: “I’ve been doing this since I was a teeenager. I didn’t think I would have to do it when I was 90. We need to stand up today so that poeple won’t have to do this when they’re 90.”

In truth, we all share a kinship – black, white, Asian, Hispanic, Jew, Christian, Catholic, young, old, male, female. All our lives and livelihoods are bound together – even when we refuse to acknowledge or see it. Shared pain serves to illuminate the bonds. But it shouldn’t have to.

  Comments  

Videos

Veteran rips off clothes to make a point

UNC's Tom Ross Talks Academics Vs. Athletics

View More Video

Trending Stories

NBA players urge Zion Williamson to shut it down after bizarre injury during UNC game

February 21, 2019 09:11 AM

American Airlines adds more flights to popular destinations after Spirit enters CLT

February 20, 2019 05:30 PM

‘The Shoe Game.’ On UNC’s blowout Duke win, Zion Williamson and busted sneakers.

February 20, 2019 11:10 PM

Mine shaft found under Charlotte house could be 150-year-old tunnel to gold

February 21, 2019 12:20 PM

Investors bombard gentrifying areas in Charlotte with offers. But experts urge caution

February 20, 2019 12:34 PM

things to do

Read Next

For Black History Month, reverence at the National Civil Rights Museum

Opinion Columns & Blogs

For Black History Month, reverence at the National Civil Rights Museum

By Desiree Zapata Miller - Contributing columnist, Charlotte Observer

    ORDER REPRINT →

February 20, 2019 05:09 PM

For Black History Month, we should all recommit to understanding what African-Americans have endured in this country.

KEEP READING

Sign Up and Save

#ReadLocal

Get six months of free digital access to The Charlotte Observer

SUBSCRIBE WITH GOOGLE

MORE OPINION COLUMNS & BLOGS

The invisible tightrope for women of color

Opinion Columns & Blogs

The invisible tightrope for women of color

February 15, 2019 02:59 PM
Trump rule change could threaten North Carolina’s water

Opinion Columns & Blogs

Trump rule change could threaten North Carolina’s water

February 11, 2019 05:00 AM
KKK robes as an honor? We’ve come a ways in 100 years

Taylor Batten

KKK robes as an honor? We’ve come a ways in 100 years

February 10, 2019 05:00 AM
Why Florida’s kids are likely to be more successful than North Carolina’s

Taylor Batten

Why Florida’s kids are likely to be more successful than North Carolina’s

February 03, 2019 05:00 AM
Are we finally ready to listen to teachers on education reform?

Opinion Columns & Blogs

Are we finally ready to listen to teachers on education reform?

February 01, 2019 06:17 PM
On taxes: You can’t have it all, Mecklenburg

Opinion Columns & Blogs

On taxes: You can’t have it all, Mecklenburg

January 31, 2019 01:42 PM
Take Us With You

Real-time updates and all local stories you want right in the palm of your hand.

Icon for mobile apps

Charlotte Observer App

View Newsletters

Subscriptions
  • Start a Subscription
  • Customer Service
  • eEdition
  • Vacation Hold
  • Pay Your Bill
  • Rewards
Learn More
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Newsletters
  • News in Education
  • Photo Store
Advertising
  • Information
  • Place a Classified
Copyright
Privacy Policy
Terms of Service


Back to Story