Don't miss an episode! Subscribe to the Madlik podcast: Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts
and Join Madlik on Clubhouse every Thursday so you can participate in our weekly live discussion of the Parsha
Link to Transcript here: https://madlik.com/2024/02/07/the-black-church-and-israel/
Reverend Dumisani Washington is a Regional Field Coordinator and National Diversity Outreach Coordinator for Christians United for Israel (CUFI). He is also the Founder and Board President of the Institute for Black Solidarity with Israel (IBSI: The Institute for Black Solidarity with Israel).
He is the author of: Zionism and the Black Church
Why Standing with Israel Will Be a Defining Issue for Christians of Color in the 21st Century
And is currently developing a Zionism and the Black Church Booklet Series for dissemination at IBSI events and in Black Churches.
כי תקנה עבד עברי התחיל המשפט הראשון בעבד עברי, מפני שיש בשילוח העבד בשנה השביעית זכר ליציאת מצרים הנזכר בדבור הראשון, כמו שאמר בו (דברים טו טו) וזכרת כי עבד היית בארץ מצרים ויפדך ה' אלקיך על כן אנכי מצוך את הדבר הזה היום. ויש בה עוד זכר למעשה בראשית כשבת, כי השנה השביעית לעבד שבתון ממלאכת אדוניו כיום השביעי. ויש בה עוד שביעי בשנים שהוא היובל, כי השביעי נבחר בימים ובשנים ובשמטות, והכל לענין אחד, והוא סוד ימות העולם מבראשית (בראשית א א) עד ויכלו (שם ב א). ולכן המצוה הזאת ראויה להקדים אותה שהיא נכבדת מאד, רומזת דברים גדולים במעשה בראשית: ולכך החמיר בה הנביא מאד, ואמר אנכי כרתי ברית את אבותיכם מקץ שבע שנים תשלחו איש את עבדו ואיש את שפחתו (ירמיה לד יג יד)...
IF THOU BUY A HEBREW SERVANT. G-d began the first ordinance with the subject of a Hebrew servant, because the liberation of the servant in the seventh year contains a rememberance of the departure from Egypt which is mentioned in the first commandment, just as He said on it, And thou shalt remember that thou wast a bondman in the land of Egypt, and the Eternal thy G-d redeemed thee; therefore I command thee this thing today. It also contains a remembrance of the creation, just as the Sabbath does, for the seventh year signals to a servant a complete rest from the work of his master, just as the seventh day of the week does. There is in addition a ‘seventh’ amongst the years, which is the jubilee, for seven is the chosen of the days [to be the Sabbath], and of the years [to be the Sabbatical year], and of the [seven] Sabbaticals [to be the jubilee]; and they all point to one subject, namely, the secret of the days of the world — from bereshith (in the beginning) till vayechulu (and they were finished). Therefore this commandment deserved to be mentioned first, because of its extreme importance, alluding as it does to great things in the process of creation. This is why the prophet Jeremiah was very stringent about it and said, Thus saith the Eternal, the G-d of Israel: I made a covenant with your fathers; At the end of the seven years ye shall let go every one his manservant, and every one his maidservant...
Why Do Black Pastors Oppose Israel?
Henry Louis Gates had an answer more than 30 years ago.
By
Alan Dershowitz
and
Andrew Stein
Jan. 31, 2024 5:14 pm ET
Henry Louis Gates Jr. PHOTO: ALBA VIGARAY/SHUTTERSTOCK
More than 1,000 black pastors are pressing President Biden to restrain Israel in its war with Hamas and threatening that if he doesn’t do so, it will cost him black support in November. “We see them as a part of us,” the Rev. Cynthia Hale of Decatur, Ga., told the
, referring to Palestinians. “They are oppressed people. We are oppressed people.” Barbara Williams-Skinner of the National African American Clergy Network said: “Black clergy have seen war, militarism, poverty and racism all connected.”
Yet their focus on the Middle East is perplexing. “The Israel-Gaza war, unlike Iran and Afghanistan, has evoked the kind of deep-seated angst among black people that I have not seen since the civil-rights movement,” Ms. Williams-Skinner said. Why? The world is filled with victims of oppression—the Uyghurs of China, the Kurds of Iraq, the Ukrainians. The black citizens of Sudan have been subjected to mass killing and enslavement at the hands of Arabs. What makes the Palestinians more worthy of sympathy—especially since, unlike these other groups, they have turned down numerous offers of statehood and have made terrorism their tactic of choice?
Perhaps it is that their antagonists are Jews. In a 1992 article, the historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. pondered the causes of rising antisemitism in the black community. He considered the influence of “Christian anti-Semitism, given the historic importance of Christianity in the black community.” But he laid the primary blame on black demagogues who were vying for leadership in the new “Afrocentric” movement.
Mr. Gates noted that many Jews were surprised by the “recrudescence of black anti-Semitism, in view of the historic alliance between the two groups.” He cited the “brutal truth” that the “new anti-Semitism arises not in spite of the black-Jewish alliance, but because of it.” The alliance had been formed by a previous generation of black ministers, led by Martin Luther King Jr., who sought integration. The new generation of Afrocentric leaders, including pastors, needed to keep blacks isolated to establish their own power.
Mr. Gates noted that “it is among the younger and more educated blacks that anti-Semitism is most pronounced” and that this bigotry “belongs as much to the repertory of campus lecturers as community activists.” More than 30 years later, these words seem prophetic.
Mr. Dershowitz is a professor emeritus at Harvard Law School and author of “War Against the Jews: How to End Hamas Barbarism.” Mr. Stein, a Democrat, served as New York City Council president, 1986-94.
See also: CHARLES M. BLOW, The Political Perils of a Black-Jewish Rift Over the War in Gaza, Feb. 7, 2024
From Ferguson to Gaza: How African Americans Bonded With Palestinian Activists, February 8th 2024
Black Power, Jewish Politics: Reinventing the Alliance in the 1960s (Brandeis Series in American Jewish History, Culture, and Life) Paperback – June 5, 2018 by Marc Dollinger (Author)