By Barrett Holman Leak in San Diego
The flickering lights of the television screen rarely hold the weight of 400 years of history, but on Feb. 24, the final episode of PBS’s Black and Jewish America: An Interwoven History attempted to do exactly that. Titled “Crossroads,” the finale served as a sobering autopsy of the “Grand Alliance” and a demanding blueprint for a shared future.
The episode’s most profound utility lay not in what it celebrated, but in the mirrors it held up to our own communal failures.
The episode begins by dismantling the mid-century nostalgia of the 1960s and taking us through real life events like the Six Day War. While acknowledging the beauty of the “Heschel-King” era, the narrative shifts to the 1970s and 80s, documenting how the cracks began to form. It shows the serious development of Black Power, Black is Beautiful, and how it influenced Jewish identity and pride.
Through interviews with brilliant scholars like Dr. Marc Dollinger, the program explores how shifting political priorities—specifically around affirmative action, how Black Power birthed Jewish Power, and differing views on Zionism—transformed a once-seamless partnership into a series of cautious, often pained, negotiations. It showed how Black Americans fiercely stood up for Jews and Israel when Russia, the PLO, and the United Nations claimed that Zionism is racism.
The most searing critique offered in “Crossroads”—and the one most relevant to the American Jewish community today—is the realization that for too long, we have discussed “Black-Jewish relations” as if they were a conversation between two people in two different rooms.
The documentary highlights a painful truth: Black Jews and Jews of Color (JOCs) remain largely invisible and voiceless within the mainstream of American Judaism. By featuring leaders like Rabbi Angela Buchdahl and Rabbi Shais Rishon (MaNishtana), the film confronts the “white-normativity” of the American Jewish establishment. It admits that for the Jew of Color, the “intersection” is not a political theory—it is a lived, often exhausting reality of being “othered” in the very spaces where they should feel most at home.
As the episode enters the contemporary era, it frames antisemitism and racism as “dual currents” fed by the same engine of white supremacy. Yet, it challenges the viewer to recognize that one cannot fight antisemitism effectively while remaining indifferent to the systemic racism that impacts the Black members of our own mishpacha (family).
The finale suggests that until mainstream Jewish institutions move beyond “outreach” and toward “in-reach”—truly centering and elevating JOC leadership—the “interwoven history” will remain an unfinished tapestry.
The closing montage offers a powerful thesis: Solidarity is not a feeling; it is a practice of justice. It features culinary historian Michael Twitty and Senator Cory Booker discussing the concept of radical empathy. The episode argues that in a polarized world, the greatest threat to both communities is the temptation to retreat into tribalism.
As the credits rolled, the message for the modern leader was clear: Our destinies are bound. To walk through the “crossroads” requires more than just remembering the past; it requires the courage to dismantle the barriers that keep our own brothers and sisters invisible in the present. Overall, I give the series an A-.
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I greatly enjoyed this series. It contained so much that I have already researched and studied from childhood through my time at university, and it reflected some of my lived experience. I have noted where it could have been done differently and better, in my view. My understanding from insiders is that there was a lot left on the cutting room floor. That said, I say this:
It is time to stop speaking of “Black and Jewish” as if they are two parallel lines that only occasionally touch. This binary thinking is a distraction—a convenient wall that obscures the vibrant, yet often silenced, reality of Jews of Color who live at the very heart of this intersection. It is also time to stop reaching outside the USA over the heads of Black American Jews and acknowledge and fully include us in the American Jewish community as we do belong. I know it upsets some for me to say this aloud. But it hurt those being excluded for it to not be stated. That is where the conversation and the healing begin.
We are at a moment of reckoning that requires more than polite dialogue; it requires an uncompromising honesty about our present and a radical commitment to our future. We must gather, not to revisit the nostalgia of the past, but to dismantle the delusions of the present.
To clarify:
- To the Jewish Community: Those who believe we can defeat the rising tide of antisemitism in America by distancing ourselves from Black Americans or by ignoring the institutional racism embedded in our own religious and secular structures are fooling themselves. Isolation is not safety; it is a vacuum that hate is happy to fill.
- To the Black Community: Those who believe that we can dismantle the pillars of racism—deeply rooted in the very foundations of this nation—while standing alone or ignoring the distinct venom of antisemitism are fooling themselves. We cannot pull down a house of prejudice while leaving some of its pillars standing.
The binary of “Black vs. Jewish” is a false choice that serves only those who wish to see both communities fail. When we ignore the voices of Black Jews, we are not just failing a “demographic”—we are amputating a part of our own collective soul.
The Invitation: I invite you to join us for an honest, unfiltered conversation. I am looking for those willing to sit in the discomfort of the “in-between.” I am looking for those ready to move past the “outreach” models of the past and toward a future of shared power and visibility. To have courageous conversations.
We do not gather because it is easy. We gather because the alternative is a continued, fragmented defeat. Our destinies are not simply inextricably interwoven; they are identical.
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Barrett Holman Leak is a Jew of Color based in San Diego. She writes on a variety of topics.