“Black and Jewish relations have been written about ad nauseam, discussed ad nauseam,” the Berkeley writer Adam Mansbach said at a public forum in San Francisco. “The ups and downs of this relationship have been incredibly well chronicled.” And yet, he added, “there is still so much to say about them.”
The recent IUIC rallies give the impression that the radical wing of the Hebrew Israelite movement is large and riled up. Meanwhile, comments by Kanye West, the rapper who now goes by Ye, and Irving that align with elements of Hebrew Israelite doctrine suggest the movement has broad support among powerful Black celebrities.
A growing number of Bay Area Jews are engaging in activism around Indigenous rights, raising uncomfortable questions about their privilege in benefiting from colonialism and the genocide of Native Americans.
In 1892, an Oklahoma preacher born into slavery received a series of divine revelations that compelled him to launch a new church and, with it, a new religious movement in the United States: Black Israelism, better known as the Black Hebrew Israelite movement.
“It was a space where we could be ourselves without some of the concerns or worries or discomforts that can come from being a Jew of color in traditionally white Jewish spaces.”
