What Do Jews Owe Crown Heights?

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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.

Musings and findings from the editors of Scribe, the Forward’s curated contributor network.

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