As a Black mother of a Jewish son, I know solidarity is not simple

There is something deeply comforting about calling ourselves an “ally.” The word allows us to believe that we have already taken a position, already demonstrated our courage, already placed ourselves on the right side of history. But solidarity is not a destination; it is a discipline.

I live at the intersection of many identities. I am Black, a woman, Lutheran, a scholar, a mother, a wife, and a leader in the Jewish community. Different parts of me come to the forefront in different rooms, and with each shift, so do my experiences of power and vulnerability.

Professionally, earning tenure at George Mason University gave me protections that many faculty members do not enjoy, and with those protections comes responsibility. I believe tenured faculty have a particular obligation to speak against injustice and advocate for colleagues whose employment circumstances leave them more vulnerable. But I am also a Black female faculty member in higher education, where Black faculty remain underrepresented, particularly in positions of institutional leadership.

That balancing act extends into my personal life. As a Black Christian mother of a patrilineal Black-Jewish son, I struggle to help him navigate Jewish spaces where he is not always fully accepted, despite being raised in a Jewish environment. Advocating for him is complicated by my own position as an outsider to the faith, where I am challenging deeply held religious traditions. We have discussed conversion as a way to ease his participation in Jewish life, yet it feels painful to suggest that an identity central to who he is requires additional validation.

In our increasingly polarized world, communities are feeling the pressure to choose between protecting themselves and remaining open to others. But openness is not always a threat to survival. When your voice is being silenced, you need people beyond your community to speak. Sometimes the person who becomes essential to your survival is someone you never would have imagined belonged in your circle.

For example, when I was  a child, my mother told me about a mathematics class she took as a student at Tennessee State University that was taught by Jewish refugee scholars who had fled Europe. They arrived at a historically Black college carrying extraordinary intellectual training and a very recent understanding of what happens when a society decides that some people are less deserving of dignity than others. They taught their students math lessons while encouraging them to resist American segregation.

That kind of alliance appears throughout the history of Black-Jewish relationships, the history I’ve dedicated my career to studying. Georg and Wilma Iggers were Jewish refugees who taught at Philander Smith University in Little Rock, Arkansas. They lived in a Black neighborhood; their children played alongside the children next door. Georg became the first white inductee into the Black fraternity Phi Beta Sigma. His commitment was not without consequence: he faced increased antisemitism for his support of Black causes, yet he remained steadfast, joining the NAACP and fighting to desegregate Little Rock’s high schools and public library.

The important thing about stories like these is that they are stories of mutuality. HBCUs needed qualified professors. Jewish refugees needed places where their expertise could flourish. Together, they did more than either could have done alone.

At George Mason University, our African American Studies resource center, named after Paul Robeson, and the university’s Hillel chapter used to be located next to each other, and that physical proximity helped forge a natural relationship between our communities. As campus layouts shifted and offices moved apart, maintaining that closeness through active engagement became a radical, yet necessary, act. In today’s world where advocacy is so easily mistaken as liking an Instagram post or sending a text, showing up in person matters.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. observed that eleven o’clock on Sunday morning is the most segregated hour in America, when Christians gather in racially divided churches. Our partnership with Mason Hillel offers a small but meaningful challenge to that divide, demonstrating what can happen when communities come together across differences. Two years ago, for example, we celebrated Paul Robeson’s birthday with kosher food and invited our Hillel friends to join us. Robeson’s legacy provided a natural bridge between our communities: he was deeply committed to both Black and Jewish causes, sang in Yiddish, and advocated for Soviet Jewry. By celebrating his life together, we honored a shared history and put solidarity into practice.

This is not to say that complete alignment is required to work alongside others for social change. The history of the Black-Jewish alliance itself proves that people can disagree profoundly at times and still choose to stand together. Perfection is often the antithesis to progress. Anyone who crosses a cultural boundary with genuine intentions will make mistakes. The responsibility of the outsider is to do the work without expecting members of a community to become their personal textbooks.

We see this complexity in iconic moments like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. marching alongside Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, an image everyone has seen. But in my classes, I also show students the Letter from Birmingham Jail to ground them in what Dr. King was actually responding to: a letter from local clergy criticizing him as an agitator pressing too hard for integration. Some of those clergy members were rabbis. Not every Jewish religious leader marched with Dr. King; there were those who walked the front lines and those who advocated for a more gradual pace. Yet there was still enough common ground to build a movement.

We can recognize those historical nuances in our present day, too. Black and Jewish communities may disagree on the details or actions surrounding the war in Gaza while still agreeing that antisemitism is a scourge. It is much like the experience of veterans in my own family: so many of my relatives served in the military despite knowing they would return home to a country that still subjected them to segregation. They fought for their country because they believed it could become better, refusing to abandon the possibility of progress.

This is how many Israelis and Jews feel today, loving their nation and knowing the importance of its existence, while recognizing the necessity of governmental reforms. Even amid varied opinions on foreign policy or political actions, people can still be, and still are, firmly united against antisemitism.

This lesson is especially important for young activists. I see extraordinary passion among my students, but passion without knowledge can become its own kind of barrier, and can even become dangerous. When advocating for a cause, understanding the people and histories that shaped it is critical.

My experiences have taught me how important it is to build relationships across communities, especially when decisions affecting those communities are made without their full participation. Those relationships can provide the support necessary to challenge exclusion and advocate for change.

Our greatest challenges do not stop at the edges of our communities. Neither can our solidarity.