Telling Our Truths
By
Dr. André Key
Four Black scholars of different Jewish communities constituted a panel in Atlanta at the annual conference of the American Academy of Religion on November 22, 2015. This convention is the “world’s largest gathering of scholars interested in the study of religion.” One of the keynote speakers at this event was Dr. Cornel West who addressed issues of race, religion, and justice. Our panel was entitled, “Researching Our History, Telling Our Truths.” It was the first time that a panel organized and composed totally of Black Jews was held at this annual conference since its inception in 1909. The panel’s focus and purpose was to allow Black Jews to discuss what it means to conduct research as imbedded scholars from multiple disciplines.
The panel opened with a theoretical challenge from Dr. Walter R. Isaac, a philosopher who offered a critique of the methodologies used to examine and study Afro-Judaic communities. His paper titled, Cooperian Reflections on Afro-Jewish Artifacts utilized the writings of Anna Julia Cooper and Alison Wylie to theorize the constitution of Afro-Jewish artifacts and the communities that preserve them. It provided a corrective approach to Afro-Jewish artifact interpretation that begins by marginalizing the interpretive roles that Hebrew-Israelite and other Afro-Jewish communities may play in identifying and preserving their historical artifacts. Isaac’s previous scholarship, “Locating Afro-American Judaism: A Critique of White Normativity” is a critique of the methods and implicit biases that exist white Jewish studies of Afro-Judaic communities.
The second panelist, Dr. André Key, Assistant Professor of History at Bennett College, offered a paper titled, Situating Black Judaism in the South: Stories of Migration and Reorientation. It combined historical and ethnographic research to highlight Black Hebrew life in four Southern cities that have become centers of Black Judaism. This paper discussed the situating and re-orienting of Black Judaism in Atlanta, Georgia; Charlotte, North Carolina; and Jackson, Mississippi. These locations represent a diverse collection of relocated Black Hebrews from the North; grassroots Black Hebrew congregations in the South, and the results of internet proselytization for the past twenty years. This paper built on Key’s previous scholarship, “Towards a Typology of Black Hebrew Thought and Practice” which offered a framework for understanding the diversity of Black Hebrew religious practice and belief.
The third panelist, Rabbi Sholomo Ben Levy, Associate Professor of History at Northampton Community College, presented a complex view of Rabbi Arnold Joshua Ford. His paper titled, From Out of Zion: Arnold Josiah Ford and Black Jewish Nationalism discussed Arnold J. Ford as a product of the black religious nationalist ethos of the Harlem Renaissance and contextualizes him as a mainstream black religious leader. It offered a description of Ford and his cohort as autodidacts and organic intellectuals who believed that history and theology held answers to their racial predicament. This re-assessment engaged the earlier characterization Harlem’s Black Jewish leadership as marginal religious charlatans and provided a new historiography of Ford’s impact on the UNIA and the indispensable role that Black Jews played in the organization. Rabbi Levy previously published the biographies of Rabbi Wentworth A. Matthews and Rabbi Arnold J. Ford in African American Lives.
Responding to their papers was Dr. Lewis R. Gordon, Professor of Philosophy and Africana Studies at University of Connecticut. Gordon who previously directed the Center for Afro-Jewish Studies at Temple University, provided a keen summary of the methods and theoretical frameworks utilized by the panelist. Gordon argued that the panelist were challenging researchers of Afro-Judaic communities to adopt a more rigorous approach to research that is not imbedded in notions of white rabbinic Jewish normativity and recognize the historical diversity of the Jewish people particularly those outside the domains of Christendom and lands under Islamic rule.
In many ways the panel, “Researching Our History, Telling Our Truths” picked up the mantle first bore by the recently departed Yosef ben-Jochannan (affectionately known as Dr. Ben), whose monumental work We the Black Jews: Witness to the White Jewish Race Myth published in 1983 was a forceful counterresponse to the racist assumptions underlying the research that had been conducted on Beta Israel of Ethiopia and the Commandment Keepers of Harlem by early twentieth century white academics. This panel was dedicated to re-asserting that intellectual challenge by providing rigorous theoretical frameworks that challenge the disciplines of Africana studies, anthropology, history, Jewish studies, and religious studies. A secondary outcome of this panel was the formation of a professional organization, the Association of Afro-Judaic Studies which will support the free exchange of ideas and encourage rigorous and intellectually honest research on Jewish communities who ancestral roots lie in Africa and its diaspora.