What Do Jews Owe Crown Heights?
Image by Getty Images
By The Scribe January 30, 2018
In 2012, Hannah Roodman endeavored to show Crown Heights, Brooklyn through the eyes of its Chabad and West Indian residents.
In the years since she directed Project 2×1, she’s had time to reflect on the changing neighborhood and our responsibilities as young Jews.
“My hope was that the Crown Heights Jewish community would acknowledge that their culture of segregation did not always serve them nor their neighbors,” she wrote. “I wanted them to be inspired to reciprocate the friendliness and curiosity that so many of my black neighbors expressed towards me and towards the project, even towards Jewishness overall… During the Crown Heights riots, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, who was deeply pained by the violence, famously said, ‘There are not two communities, we are one community.’ How might we better protect, steward, and evolve our cultures towards this kind of deep truth?”
Read Hannah’s whole story in PROTOCOLS.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover. All donations are being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
