(JTA) — More than 100 members of the Orthodox National Synagogue in Washington DC traveled to Selma, Alabama, to visit the historic Reform Temple Mishkan Israel. The Reform temple in Selma only has seven remaining members, according to the Montgomery Advertiser. Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld of the Orthodox National Synagogue said the purpose of the group’s visit…
More than 150 Reform Jewish rabbis are marching with the NAACP from the Deep South to the U.S. capital to promote social justice. The Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism and the Central Conference of American Rabbis are participants in the NAACP’s Journey for Justice, an 860-mile march from Selma, Alabama, to Washington, D.C. The…
In 1964, 600 Jewish men and women journeyed South to help register voters, most of them carrying memories of relatives lost to the Holocaust. Two of them lost their lives. At a gathering of nearly 200 people in Selma’s Congregation Mishkan Israel on Sunday, the brother of Andrew Goodman recalled that it took the death…
David Sookne, front left, and Bruce Hartford, third from right, register voters in 1965 / Courtesy (JTA) — Since the nationwide release of “Selma” a week before the national holiday commemorating the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., I have wondered about the extent of Jewish participation in the civil rights movement. Was it just the Selma…
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, right, marches with Dr. Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders / Getty Images (JTA) — The 50th anniversary of the 1965 march at Selma is being commemorated this year with the release of the film “Selma.” Regrettably, the film represents the march as many see it today, only as an…
A still from the new film ‘Selma’ Leida Snow’s review of the new film “Selma” takes director Ava DuVernay to task for a “glaring omission” — airbrushing out the contributions of white people in general, and Jews in particular, to the civil rights movement. But Snow makes this critique by drawing selectively from American Jewish…
When filmmakers choose what to include or exclude from the stories they tell, their choices often have repercussions beyond the drama on the screen. In films based on real-life events, omissions can seriously distort the way we remember the past. “Selma,” a film directed by Ava DuVernay, offers an ambitious portrait of Martin Luther King…
For most Americans outside the South, Montgomery, Alabama today is a kind of civil rights museum, an indoor-outdoor repository of the 20th century movement for racial justice and equality. The new film “Selma,” which opened in limited release over the Christmas weekend and is slated for wide theatrical release January 9, is likely only to…
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