Rabbi Capers Funnye is in a tiny minority in the US: he’s an African-American Jew. He’s also Michelle Obama’s cousin and has the ear of the US president. Zev Chafets meets the charismatic leader who wants mainstream Judaism to accept that Israelites don’t have to be white.
Rabbi Capers Funnye celebrated Martin Luther King Day this year in New York City at the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue, a mainstream Reform congregation, in the company of about 700 fellow Jews – many of them black.
The organisers of the event had reached out to four of New York’s Black Jewish synagogues in the hope of promoting Jewish diversity, and they weren’t disappointed. African-American Jews, largely from Brooklyn, the Bronx and Queens, many of whom had never been in a predominantly white synagogue, made up about a quarter of the audience. Most of the visiting women wore traditional African garb; the men stood out because, though it was a secular occasion, most kept their heads covered. But even with your eyes closed you could tell who was who: the black Jews and the white Jews clapped to the music on different beats.
Funnye, the chief rabbi of the Beth Shalom B’nai Zaken Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation in Chicago, one of the largest black synagogues in America, was a featured speaker that night. The overflowing audience came out in a snowstorm to hear his thoughts about two men: the Rev Dr. Martin Luther King Jr and Barack Obama. King is Funnye’s hero. Obama, whose inauguration was to take place the following day in Washington, is family – the man who married Funnye’s cousin Michelle.
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Tags: Jewish connection, Obama, Zionism
