Black and Jewish Journeys in the US:

An EBS Bridging Series Course

In this interdisciplinary course, we will explore the history of Black and Jewish communities in the United States and the convergence in these communities ways of thinking about identity, community, and place. This course will make use of a variety of media - literature, philosophical and religious texts, cinema, and visual arts - to deepen our understanding of these two communities and their shared experience.

The EBS Bridging Series is an initiative dedicated to exploring the encounters between different traditions, cultures, movements and art forms in order to harness the lessons those encounters hold for the contemporary world.

This class is taught by EBS Head of School Robert Smith, who has taught extensively in middle school, high school, and post-secondary settings. Robert received his Bachelor of Science in Asian and Latin American Studies from Georgetown University and pursued doctoral studies in Modern Jewish Thought at Stanford University. He received a Fulbright Fellowship to research contemporary Jewish life and thought in Argentina, where he studied at the Marshall Meyer Latin American Rabbinical Seminary. As a high school student, Robert became involved with an initiative designed by Temple Israel, the largest and oldest synagogue in Minneapolis, to bring Black and Jewish teens together to explore each other’s history and envision new possibilities for collaboration.

This course will run from 6pm to 7:30pm on the following dates: 8/5, 8/12, 8/19, 8/26, 9/2, 9/9, 9/16, and 9/23

Price: $300