Blacks and Jews

The faultline between Blacks and Jews is one of the most visible symbols of America's racial divide. This film, made collaboratively by Jewish and Black filmmakers, goes behind the headlines and the rhetoric to try to heal the misunderstanding and mistrust. Blacks & Jews was acclaimed at the Sundance Film Festival for initiating a frank yet constructive nationwide dialogue between these two traditional allies.

During the Civil Rights movement, Black Americans and Jewish Americans fought together for equal rights. With the waning of that movement, differences in economic status caused both groups to turn inward. Positions hardened around such divisive issues as affirmative action in the schools, Louis Farrakhan's anti-Semitism, even Jewish influence in Hollywood.

Blacks & Jews cuts through the sensationalized media coverage and the stereotypes to re-examine key conflicts from the perspectives of activists on both sides.

• The Crown Heights riots in New York dramatizes the distrust between these two communities. But we also meet a Black man who saved a Hassid's life and a Jewish leader who works to brings the youth of both communities together.

• During the 1960s, "blockbusting" in Chicago pitted Jewish owners against Black homebuyers. A rabbi recounts how he took on real estate speculators and racism in the Jewish community as a leader of an interethnic coalition. A former Black Muslim leader explains the attraction of the Nation of Islam to many African Americans and why he finally left the movement.

• When a group of Black teens in Oakland laughed during a screening of Schindler's List, it launched a feeding frenzy in the press and a political circus for demagogues on both sides. Students and teachers tell what really happened and how they took steps to increase understanding of both the Holocaust and slavery.

• Scholars and critics such as Gary Rubin, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, Michael Lerner, Salim Muwakkil, Cornel West and Clayborne Carson place these stories in context and explain how attitudes have hardened as a result of competition over a stagnant economic pie, a shared psychology of victimization and exploitive media coverage.

Blacks & Jews offers no Panglossian assurances of easy racial harmony. But screenings of this film can cut through the anger and emotion on both sides and demonstrate that dialogue and cooperation must be based in a serious effort to understand and value the experience of others. Synagogues and churches, campus ministries and student advisors, community organizers and antiracism activists will all find Blacks & Jews an invaluable new tool for increasing mutual understanding and building coalitions for social justice, not just between Blacks and Jews, but between all ethnic groups.