The Soul of Judaism

July 16, 2018
Haynes (Down the Up Staircase), professor of sociology at UC Davis, surveys an underreported aspect of contemporary American Judaism in an accessible book that occasionally lapses into academic jargon. Haynes provides detailed information about the origins, history, culture, and differences of discrete categories of black Jews. He considers three main strands: those recognized by mainstream Judaism (such as the Ethiopian Beta Israel), non-Jews who converted to Judaism, and those communities that claim that they are the descendants of the lost tribes of Israel. . After light-skinned European Jews became more accepted in American society, in Haynes’ estimation, they were viewed by some African-Americans less as specific “others” than as just another subgroup of the white majority. He includes major points of tension between Ashkenazi and black Jews, such as the controversy over Louis Farrakhan and the Million Man March, which divided Jews of African descent; some boycotted it because of Farrakhan’s anti-Semitism and others supported it in spite of Farrakhan’s views. Haynes’s relegation of recent history to a brief concluding section—the product of his heavy reliance on interviews conducted 15–20 years earlier—is a glaring missed opportunity. Despite this, Haynes’s book is a good introduction to the subject and will be a worthy companion to Tudor Parfitt’s Black Jews in Africa and the Americas.

August 1, 2018

Based on interviews with African American Jews along with historical research, Haynes (sociology, Univ. California-Davis; Down the up Staircase) explores how race and religion can be distinct yet overlap. Subjects fall into three broad categories: converts to Judaism, those who are Jewish by virtue of birth or heritage, and those who have appropriated a Jewish heritage but see no reason to convert. The author's historical research includes the Sephardi, African, Caribbean, and South American Jews of the diaspora, and black Hebrews. The interviews highlight the paths subjects have taken to form their identities, emphasizing that identity is a matter of praxis and community. However, part of Jewish praxis involves regulations about who can claim to be Jewish; some movements do not always recognize all black Jews, nor do all black Jews feel entirely at home in any one of the major Jewish movements. Haynes also takes care to show how being Jewish and being black often represent two different and sometimes conflicting communities. VERDICT A considerate work that challenges the essentialist ideal of defining Jewishness.--James Wetherbee, Wingate Univ. Libs., NC

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