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In ‘Black and Jewish America,’ Henry Louis Gates Jr explores the history of Black-Jewish partnership and conflict
The new PBS series Black and Jewish America: An Interwoven History is not the first piece of media to investigate the relationship between the two communities. But what’s unique about the program, narrated by scholar and Finding Your Roots host Henry Louis Gates Jr., is that it doesn’t shy away from the historic complexities of this partnership — and the many times it almost fell apart.
Alarmed by the recent rise in white supremacist hate crimes, Gates reconnected with Paul Bertelsen and Sara Wolitzky, who had worked on some of his past projects and are co-directors and co-producers of the series.
“I think we all felt collectively the same kind of revulsion at this rise of white supremacist hate,” Bertelsen, who was a producer on Gates’ Peabody Award-winning series The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross, told me over Zoom. “The hoods came off, you know, and so we all, as storytellers and historians, grew concerned, and found this to be a great opportunity to kind of show the importance of shared experience and coalition building.”
Narrated by Gates, the four hour-long episodes recount chronologically Black and Jewish history in America from 1492 through the present using archival footage and interviews with historians and cultural scholars, such as Cornel West and Derek Penslar. From the first episode, they establish that the two identities have never been mutually exclusive. Gates sits around a seder table with white Jews, including author Abigail Pogrebin, and Black Jews, such as chef Micahel Twitty and Shais Rison, the African-American Orthodox Jewish writer known as Ma Nishtana.
By describing times when Black and Jewish people were allies as well as when they were in conflict with one another, the series feels more authentic — and more convincing — than other media about allyship that are often rooted in platitudes and a romanticization of the past. It’s impossible to have honest partnership without confronting uncomfortable truths: There were Jewish slave owners, there were members of the Black Power movement who subscribed to virulent antisemitism, and not all Jews were allies with the Civil Rights movement.
Wolitzky told me that Susanna Heschel, daughter of Rabbi Abraham Heschel, who famously marched with Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma in 1965, recounted a department store called Tepper’s that was near the march. It was owned by Jewish businessman Sol Tepper who was a member of the supremacist organization the White Citizens Council.
“These communities are not monoliths in any shape or form, and at every moment you have differences of opinion,” Wolitzky said
Because many Jews were seen as white, they had legal and economic advantages that weren’t afforded to their Black neighbors, even while they faced social discrimination, such as university quotas and country club bans. Some Jews used this privilege to help Black people, and others used it to take advantage, such as Louis Armstrong’s manager Joe Glaser, who, according to jazz artist Ben Sidran, was likely not giving Armstrong his fair share of money.
The Jewish manager-Black artist dynamic has caused conflict throughout music history, in rock, rap, and hip-hop, although these other incidents aren’t mentioned directly in the series. Given the depth of the history of Black and Jewish relations, some stories and details had to be left on the cutting room floor.
“One of the things we couldn’t afford to do is tell the same story twice, even if it featured different characters,” Bertelsen said. “We were very eager to kind of look at Def Jam Records, and Rick Rubin, and Russell Simmons, and that crew. But we had told it in Episode #2, in essence, through Louis Armstrong and Joe Glazer.”
The creators have packed a lot into a relatively short amount of time, including both well-known incidents of Black and Jewish allyship — such as Jews co-founding the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People — and stories that aren’t as broadly discussed — such as Black-Jewish partnership in Merriam, Kansas, to advocate for better Black educational facilities in the 1940s.
Black and Jewish ends by touching on the political fallout after Oct. 7, but offering hope in the form of an intercultural student dialogue group at UCLA founded in the wake of campus protests and led by professor David Myers, an occasional Forward contributor.
Of course, the story isn’t over. Since filming ended in 2025, new developments in national politics and concerning Israel have already popped up. The show mentions the Anti-Defamation’s League role in combatting Black labor exploitation in the Bronx, even as the organization has recently stepped back from broader civil rights causes.
Wolitzky mentioned the recent accusations of antisemitism in DEI initiatives as another issue that’s relevant to the ongoing story of how Black and Jewish people relate in America. However, like the changing ADL, it’s a story that we are still living through.
“These films are really a historical lens, and it’s always really hard to have that same sense of perspective on the current moment,” Wolitzky said.
The first episode of Black and Jewish America: An Interwoven History premieres on PBS on Tuesday, February 3rd at 9pm EST. On Feb. 5, Henry Louis Gates Jr., the filmmakers, and Sen. Corey Booker will discuss the series at 92NY.
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‘Marty Supreme’ and everything else Jewish at this year’s Academy Awards
At last year’s Academy Awards, Anora — a frenetic, somewhat ambiguously Jewish look at a Jewish enclave of New York, took home best picture, original screenplay, director and actress for its Jewish lead Mikey Madison. This year, we have a film that feels, in some ways, quite parallel, while cranking the Yiddishkeit to 11: Josh Safdie’s breathless picaresque Marty Supreme, set on the Lower East Side, is up for best picture and its star, Timothée Chalamet is a favorite for best actor.
There’s also Blue Moon, Richard Linklater’s portrait of Jewish lyricist Lorenz Hart’s breakup with composer Richard Rodgers (Ethan Hawke is up for best actor). And One Battle After Another, a campy and absurdist satire about the infiltration of white supremacists in the U.S. government, is poised to have a massive night, with the blockbuster Sinners serving as its main competition.
That all goes to say that it’s another great year for Jewish stories at the Oscars, with some really compelling fodder for discussion about the place that Jews occupy today in arts and media. What stories are we telling and how are they received?
Here, as ever, the Forward culture team is here to break it all down for you, live as it unfolds. Of course, we cover Jewish movies all year. But at the Academy Awards, we get to see how the rest of the world feels about these movies. We will be updating this story with our thoughts throughout the ceremony.
Traditionally, as we begin these Oscars roundtables, we discuss what we’re all wearing and eating. What’ve we got?
Olivia: brown sweater and jeans; no food but aggressively chewing mint gum. I will later be drinking some of the seltzer I got from Brooklyn’s Seltzer Fest today.
Mira: I did a bunch of cooking for the week so I have vegetarian avgolemono soup and Alison Roman’s fennel salad. (I’m obsessed with this salad.) I am proudly wearing hard pants.
PJ: I am reheating some chicken from last night. Wearing a blue sweater with a little toggle and jeans. How many of Stellan Skarsgård’s large adult sons are here? In other l’dor v’dor news, Bill Pullman just mentioned how they filmed the Spaceballs sequel with his son Lewis.
Talya: I believe I’m wearing the exact same sweater I donned for this event last year — where’s my award for consistency? And, as always, sweatpants; I cannot comprehend suffering through this event in jeans.
Discussion of Israeli-Palestinian protests on the red carpet
Mira: Love a toggle. Speaking of outfits, anyone have thoughts on Odessa A’zion’s spangled red carpet set? She is one of the only people who styles herself on the red carpet, which I do respect.
Olivia: A’Zion’s outfit kind of looks like she forgot to tie whatever was supposed to be holding it up. I don’t think it looks bad, just like it’s falling down.
PJ: It wouldn’t look out of place hanging from the window of a VW van with shag carpet and some Tibetan prayer flags.
Mira: Of note, the past several years have seen protesters approaching people on their way into the ceremony, and a lot of pins on the red carpet taking a stance on the Israel-Hamas war, largely pro-Palestinian ones. We’re seeing less of that this year — though not none. Javier Bardem posted a photo of him wearing a pin reading “no to the war” in Spanish, along with another pin featuring Handala, a cartoon boy considered a symbol of Palestinians. The team of The Voice of Hind Rajab, nominated for best foreign film, are also wearing red pins with a white dove.
