Table of Contents

Introduction ; PART ONE: AFRICAN AMERICAN JEWS AND ISRAELITES ; Black Culture and Black Zion: African American Religious Encounters with Judaism, 1790-1930: An Overview ; African American Jews: Dispelling Myths, Bridging the Divide ; Symbolic Identity Formation in an African American Religious Sect: The Black Hebrew Israelites ; Another Exodus: The Hebrew Israelites from Chicago to Dimona ; PART TWO: AFRICAN AMERICAN MUSLIMS AND JUDAISM ; The Proximate Other: The Nation of Islam and Judaism ; The Nubian Islamic Hebrews, Ansaaru Allah Community ; PART THREE: AFRICAN AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY AND JUDAISM ; Remembering Nehemiah, A Note on Biblical Theology ; Theological Affinities in the Writings of Abraham Joshua Heschel and Martin Luther King, Jr. ; This is the Gateway to the Lord: The Legacy of Synagogue Buildings for African-American Churches on Cincinnati's Reading Road ; The Jew in the Haitian Imagination ; Selected Bibliography ; Notes on Contributors

Reviews

"Black Zion serves as a useful source....[for] data and information on that segment of Black religious life that has been influenced, to some degree, by Jewish religious thought, ritual and tradition."--American Jewish History
"Black Zion is an informative and readable source for a little-known chapter in the black-Jewish encounter. this eye -opening, descriptive anthology penetrates the ethnic ghetto and beyond."--Choice

Many recent studies of Black-Jewish relations assume that the two ethnic categories are mutually exclusive. Not so, according to the two Swarthmore College historians who edited this absorbing volume. A 1990 national survey found that 2.4% of American Jews--about 132,000 people--identify themselves as black and that 239,000 African-Americans claim some personal connection with Judaism. The ten essays that comprise this collection offer "a suggestive sample" of their varied stories. The most interesting chapters examine the terms in which African-American Jews negotiate their compound identities in the context of a wider culture that is generally unsympathetic. Other essays examine such topics as the theological connections between Judaism and African-American varieties of Islam, the appropriation of abandoned synagogues by African-American congregations and the employment of Jewish stereotypes among Haitian practitioners of Vodou. One may quibble with the selection: a celebratory essay on Abraham Joshua Heschel's relationship with Martin Luther King seems decidedly out of place, and there are two chapters on the Hebrew Israelites, a small sect of black Americans who emigrated to Israel in 1969, but none on the Falasha Jews of Ethiopia, whose cause appeals neither to Pan-Africanists nor to Zionists. However, the book's eclectic nature is also one of its strengths, revealing the great diversity and complexity of modern religious responses to the questions of ethnic identity. (Jan.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

"Black Zion serves as a useful source....[for] data and information on that segment of Black religious life that has been influenced, to some degree, by Jewish religious thought, ritual and tradition."--American Jewish History "Black Zion is an informative and readable source for a little-known chapter in the black-Jewish encounter. this eye -opening, descriptive anthology penetrates the ethnic ghetto and beyond."--Choice