50 Alberta Drive Amherst, NY 14226-2087
Phone & Fax (716) 834-0708
Email: Templesinai@juno.com
|
|
50 Alberta Drive Amherst, NY 14226-2087 Phone & Fax (716) 834-0708 Email: Templesinai@juno.com |
Library Update
Relations between African-Americans and Jews have had a checkered history over the past fifty years, from their high point during the Civil Rights Movement to the tensions of the later 60's and afterwards. This tension found expression in the anti-Semitic rhetoric of Louis Farrakhan and the Crown Heights riots. Although he himself was never anti-Semitic, many of these contradictions are embodied in Julius Lester, the author of Lovesong: Becoming a Jew, which can be found in the biography section of the Dr. Alex Morrison Memorial Library.Born in 1939 to a black Methodist minister and his light-skinned wife, young Julius discovered at the age of nine that his great-grandfather had been a German Jew who married a former slave and was disowned by his family. Despite his Methodist upbringing and a stint as an atheist in college, a thread of fascination with Judaism weaves itself through his life from that time forward.
During the 60's and 70's Lester participated in the Civil Rights Movement, became a successful writer and spokesman for Black Power, and set off a controversy by having a guest on his radio program read on the air an anti-Semitic poem written by a fourteen-year-old black student. Privately, however, he was engaged in an intense spiritual odyssey which eventually brought him to his conversion in 1982. His account of that journey, including glimpses into his personal life such as the loss of his father and his feelings of inadequacy in fathering his children, is moving and beautifully written, and his passionate love of Judaism, particularly in the last part of the book as he studies for his conversion and begins his observance of the mitzvot, shines from the page.
A recent interview with Julius Lester can be found at http://www.ajlmagazine.com/content/012007/juliuslester.html
Return to Main Page