PJ: Those have replaced the red hand ArtistsforCeasefire pins, which some said recalled the bloody palms of Palestinians who killed IDF soldiers in 2000.
Olivia: A reporter for ABC in a pre-recorded segment asked executive producers and showrunners for the ceremony Raj Kapoor and Katy Mullan if anything would get bleeped, such as mentions of Trump, Israel and Palestine. Recently, the BBC removed director Akinola Davies Jr’s call for a “Free Palestine” from their BAFTA stream. Kapoor asserted that the night’s production team supports free speech, but we’ll see what transpires over the course of the night.
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US Sends Additional Arms to Israel to Sustain Iran Operations
The first of two Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) interceptors is launched during a successful intercept test. Photo: US Army.
i24 News – The United States has recently increased shipments of munitions to Israel to support ongoing Israeli air operations against Iran.
According to reports broadcast by the public radio network Kan Reshet Bet, several weapons deliveries have arrived in Israel in recent days as part of what officials describe as an ongoing airlift aimed at sustaining the pace of military strikes.
Since the start of the campaign, Israeli forces are believed to have dropped more than 11,000 bombs on targets across Iran.
The shipments come as reports emerge about a potential shortage of ballistic missile interceptors in Israel. US officials told the news outlet Semafor that Israel’s interceptor stockpiles have been heavily used during the conflict.
According to those sources, Washington had already been aware for months that supplies could become strained, though it remains unclear whether the United States would be willing to share its own interceptor reserves. Israeli officials have since rejected claims that such a shortage exists.
Unlike the Iron Dome, which is designed to intercept short-range rockets and projectiles, ballistic missile interceptors serve as Israel’s primary defense against long-range missile threats. Fighter jets can also be used to attempt interceptions, though this method is considered a supplementary measure to missile defense systems.
Meanwhile, the Israeli government has taken additional budgetary steps to support the war effort. During an overnight vote between Saturday and Sunday, ministers approved a roughly 1 billion shekel reduction across various ministry budgets to help finance classified military purchases linked to Operation “Roar of the Lion.”
The government had already approved a 3 percent cut in ministry budgets, a move expected to increase the defense budget by approximately 30 billion shekels as the conflict continues.
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Pope Leo Decries ‘Atrocious Violence’ in Iran War, Urges Ceasefire
Pope Leo XIV leads the Angelus prayer from a window of the Apostolic Palace, at the Vatican, March 15, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Matteo Minnella
Pope Leo made an impassioned plea on Sunday for an immediate ceasefire in the expanding Iran war, lamenting “atrocious violence” that he said had killed thousands of non-combatants and caused suffering across the region.
As the US-Israeli war on Iran enters its third week, the first US pope warned that violence would not bring the justice, stability and peace that the peoples of the region long for.
“For two weeks, the peoples of the Middle East have been suffering the atrocious violence of war,” the pope said at his weekly Angelus prayer in St. Peter’s Square.
“In the name of Christians in the Middle East and of all women and men of good will, I appeal to those responsible for this conflict: Cease fire!” Pope Leo said.
IDEA THAT WAR SOLVES PROBLEMS IS ‘ABSURD’
Leo added that the situation in Lebanon – ravaged by a war between Israel and the Iran-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah – was also a cause of “great concern.”
“I hope for paths of dialogue that can support the country’s authorities in implementing lasting solutions to the serious crisis currently underway, for the common good of all the Lebanese people,” the pope said.
During a visit to a Rome parish later, the pope said war could never resolve problems and hit out at people who invoke God to justify killings.
“Today many of our brothers and sisters in the world are suffering because of violent conflicts, caused by the absurd claim that problems and disagreements can be resolved through war, when instead we must engage in unceasing dialogue for peace,” he said during his homily.
“Some even go so far as to invoke the name of God to justify these choices of death, but God cannot be enlisted by darkness. Rather, He always comes to bring light, hope and peace to humanity.”