“Shifting Affinities: Cultural Investigation of the ‘Black-Jewish Relations’ Paradigm”

On September 23, 2020, the Yale Program for the Study of Antisemitism hosted the first in a series of webinar conversations about the relationship of antisemitism to antiblackness and other forms of prejudice. American Studies scholar Jeffrey Melnick (UMass Boston) and Anthony Russell, a renowned specialist of Yiddish Music, engaged in a wide-ranging discussion about the history of black-Jewish relations in the United States, the concerns the two groups share, and the issues that divide them. The discussion lasted for forty minutes, after which they took twenty minutes of questions from the audience.