Two Peoples, One Destiny: A Forgotten Vision of Black-Jewish Unity

As hundreds of Black Hebrew Israelites gathered outside Brooklyn’s Barclays Center in 2022, their chants of “We are the real Jews!” echoed through the streets. Inside, NBA star Kyrie Irving sat suspended for promoting antisemitic content. The scene painted a troubling picture of modern Black-Jewish relations – but history tells us it didn’t have to be this way.

Nearly 125 years ago, one of the most remarkable Black leaders you’ve never heard of penned a passionate defense of the Jewish people that feels more relevant today than ever. Edward Wilmot Blyden, a Caribbean-born intellectual who helped lay the foundation for Pan-African nationalism, saw something that many of today’s leaders have forgotten: a divine connection between two peoples who were destined to change the world together.

Born in 1832 in St. Thomas, Blyden’s earliest memories were of playing on “Synagogue Hill” with his Jewish friends, attending services at their synagogue, and absorbing the dignity and beauty of Jewish worship. But it wasn’t just childhood nostalgia that drew him to Jewish culture and history. As a Black man who witnessed the horrors of slavery and faced brutal discrimination himself, Blyden recognized in the Jewish story a powerful parallel to the Black experience.

When Rutgers Theological College rejected him because of his skin color, Blyden could have turned bitter against the world. Instead, this disappointment launched him on a remarkable intellectual and spiritual journey that would lead him to master Hebrew, visit Jerusalem, and ultimately write a groundbreaking book called “The Jewish Question” – just one year after Theodor Herzl convened the First Zionist Congress.

What Blyden saw in Judaism and the Hebrew Bible was revolutionary for his time – and perhaps even more so for ours. While many Christians of his era twisted Biblical verses to justify racism, Blyden found in Judaism’s holy texts a profound rejection of racial hierarchy. He pointed to Moses’ marriage to Tzipporah, an Ethiopian woman, and to God’s declaration in the Book of Amos that the Ethiopian people were as precious to Him as the Israelites.

“Both peoples are children of endurance and suffering,” Blyden wrote, bound together by a “history of almost identical… sorrow and oppression.” Both endured slavery – the Jews in Egypt, the Blacks in America. Both faced persecution that continued into Blyden’s time: lynchings and segregation for Blacks, murderous pogroms for Jews.

But Blyden saw something even deeper. Just as the Jewish people never lost faith during their long exile, singing songs of yearning for Zion “by the waters of Babylon,” so too did enslaved Blacks maintain their dignity and hope through spirituals that “float down the Ohio River.” When Blyden witnessed the birth of the Zionist movement, he recognized in it not just a political movement, but a spiritual awakening that could inspire Black liberation.

The tragedy of our time is how far we’ve strayed from Blyden’s vision. Today, the Black Hebrew Israelite movement claims to be the “real” Jews while denouncing actual Jews as “imposters.” This toxic ideology, which now claims over a million followers, eerily echoes the ancient Christian “replacement theology” that led to centuries of Jewish persecution.

Yet there are signs of hope. As Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, told New York Mayor David Dinkins after the Crown Heights riots: “We are not two communities – but one community, under one administration, under One God.” This vision of unity, first articulated by Blyden over a century ago, offers a path forward through our current divisions.

For Christians reading this story, Blyden’s journey shows how a deep engagement with Judaism’s texts and traditions can enrich rather than threaten Christian faith. For Jews, his life demonstrates how the Jewish story can inspire and uplift other communities without being appropriated or distorted.

And for all of us, Blyden’s forgotten vision reminds us that the path to healing our fractured world begins with recognizing the divine spark in every human being – and understanding that our destinies are inextricably intertwined.

Today, as antisemitism surges and racial tensions simmer, Blyden’s message rings truer than ever: two peoples, bound together by God, Bible, and history, are destined to join together in mutual respect and affection. The only question is: Will we have the courage to embrace this vision?