Rabbi Capers Funnye skillfully navigated a Jewish world wary of Hebrew Israelites

JTA — There’s a story that Rabbi Capers Funnye was fond of telling when he addressed mostly white Jewish audiences.

On his travels around the United States, he explained, he would often drop into a local synagogue to daven Shacharit, the morning prayer service.

Upon entering the unfamiliar shul, he was prepared for the inevitable: a white member of the congregation would eye him suspiciously and eventually sidle over. “Are you Jewish?” the person would inquire. To this, Funnye — wearing a kippah, tallit, and tefillin, and holding a siddur in his hands — would respond: “No. I just found these things at the entrance and thought it would be fun to try them on.”

The joke spoke to the equanimity with which Funnye, one of the most prominent Black Jews in the United States, approached his work as an advocate for diversity and inclusion in American Jewish communities.

Funnye died on Monday at age 74. His death was announced by the Chicago congregation he had led since 1985, Beth Shalom B’nai Zaken Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation. A memorial service is scheduled to take place at the synagogue on Friday. The cause of death was cancer, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

I first became acquainted with Funnye nearly 20 years ago, when we both worked with the Jewish diversity non-profit Be’chol Lashon. Over the years, I heard him speak many times — he had a booming voice and a great laugh — and interviewed him for articles about Jews of color and Hebrew Israelites (people of color who identify as descendants of the ancient Israelites, but not necessarily as Jews). I once spent an enjoyable Shabbat as a guest at his shul in Chicago, and I regularly “attend” services there via livestream.

He was a multifaceted person and leader. He was a Southerner and a Northerner; he grew up in segregated South Carolina as well as in Chicago. He was an Israelite who was also a Jew according to halacha, traditional Jewish religious law; he formally converted to Conservative Judaism as an adult to facilitate his work with white Jews. He was educated at both Israelite institutions and traditional Jewish ones; he was an alumnus of the Israelite Academy in New York City, and Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership in Chicago.

Funnye was known to many as “Obama’s rabbi” — a cousin of Michelle Obama, a dynamic and sought-after speaker at synagogues and conferences, a participant in programs such as the recent PBS series “Black and Jewish America: An Interwoven History.” He possessed a deep love for Torah and for the Jewish people.

He was also known by some as “Chief.” Since 2015, he had served as the chief rabbi of the International Israelite Board of Rabbis (IIBR), a century-old, Torah-observant branch of Black Israelism. Much of the work he did during the last decade was focused on strengthening the IIBR and its member congregations in the United States, the Caribbean, and Africa.

His agenda was ambitious, and his accomplishments were many.

He welcomed women into the rabbinate, bringing the IIBR into closer alignment with the liberal denominations of Judaism. Funnye ordained a female rabbinical student and mentee, Tamar Manasseh, in 2021.

He played a role in the hiring of Israelite clergy at a Conservative synagogue in New Jersey. With his encouragement, Rabbi Eliyahu Collins became the first Israelite rabbi hired to lead a mainstream synagogue in the United States; Collins still works at the synagogue, Ahavas Sholom in Newark. (Funnye himself led a mixed Israelite-Orthodox Jewish congregation in Chicago in the 1990s, but he did so as a volunteer.)

In addition, he and Rabbi Baruch Yehudah became the first Israelite rabbis admitted to the New York Board of Rabbis. This was significant not just because it boosted the IIBR’s legitimacy in the Jewish world, but also because decades earlier, the NYBR had rejected Rabbi Wentworth Arthur Matthew, one of Funnye’s predecessors as IIBR chief rabbi. Several more Israelite rabbis have joined the board in recent years.

Historically, Israelite communities and white Jewish communities have operated independently of each other. Funnye’s background made him uniquely suited to fostering greater dialogue and collaboration between them.

He was repulsed by the openly antisemitic groups often referred to in the press as “Black Hebrew Israelites,” and regularly condemned them. “We do not and will not ever speak in disparaging terms about any group,” he once told me about the IIBR.

Judging by the outpouring of grief over his death on social media, Funnye had many friends and allies in the mainstream Jewish world. Yet ultimately, he was unable to bring all of the establishment around to accepting Torah-observant Israelites as fellow Jews.

He was livid when the leaders of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism wrote an op-ed in 2023 arguing that some of the Israelites associated with the IIBR are not Jews, and that Israelite clergy is not suited to lead mainstream Jewish congregations.

“It was extremely racist,” he told me when I asked him about it earlier this year. “There was no investigative work.” (Rabbi Jacob Blumenthal, the CEO of USCJ and the Rabbinical Assembly, told me his organization was concerned about “maintaining the halachic standards that define Jewish lineage.”)

Funnye asserted that Israelites represent a unique but legitimate denomination of Judaism, with its own halacha and customs. Anyone who attends services at Beth Shalom or the other IIBR congregations can see as much.

He held out hope that the rest of the Jewish world would recognize this. Perhaps it will one day. The sooner the better.

For now, the easiest way for white Jews to honor Rabbi Capers Funnye’s legacy is to remember this: Don’t ask the person of color davening next to you in shul if they’re Jewish. Just assume that they are.

Funnye is survived by his wife, Mary, in addition to four children as well as grandchildren, according to the Sun-Times.