'Blacks and Jews share so many parallel plights, struggles'

NY synagogue to host concert celebrating Black-Jewish ties amid tensions over Gaza war

January 19 ‘Soul to Soul’ program hosted by the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue leans into congregation’s historical involvement in the civil rights movement

Luke Tress is The Times of Israel's New York correspondent.

Singers during a past performance of 'Soul to Soul.' (Victor Nechay/Courtesy)
Singers during a past performance of 'Soul to Soul.' (Victor Nechay/Courtesy)

NEW YORK — In May of 1957, Martin Luther King, Jr., ascended to the stage of the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in New York City to deliver one of his speeches called “The Future of Integration.”

“We have come a long, long way in the struggle for racial justice, but we have a long, long way to go before the problem is solved,” the speech says.

Later this month, the synagogue will celebrate Black-Jewish cooperation in that long struggle with a concert for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day focused on ties between the two communities. The show comes as the conflict in the Middle East has shifted the relationship between the two groups.

“What we’re shooting for here is to remind people of our shared history,” said Daniel Singer, the synagogue’s cantor. “When we sing together, we feel that music transcends all of these divisions, and that’s what we want to accomplish.”

The January 19 show, called “Soul to Soul,” is a production of the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene, a Yiddish theater company. The show includes songs in English and Yiddish by Black and Jewish performers, accompanied by imagery and video of historic civil rights speeches and marches, and audio from speeches by King and Rabbi Abraham Heschel, his associate in the civil rights struggle.

Performers include singer Lisa Fishman, Cantor Magda Fishman, musician Yoshie Fruchter, and Broadway performers Elmore James and Sam McKelton. Zalmen Mlotek of the Yiddish theater is the artistic director.

The genesis for the program came around the year 2000. James said he was listening to Paul Robeson, a Black performer and political activist who learned some Yiddish and performed in the language.

“He was singing a Yiddish song and I didn’t know what he was singing but I loved the song,” James said. On a whim, he stopped in a Judaica store he happened to walk past and asked if someone there could help him learn the song. A man in the store pointed him to the Yiddish theater, where he connected with Mlotek.

“Zalmen was very excited that someone who wasn’t Jewish wanted to learn Yiddish songs,” James said. Mlotek taught James some of the Yiddish songs Robeson performed, and James, a classical singer who performs in nine languages, picked up the Yiddish quickly, partly due to its similarity to German, which he was already familiar with.

The collaboration between James and Mlotek led to the “Soul to Soul” program that first debuted in 2008 and plays in a different location each year. Stephen Wise last hosted the program around eight years ago, Singer said.

The 90-minute show includes spiritual songs from the Black and Jewish communities, such as “Wade in the Water” and a Yiddish song about Ellis Island, and material from composers including George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Louis Armstrong and Sam Cooke. During Yiddish songs, English subtitles are shown to the audience with a projector.

Mlotek said the show served to highlight “shared experiences” between the two groups and cooperation in the civil rights movement. Mlotek grew up in the 1960s and did voter registration and went to demonstrations as part of the movement.

“People are just not aware that the relationships between these two peoples go back and how important it is in this moment in history to remember that,” Mlotek said. “Racism hasn’t gone away and so we feel it’s our responsibility as Jews to share this and to educate as well as entertain at the same time.”

Zalmen Mlotek of National Yiddish Theater Folksbiene. (Courtesy)

James studied with Jewish classmates at the High School of Performing Arts in Midtown Manhattan and said that Jewish teachers were “instrumental” in his early career. He sees the concert as a way of giving back to the Jewish community.

“It’s a reminder of the very strong alliance that Blacks and Jews had in the second half of the 20th century and how powerful that alliance was,” James said. “So it’s a celebration of that and a reminder of how strong it could be in the future.”

His favorite number is one of the closing songs called “Es Brent,” Yiddish for “It’s Burning.” The lyrics were written by the Polish Jewish poet Mordechai Gebirtig in 1936 and describe a village being torched.

“It’s a very powerful song for me. I never get tired of performing it,” James said.

Performer Elmore James. (Christopher Bowen/Courtesy)

New York Congressman Ritchie Torres, one of Israel’s staunchest supporters in Washington, will speak at the show, as will Peter A. Geffen, the founder of Manhattan’s Abraham Joshua Heschel School. Geffen was a civil rights worker for King and accompanied Heschel to King’s funeral. Torres and Stephen Wise’s chief rabbi, Ammiel Hirsch, have publicly spoken together in the past about their shared support for Israel.

The synagogue has a history of civil rights involvement that it will lean into for the performance. Its namesake, Rabbi Stephen Samuel Wise, was a founding member of the NAACP in 1914. Rabbi Richard Hirsch, Ammiel’s father, was the first director of the Reform movement’s Religious Action Center, a focus for civil rights organizing in the 1960s.

Rabbi Edward Klein, the leader of the synagogue from 1949 to 1981, was an early supporter of King and invited him to the congregation. Klein also brought Black and Jewish children together for Passover seders at the synagogue.

“Passover is a festival of freedom. But in a larger sense, it symbolizes religious freedom for people of all faiths, colors and creeds. The ideal of freedom is a pillar of the Judeo-Christian tradition,” he told the children in 1971.

The October 7, 2023, invasion of Israel and ensuing war against the Hamas terror group has scrambled some Black-Jewish relationships. Immediately after the Hamas attack, multiple Black Lives Matter chapters in the US appeared to praise or endorse the massacre. Some progressive Black lawmakers have been harshly critical of Israel, its supporters and Jewish groups, sparking pushback from Jewish organizations.

On the ground, hardline anti-Israel groups have organized protests for MLK Day. At anti-Israel rallies, Jewish counter-protesters sometimes deride Black demonstrators for, they say, scorning the Jewish community after the historical Jewish support for the civil rights movement. Polls have found a divergence in views on the war between Black and white Americans, and between Jews and non-Jews.

A poster showing Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, at a rally in New York City, January 6, 2025. (Luke Tress/Times of Israel)

The war has also reinforced some relationships between the two communities, for example, in a joint push to reinstate an anti-masking mandate in New York. Other Jewish groups involved in interracial initiatives, like the Workers Circle, have circumvented the issue to continue their partnerships.

“There’s so many parallel plights, so many parallel struggles that Blacks and Jews share,” James said. “It’s a constant reminder of why we should pool our resources and our forces to create something much better.”

The Stephen Wise performance will look to surmount any differences in politics and harken back to the communities’ historical collaboration. At the end of the show, a choir of children from Stephen Wise, Harlem’s IMPACT Repertory Theatre and the Abraham Joshua Heschel School will perform songs from the civil rights era, similar to the joint seders the synagogue hosted decades ago.

“I don’t personally feel the division, but I know I’m hearing about it a lot. It’s disheartening,” Singer said. “It’s something that you don’t want to hear emphasized so it’s nice to have something that is really emphasizing our unity, reminding people of our history, and that we can stand together and we can be together despite whatever political differences there are.”

Most Popular
read more: