From Behind the Veil: Reflections on Black History Month

By Kendell Pinkney

When the email landed in my inbox, I groaned.

“We would like to commemorate Black History Month, and your name came up as someone with a perspective that members of the RA would greatly appreciate hearing. Would you be interested in writing a 600-750 word piece for our blog about what Black History Month means to you?”

I rolled my eyes and paced about my Crown Heights living room as peals of antiphonal protest fluttered about my head like angels caught in a strange kedusha:

“Why me?! Why me?! Why me?!
Oh God of hosts,
why am I the one to bear the fullness of this request?”

I knew why I’d been asked to write.

I am black.

What is more, I’m a theatre-artist who has explored the messiness of my black and Jewish identities on a public stage.

Finally, I am one of very few (possibly, the only) black Americans to enroll in the rabbinical program at the Jewish Theological Seminary.

If I couldn’t be asked to write on what Black History Month means to me, then who at JTS could? So, I must at least concede that the request made a lot of sense. Additionally, the RA’s desire to commemorate Black History Month arises, at least partly, from the acknowledgement that there are historical ties that connect the Jewish and black communities in America’s history.

That being said, the request still irked me. What is more, I have struggled over the past week-and-a-half with the reality that I have no idea how to address this prompt. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate several of the contributions of the individuals who are often cited in Black History Month celebrations (i.e. Martin, Rosa and Malcolm), but the question “What does Black History Month mean to you?” feels too abstract. What feels less abstract, however, is my lived experience.

My experience is my childhood in Dallas, Texas.
My experience is 10 years old - waking up on Sunday mornings to the gospel stylings of Yolanda Adams and Cece Winans floating up from my mom’s ancient tape-player.
My experience is family reunions - the sound of dominoes smacking against a rickety card-table, laughter warming up my grandmother’s house, Motown filling the speakers.
My experience is listening to the stories of my aunts, uncles, and grandparents living and thriving in a segregated Louisiana that didn’t care to acknowledge their full humanity, much less commemorate their history.

I cannot easily say what Black History Month means to me, but I can say what these above experiences mean to me.
They make me who I am.
Equally as important, they make me the Jew that I am. That is all I can say.

But is that really all? Surely I can say more...

When I return to that initial question, “What [does] Black History Month mean to you?” I feel that prickly, talmud-Torah-loving, give-and-take-oriented, rabbinical urge to ask a question rise up inside of me. If, as the RA implied with its request, Black History Month is something worth commemorating for Jews, then “What [does] Black History Month mean to Conservative Jews?” I think that this week’s parasha allows us to take this question a bit further.

At the end of parashat Ki Tissa, Moses goes up Mount Sinai to speak with God. After doing so, his face shines. In fact, his face is so radiant that his fellow Israelites shrink away from him when they see him (Ex. 34.30-35). The only way that the people can bear to look at him is when he puts a veil across his face to hide the effects of his sacred experience. This event from Torah calls to mind a different “veil” discussed by renowned 19th-20th cent. scholar, W. E. B. Du Bois in his influential The Souls of Black Folk. For Du Bois, the “veil” is a symbol that represents the racial (un)consciousness that keeps white people from truly seeing and understanding the experiences of black folks.

I readily acknowledge that the “veil of Moses” and the “veil of race” exist in two very different historical, conceptual, and literary contexts. Yet, as an artist who tends to make much of free associations, there is a deeper question that links these two “veils” in my brain: How can American Jewish communities (many of which happen to be considered white, even if they are not self-identified as white) and black communities have meaningful commemorations of each other’s memories and histories if they are looking at each other from behind a veil? How can each community “do commemoration” if they cannot look directly at each other and hold the radiant sacredness of each other’s experiences?

I have no neat responses to these questions. There are no neat responses. All I can offer is that Conservative Jewish communities will need to find their own reasons to commemorate black memory and contributions to history. Likewise, black communities will need to find their own reasons to commemorate the historical contributions and memories of Jews. I do not know how to bring that kind of understanding about. That being said, as someone who frequently gets to look behind the veils of the black and Jewish experience, I can tell you that there is radiant sacredness on both sides. Maybe with the help of God, one day we will learn how to look bravely at each other rather than shrink away in fear.

Note: part of this piece is adapted from an earlier essay that was published on LABA Journal in Feb. 2018.

Additionally, this piece is connected to this week’s (2/23) parasha Ki Tissa.