The ADORE (A Dialogue On Race and Ethnicity) group will meet via Zoom on March 27th, 11:30am-2:00pm Hawai’I Time following the church service. Now that we have posted a newly revised Black Lives Matter banner in front of our church building on the Pali Hwy, one which includes the statement, “we oppose antisemitism,” it seems timely to learn a bit about the history of Black Americans and Jewish Americans working together for social justice reform in America.
We will view and discuss writer/director Aviva Kempner’s inspiring 100-minute film documentary, Rosenwald, which will take us back a century to the era of extremely restrictive Jim Crow laws and culture. This film beautifully portrays the little-known cooperative efforts of Jewish American philanthropist Julius Rosenwald, who was the CEO of Sears, and African American educator Booker T. Washington, author, orator, and adviser to several U.S. presidents. Among the many civil rights endeavors Rosenwald and Washington collaborated on were the creation of over 5,000 schools for African American children in the South and the establishment of a generous fund for grants to be given to African American artists, writers, intellectuals, historians and others. Four notable graduates of Rosenwald schools are author and poet Maya Angelou, Congressman John Lewis, journalist Eugene Robinson, and playwright George Wolfe. The Rosenwald Fund recipients included giants such as James Baldwin, W.E.B. DuBois, Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, Augusta Savage, Jacob Lawrence, Ralph Bunche, Marian Anderson, Gordon Parks, Dr. Charles Drew, and the Tuskegee Airmen. The influence of these Black community leaders has had untold positive reverberating influence up until the present. Julius Rosenwald was deeply inspired by the Jewish tenets, tikkun olam (repair the world) and tzedakah (righteousness, fairness, justice, charity) as well as Booker T. Washington’s writings and philosophy.
Please join us to learn about the inspiring collaboration of two men, one Jewish American and one African American, who joined forces to make a difference, to “repair the world.”
And, here you can find the Zoom invitation link to the March 27th ADORE meeting:
ADORE UnitariansofHI is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting. Suggested login time is 11:15-11:20am Hawai’I Time as we will start promptly at 11:30am. It will be helpful to check your sound and video ahead of the meeting start time as well as muting yourselves at 11:30am.
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https://zoom.us/j/95107680529?pwd=S2t2aWhQK1gwTG1nV2NZQllvcHM0dz09
Meeting ID: 951 0768 0529
Passcode: ADORE2021
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