Judaism, Race, and Ethics

Recent political and social developments in the United States reveal a deep misunderstanding of race and religion. From the highest echelons of power to the most obscure corners of society, color and conviction are continually twisted, often deliberately for nefarious reasons, or misconstrued to stymie meaningful conversation. This timely book wrestles with the contentious, dynamic, and ethically complicated relationship between race and religion through the lens of Judaism.

Featuring essays by lifelong participants in discussions about race, religion, and society— including Susannah Heschel, Sander L. Gilman, and George Yancy—this vibrant book aims to generate a compelling conversation vitally relevant to both the academy and the community. Starting from the premise that understanding prejudice and oppression requires multifaceted critical reflection and a willingness to acknowledge one’s own bias, the contributors to this volume present surprising arguments that disentangle fictions, factions, and facts. The topics they explore include the role of Jews and Jewish ethics in the civil rights movement, race and the construction of American Jewish identity, rituals of commemoration celebrating Jewish and black American resilience, the “Yiddish gaze” on lynchings of black bodies, and the portrayal of racism as a mental illness from nineteenth-century Vienna to twenty-first-century Charlottesville. Each essay is linked to a classic Jewish source and accompanied by guiding questions that help the reader identify salient themes connecting ancient and contemporary concerns.

In addition to the editor, the contributors include Sander L. Gilman, Annalise E. Glauz-Todrank, Aaron S. Gross, Susannah Heschel, Sarah Imhoff, Willa M. Johnson, Judith W. Kay, Jessica Kirzane, Nichole Renée Phillips, and George Yancy.

“It is an invitation to leave the focus upon the collective self in favor of solidarity and an emphatic gaze to the Black community. In the multiform approach to the topic of Judaism, race, and racism, the volume suggests the development of solidarity with oppressed and persecuted people and a relatedness to marginalized groups.”—Ephraim Meir, Reading Religion

Jonathan K. Crane is Raymond F. Schinazi Scholar in Bioethics and Jewish Thought at Emory University’s Center for Ethics, Associate Professor of Medicine at Emory School of Medicine, and Associate Professor of Religion at Emory College. He is the founder and coeditor-in-chief of the Journal of Jewish Ethics.

Preface

Jonathan K. Crane

1. A Colorful, Complicated Conversation

An Introduction

Jonathan K. Crane

2. In the Color Line

The Tenacity of Racism and Its Challenge to Ethicists

Susannah Heschel

3. When Our Legs Utter Songs

Toward an Antiracist Ethic Based on Amos 1–6

Willa M. Johnson

4. Jews as Oppressed and Oppressor

Doing Ethics at the

Intersections of Classism, Racism, and Antisemitism

Judith W. Kay

5. Race and the Story of American Judaism

Aaron S. Gross

6. The “Yiddish Gaze”

American Yiddish Literary Representations of Black Bodies and Their Torture

Jessica Kirzane

7. Rituals of Commemoration

Sites for Cultural Memories as Traumatic Silences and Memorial Cries for Social Change

Nichole Renée Phillips

8. Jewish Critical Race Theory and Jewish “Religionization” in Shaare Tefila Congregation v. Cobb

Annalise E. Glauz-Todrank

9. Racial Standing

How American Jews Imagine Community, and Why That Matters

Sarah Imhoff

10. Race, Racism, and Psychopathology

From Anti-Semitic Vienna to the Post–Civil Rights Era in the United States

Sander L. Gilman

11. Whiteness as Anti-Theological

An Ethics of No Edges

George Yancy

List of Contributors

Index

Jewish Studies

Religious Studies & Religion

           Judaism

           Philosophy of Religion

Critical Race Studies