Twenty years ago, historian Cheryl Lynn Greenberg published Troubling the Waters: Black-Jewish Relations in the American Century, a landmark study of the complicated political relationship between Black and Jewish Americans. Challenging both the nostalgic idea of a seamless Black-Jewish alliance and the notion that the relationship simply collapsed, Greenberg traced a history in which cooperation and conflict, shared political goals and competing interests, were intertwined from the beginning.

Two decades later, Greenberg returns to Troubling the Waters to ask what has changed, what has endured, and how the history looks from the vantage point of today. What can the past tell us about Black-Jewish relations now, and does the idea of a Black-Jewish alliance still help us understand the political relationship between the two communities?

Who this is for

• Anyone interested in the history of Black-Jewish relations in America, beyond the simplified alliance-or-collapse narrative
• Readers of Troubling the Waters looking to hear from the author directly, twenty years on
• Those thinking about coalition politics and how shared and competing interests shape relationships between communities over time

What you'll leave with

• Greenberg’s account of how cooperation and conflict between Black and Jewish Americans were intertwined from the start
• Her view of what has changed in twenty years, and whether the idea of an alliance still helps explain the present

Two Wednesdays: November 11 & 18, 6–7:30pm Pacific

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