Authors and new anthology celebrate people who identify as both Black and Jewish

The first documented arrival of Africans in English-occupied North America occurred 1619, while the first Jewish settlers in North America arrived in 1654 in New Amsterdam (now New York City). These two communities have had a long, sometimes complicated, sometimes complimentary relationship. 

On this week's Dialogue, we talked with two editors of the new anthology, Black, Jewish, and Beautiful: Contemporary Blewish Voices. It will be discussed March 9, 2026, at the University of Illinois Alumni Association-Alice Campbell Alumni Center. Click here for more information. A virtual meeting option is available.

We were joined by Brett Ashley Kaplan, Director of the Initiative in Holocaust, Genocide, Memory Studies and professor of Comparative and World Literature at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and Anthony Russell, a multidisciplinary artist, who performs in Yiddish, a language used by Jewish people in with words from Hebrew and other languages.

In February 2026, PBS debuted the 4-part documentary from Henry Louis Gates called Black and Jewish America: An Interwoven History.