This is an exploration of the interaction between African American religions and Jewish traditions, beliefs, and spaces. The collection's argument is that religion is the missing piece of the cultural jigsaw, and black-Jewish relations need the religious roots of their problem illuminated.

Introduction ; PART ONE: AFRICAN AMERICAN JEWS AND ISRAELITES ; Black Culture and Black Zion: African American Religious Encounters with Judaism, 1790-1930: An Overview ; African American Jews: Dispelling Myths, Bridging the Divide ; Symbolic Identity Formation in an African American Religious Sect: The Black Hebrew Israelites ; Another Exodus: The Hebrew Israelites from Chicago to Dimona ; PART TWO: AFRICAN AMERICAN MUSLIMS AND JUDAISM ; The Proximate Other: The Nation of Islam and Judaism ; The Nubian Islamic Hebrews, Ansaaru Allah Community ; PART THREE: AFRICAN AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY AND JUDAISM ; Remembering Nehemiah, A Note on Biblical Theology ; Theological Affinities in the Writings of Abraham Joshua Heschel and Martin Luther King, Jr. ; This is the Gateway to the Lord: The Legacy of Synagogue Buildings for African-American Churches on Cincinnati's Reading Road ; The Jew in the Haitian Imagination ; Selected Bibliography ; Notes on Contributors

"Absorbing....The book's eclectic nature is also one of its great strengths, revealing the great diversity and complexity of modern religious responses to the questions of ethnic identity."--Publishers Weekly "A timely collection of ten essays [that] sensitively examine the deep but often fraught religious ties between Jews and African-Americans....An illuminating corrective to conventional wisdom and conventional prejudice."--Kirkus Reviews "[Explores] many ripe but neglected topics....Chapters include a study of the mutual influence between Martin Luther King Jr. and Abraham Heschel and a field report on the demonization of `the Jew' during Holy Week observances in rural Haiti--worth the purchase price alone....An interesting tour of the field."--he Washington Post Book World "Absorbing....The book's eclectic nature is also one of its great strengths, revealing the great diversity and complexity of modern religious responses to the questions of ethnic identity."--Publishers Weekly "A timely collection of ten essays [that] sensitively examine the deep but often fraught religious ties between Jews and African-Americans....An illuminating corrective to conventional wisdom and conventional prejudice."--Kirkus Reviews "Deliver[s] on its promise to `explore the creative ways that African-Americans have interacted with Jewish beliefs, Jewish traditions, and Jewish institutions."--Albany Times Union