Soul Food Shabbat - Dinner, panel and table conversations about race and antisemitism: Jim Crow and Nuremberg Laws - The Stan Greenspon Holocaust and Social Justice Education Center

For years, Queens students have sponsored a Soul Food Shabbat bringing together the Queens Black Student Union and Queens Hillel for a celebration of Shabbat and an exploration of commonalities as we explore our past and present struggles. This year, we are opening the experience up to the broader Charlotte community. Join us on Friday, February 10, 2022, 5:30 to 7:00 pm in the Claudia Belk Room in the Levine Center for Wellness on the Queens Campus.

Utilizing video testimony from Leon Bass, a Black World War II liberator in a segregated army, we will engage in a conversation with our visiting scholars and all who attend to explore the legacy of this difficult history. We will explore the connections between Jim Crow Laws and the Nazi Nuremberg Laws, the social construct of race and its historical impact on Blacks and Jews, and identify practical responses to combat antisemitism and racism today.

This program is sponsored by Queens Hillel, the Belk Chapel, DICE (Diversity, Inclusion, and Community Engagement), the Stan Greenspon Holocaust and Social Justice Education Center, and the Charlotte Black/Jewish Alliance.

Panelists will include Dr. Aya Marczyk, Associate Research Scholar at Yale University and Dr. O. Jennifer Dixon-McKnight, Assistant Professor, History and African American Studies, Winthrop University

Moderators will include Dr. Melvin Herring, Director of the Master of Social Work Program, Johnson C. Smith University and Rabbi Judy Schindler, Sklut Professor of Jewish Studies, Queens University of Charlotte

This program is free for Queens faculty, staff and students. There will be a fee of $23/person to cover the cost of dinner for community members.

Click here to register. – Deadline for registration is February 7th.

Aya Marczyk has a PhD in European intellectual history from the University of Pennsylvania, an MS in cognitive psychology from Bucknell University, and a BA from Brown. Her research explores how teaching with historiography can create bridges between the work of professional historians and high school history classrooms. She has co-edited and translated several books that explore the intersection of culture and politics, including, with Adam Michnik, Against Anti-Semitism: An Anthology of Twentieth-Century Polish Writings (Oxford University Press, 2018). She is working to bring the Fortunoff Video Archive’s collection of Holocaust testimonies to high school classrooms through curriculum and professional learning institutes for teachers. The first unit on Race and Citizenship in Jim C row US and Nazi Germany is now available on the Fortunoff Archive’s website.

Dr. Dixon-McKnight teaches courses in African-American History and United States History. Her research interests include African-American History, United States History, and Women’s and Gender History, with a particular focus on using oral history to examine social movements forged by African-American women. Dixon-McKnight is currently working on a project that focuses on the 1969 Charleston hospital workers campaign and the hundreds of African-American working-class women at the center of the movement.

Dr. Melvin Herring is the Director of the Master of Social Work Program at Johnson C. Smith University that specializes in training culturally competent social work practitioners. He has been recognized for his work in the area of Cultural Competence. Among other scholarly work, he co-authored the book Human Behavior Theory and Social Work Practice with Marginalized Oppressed Populations (2019, Routledge) and the article Implementation of an Interdisciplinary Cultural Competence Training with Law Enforcement Personnel in the Journal of Ethnic & Cultural Diversity in Social Work (2019). He also co-developed a cultural competence theoretical model to guide his practice and pedagogical approach and has utilized this model to train numerous students and organizations.

Rabbi Judy Schindler is the Sklut Professor of Jewish Studies and Director of the Stan Greenspon Holocaust and Social Justice Education Center at Queens University of Charlotte. She was named Rabbi Emerita of Temple Beth El in Charlotte, North Carolina, after serving as Senior Rabbi from 2003-2016 and as Associate Rabbi from 1998-2003. Prior to coming to Charlotte, she was an Associate Rabbi at Westchester Reform Temple in Scarsdale, New York.