For mainstream American blacks, the vast majority of churches have Hebrew names--Ebenezer, Mount Zion, Canaan, Mount Moriah, Taber...nacle, New Hebron, Mount Olive. Hebraic traditions run deep in the black church. More than any people on earth, including the Jews, American blacks have adopted the Mosaic model of social organization, with the exalted political prophet bonded to the "children of Israel" below. Blacks and Jews have in common a history of cyclical swings between cultural separatism and assimilation. Black Zionists helped establish an independent Liberia in 1847, some fifty years before the emergence of modern Jewish Zionism. Jews, who have canonized no new prophets in two millennia and who shudder at the memory of their false messiahs, look with both longing and horror upon the last generation's procession of black prophets: Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., Louis Farrakhan, and Jesse Jackson. Depending on one's prediction of the outcome, blacks and Jews are either intimate enemies or quarrelsome cousins.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... the histories of Blacks and Jews in bondage and out of bondage, have been blood histories pursued through our kindred searchin...gs for self-determination. Let this blood be a stain of honor that we share. Let us not now become enemies to ourselves and to each other.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The majority of Black Americans are unaware of the complexity of the meaning of Israel to American Jews. But, ironically, Afro-Zio...nists have as an intense an emotional identification with Africa and with the Third World as American Jews have with Israel. Doubly ironic, this same intensity of identification with a "Motherland" seems rooted in the mythologies common to both groups. In this special sense--in the spiritual sense implied by "Zion" and "Diaspora" and "Promised Land"MBlack Americans are America's Jews. But given the isolation of Black Americans from any meaningful association with Africa, extensions of the mythology would be futile. We have no distant homeland preparing an ingathering.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. ... I had heard of you by t...he hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
All things are wearisome; more than one can express; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, or the ear filled with hearing. What ha...s been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; there is nothing new under the sun.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Give ear to my prayer, O God; and hide not thyself from my supplication.... Attend unto me, and hear me: I mourn in my complaint, and make a noise;LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners; yet we know that a person is justified not by the works of the law but thr...ough faith in Jesus Christ. And we have come to believe in Christ Jesus, so that we might be justified by faith in Christ, and not by doing the works of the law, because no one will be justified by the works of the law.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
But when I saw that they were not acting consistently with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all, "If you, tho...ugh a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews?"LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gen...tiles...LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they descendants of Abraham? So am I. Are they ministers of Christ? I... am talking like a madman -I am a better one: with far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless floggings, and often near death. Five times I have received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I received a stoning. Three times I was shipwrecked; for a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from bandits, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers and sisters; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, hungry and thirsty, often without food, cold and naked. And, besides other things, I am under daily pressure because of my anxiety for all the churches.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »