Rothman Scholar - Dr. Susannah Heschel
Shabbat services at 6:30 p.m., dinner and speaker to follow.

Selma: an iconic site in American history and an iconic moment in Jewish history. “I felt my legs were praying.” With those words describing his experience of the Selma march of 1965, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, professor of Jewish ethics and mysticism at the Jewish Theological Seminary, transformed a political march into a moment of profound religiosity. Heschel was hardly the only Jew or rabbi to participate in the Selma march. On the contrary, Jews flocked to the South to participate as Freedom Riders and in efforts to register Black voters.

On the other hand, the Selma photograph also shows the other side. In the background is a large billboard advertising Tepper’s, a department store owned by Sol Tepper, a member of Selma’s Jewish community and an outspoken proponent of segregation. How do we evaluate the role of Jews in the Civil Rights Movement and the importance of that movement in American Jewish history? Why are Black-Jewish relations so important, especially to Jews?

Dr. Susannah Heschel is the Eli Black Professor of Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College. Her scholarship focuses on Jewish-Christian relations in Germany during the 19th and 20th centuries, the history of biblical scholarship and the history of anti-Semitism. She is the daughter Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel.