Rabbi Chessin’s Column

These days the relationship between the Black and Jewish communities is complicated, characterized by cooperation and conflict. New interest arose this fall when some of us became aware of the “Black Hebrew Israelites” for the first time.

  Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, caused a commotion when he tweeted that he would go “death-con 3” on Jewish people. Ye defended himself by citing the Black Hebrew Israelite contention that he could not be antisemitic because “black people are actually Jew.” (sic) The Black Hebrew Israelites (BHI) allege that people of color are the TRUE descendants of the Biblical Israelites, not Ashkenazi or Sephardic Jews.

  Then NBA star Kyrie Irving tweeted a link to the movie “Hebrew to Negroes: Wake Up Black America,” which includes antisemitic tropes about Jews and power in the financial system and Hollywood, and Jewish conspiracies for world domination. When Irving returned from his resultant suspension, hundreds of Black Hebrew Israelites demonstrated outside the Barclay Center chanting, “We are the real Jews.”

  The BHI movement was initially founded in the late 19th century by William Saunders Crowdy, an escaped slave who claimed he had visions in which God told him that African Americans were descendants of the Hebrews in the Bible. In 1896, Crowdy established the first congregation of the movement based on aspects of both Christianity and Judaism. They believe that Jesus was a person of color and that Black Americans are God’s chosen people. Some churches, like Crowdy’s, supported unity among races and genders, but other sects evolved into extremism.

  Radical Black Hebrew Israelites refer to European Jewish people as the “synagogue of Satan,” arguing that they are “devilish imposters” responsible for the slave trade and plotting world domination. On the contrary, the kidnapped enslaved Africans were the actual descendants of the exiled Israelites of biblical times. 

  Thankfully, not all sects of the BHI movement are extremist or antisemitic. For example, Rabbi Capers Funnye is a prominent Black Israelite clergyman in the United States. He is the chief rabbi of the International Israelite Board of Rabbis and the clergy leader of a Chicago synagogue with a mixed membership of Jews and Black Israelites. His congregation follows the Torah and supports the state of Israel.

  Funnye distinguishes his congregation from the Black Hebrew Israelites. Funnye condemns the antisemitism of the radical Israelite sects, stating, “God is never about divisiveness. God is never about hatred. God is never about, ‘You ain’t.’ I don’t have to say what you aren’t to make me who I am.”

  May this month – and every month of the year – serve as sacred inspiration for Jewish and African American leaders to raise such voices of moderation, fellowship, and respect, and to drown out social media’s din of divisiveness, anger, and acrimony.

In 1918, near the end of World War I, Israel Beilin penned a patriotic song while serving in the army at Camp Upton in N.Y. But, there were so many patriotic songs coming out at the time that the composer filed the piece away in his scrap heap.

  Two decades later, the composer, whose name was Americanized to Irving Berlin, was approached by radio star Kate Smith, who wanted a new song to sing for a special 1938 Armistice Day radio show. 

  Berlin tried several different songs and then remembered his “God Bless America,” filed away in an old trunk.  

However, the world had changed in many ways in the two decades from 1918 to 1938. For one, after World War I, Americans were enthusiastic and patriotic. They were proud of their war efforts and their “boys” who went “over there.” 

  Now, in the 1930s, Americans were adamantly opposed to participating in another European War. So Berlin himself dusted off his old song and made several changes to make it a “peace song.”   

  The original stated: “Stand beside her and guide her to the right with a light from above.” Initially, “to the right” had not been a political statement. But, it had become so, and Berlin said: “For obvious reasons, I changed the phrase to ‘Through the night with a light from above.’” 

  More significantly, Berlin added an ominous preamble to his song, which included his own prayer for non-intervention in the war: 

“While the storm clouds gather far across the sea

 Let us swear allegiance to a land that’s free

 Let us all be grateful that we’re far from there

 As we raise our voices in a solemn prayer.”

  The song was sung this way by Kate Smith every performance from the fall of 1938 into the early months of 1939. Yet, Berlin copyrighted the song in February 1939, changing the words “grateful that we’re far from there” to “grateful for a land so fair.”  

  What caused the composer to shift from an isolationist viewpoint to the song as we sing it today? A chilling twist of fate is that “God Bless America’s” premiere occurred one day after Kristallnacht, Germany’s Night of Broken Glass! On November 9-10, the Nazi’s SA paramilitary forces and civilians carried out a pogrom, attacking Jewish homes, businesses, and synagogues. This violent attack was America’s first view of the brutality of the Nazi regime, shifting American public opinion about intervention. 

  For Berlin, “God Bless America” could no longer be a peace song.  He changed its words and began to lead it at rallies in support of American involvement in the escalating conflict in Europe.

  “God Bless America” is the quintessential Jewish War Veterans’ song. As Irving Berlin’s daughter, Mary Ellin Barrett, wrote in her memoirs, “It wasn’t ‘God Bless America, land that we love.’ It was ‘God bless America, land that I love.’ It was an incredibly personal statement that my father was making, that anybody singing that song makes as they sing it. And I understood that that song was his ‘thank you’ to the country that had taken him in. It was the song of the [Russian Jewish] immigrant boy who made good.”

  This Veteran’s Day, may we honor those who served and swear allegiance to continue the fight for a land that’s free.

In a nod to gender-neutral language, Representative Emanuel Cleaver II concluded his opening prayer for the launch of the 117th Congress with the words “amen and awoman.” While it sounds like the kind of joke I might make, the fact is the congressman may have been seriously attempting to be inclusive.The term amen’s origins are from the Hebrew root for the word “Emunah,” which means faith or belief. It is a gender-neutral term. Reciting Amen to a prayer or blessing demonstrates a statement of affirmation. Judaism teaches that when a leader says a blessing, and the congregation responds, “Amen,” it is as if the entire community has fulfilled the mitzvah of saying the blessing. When Jews cannot recite an entire Hebrew prayer, a simple amen might suffice.

In American English, the word “amen” has two pronunciations, ah-men or ay-men. The ah-men pronunciation is the one that is used in performances of classical music and churches with more formalized rituals and liturgy. The ay-men pronunciation is associated with evangelical Christianity and the pronunciation that is typically sung in gospel music.

The great 15th-century philosopher Adar Banal explained the term as follows. He said the congregation’s real purpose is to combat the idea that God is merely in the heavens above. God also dwells within you and me and makes the Divine presence known through the acts of our hands, the impulses of our hearts, and the healing nature of our deeds. To say Amen and not to act is meaningless. A passionate Amen requires that we get up from our prayers and work in our world according to the high ideals expressed.

Thus for our elected officials, we pray:

May you never let an Amen pass your lips without being followed by actions that unify and heal our fractured nation.
May your actions serve all of our citizenry’s needs regardless of ethnicity, faith, gender, sexual orientation, economic status, or political affiliation.
May this Congress, rather than paying lip service to our Constitution and founding fathers’ highest ideals, strive to serve its citizenry as one nation, under God, indivisibly enacting liberty and justice for all.

Then indeed, we will conclude with a hearty AMEN.