Black Zion: African American Religious Encounters with Judaism (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780195112573)

Black Zion explores the myriad ways in which African American religions have encountered Jewish traditions, beliefs, and spaces. The collection's unifying argument is that religion is the missing piece of the cultural jigsaw puzzle, that much of the recent turmoil in black-Jewish relations would be better understood, if not alleviated, if the religious roots of those relations were illuminated. Toward that end, the contributors look a number of provocative topics, including the concept of the Chosen People, the typological identification of blacks with Jews, the actual identification of blacks as Jews, the sacredness of space and symbols, the importance of scriptural interpretation in creating theology and self understanding, the dialectic of exile and redemption in communal history, and the integration of ethnicity and religion in constructing group identity. Ranging from the Nation of Islam to the Hebrew Israelites and from Abraham Joshua Heschel to Martin Luther King, Jr., the book sheds light on a little examined but vitally important dimension of black-Jewish relations in America: religion.

Author: Yvonne Chireau
ISBN-10: 0195112571
ISBN-13: 9780195112573
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Language: English
Published: 12/16/1999
Pages: 256
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.22lbs
Size: 9.12h x 6.36w x 0.93d

Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 11/01/1999 pg. 1700
Library Journal 01/01/2000 pg. 119
Choice 01/01/2001 pg. 920