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.
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
