O pinion
in life and that each of them
is an important part of that
mission. The strength of our
religion depends on education
more than anything else, and
today it is either insufficient or
too expensive.

We need a whole new gener-
ation of Jewish day schools.

Our fundraising organizations
need to re-evaluate their prior-
ities and focus on founding
new schools, supporting
existing schools and making
them all affordable with subsi-
dies or scholarships. This will
not be an easy task because
the religious differences of the
various Jewish movements
have to be taken into account.

One size will not fit all. But
what could be more important?
I call upon the leaders of
our Jewish organizations to
re-evaluate their fundraising
goals, so that they can make
possible the kind of Jewish
education that American Jews
clearly need, with a strong
religious education, combined
with the necessary secular
education to be successful in
life. This is what the soul of
American Jewry needs more
than anything. l
Solomon D. Stevens has a Ph.D.

from Boston College. His books
include “Religion, Politics, and
the Law” (co-authored with Peter
Schotten) and “Challenges to
Peace in the Middle East.”
STATEMENT FROM
THE PUBLISHER
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My Jewish Ancestors Owned Slaves.

That’s Why I’m a Rabbi for Racial Justice
BY RABBI BARRY BLOCK
IN “THE SOCIAL Justice Torah
Commentary,” Rabbi Brian
Stoller describes a turtle-shaped
dinner bell that his great-grand-
mother used to summon a Black
butler to attend to her needs at
the family’s Shabbat table.

When I got to that line while
editing the volume, I felt a jolt
of familiarity: An identical bell
served the same purpose at my
own grandmother’s table.

All of my grandparents
— and all four of my American-
born great-grandparents
— hailed from the South, and
social justice activism was not
baked into my DNA.

Yet unlike many “old”
southern families, I was raised
without glorification of the
Confederacy. As a preteen, I only
learned that both of my parents
are descended from Confederate
veterans because I asked. My
parents, members of the Silent
Generation, were not engaged
in the civil rights movement
of the 1960s. However, unlike
most members of the privileged
Houston Jewish community in
which they were raised and in
turn raised my sister and me, they
opened their eyes to social injus-
tice in the 1970s and exposed us to
progressive thought and activism,
rooted in Reform Jewish life.

As I neared the end of my
work on “The Social Justice
Torah Commentary,” a distant
relative sent me a page of the
1860 Louisiana slave census,
the first documentary proof
for me that an ancestor — my
great-great-great-grandmother, Magdalena Seeleman — was a
slaveholder. Magdalena
Gugenheim Seeleman was born Dec. 25,
1810, in Zweibrucken, Germany.

She first shows up in the U.S.

Census in New Orleans in 1850.

She is listed in the 1860 U.S.

Census as living in the home
of her daughter and son-in-law,
Simon and Caroline Shlenker,
in Trinity, Catahoula Parish,
Louisiana. According to the list
of parish slaveholders from June
22, 1860, “M. Seeleman” was the
owner of a 29-year-old woman
described as “mulatto.” Right
above, Simon is described as the
owner of a Black woman, age 25.

Simon’s brother Isaac was
married to Caroline’s sister
Charlotte; Isaac and Charlotte
were my great-great-grandpar-
ents. Isaac and Charlotte are not
on the list of slaveholders, but
a document says Isaac received
payment from the state of
Louisiana for serving as a prose-
cutor of escaped slaves. In an
advertisement dated April 10,
1861, Isaac “and Bro.” offer a
“Negro” for sale; the “girl” is
described as “young, healthy
and acclimated.”
The information is as horri-
fying as it is unsurprising.

When I visited The National
Memorial to Peace and Justice
in Montgomery in 2019, I found
memorials indicting Catahoula
Parish, Louisiana, where
Seeleman lived, as the site of
multiple racist terror lynchings.

All five of the other counties
and parishes where my family
thrived during the lynching era
are similarly accused there.

At Montgomery’s Legacy
Museum, I confronted a sign
offering a reminder that many
of the same families who
were enriched by enslaving
Black Americans continue to
enjoy that prosperity today.

Their wealth, inherited down
JEWISH EXPONENT
the generations, cannot be
separated from the enslaved
human beings that their — that
is, my — ancestors oppressed
to earn a generous living.

Earlier in my career as a rabbi,
not yet entirely aware of my
family history, I did not focus
on racial justice in my work, but
rather on immigration reform,
abortion rights and LGBTQ
equality. I became outspoken to
the point that, when I was seeking
to leave my previous congrega-
tion for a new pulpit, a friend in
lay leadership hoped that I would
look in “blue states.” Instead,
in 2013, I took the pulpit of
Congregation B’nai Israel in Little
Rock, Arkansas, where I was truly
awakened for the first time to the
moral urgency of advancing racial
equality in our nation.

Later, congregants — women,
in particular, including descen-
dants of the Confederate soldiers
who founded the congregation
— heeded Rabbi Sanders’ call to
organize against segregation in
public schools.

Rabbi Sanders retired the
summer I was born, a half
century before my arrival in
Little Rock. His predecessors
and successors, along with their
partners in lay leadership, estab-
lished a legacy of social justice
activism, calling on congre-
gants and me to continue that
critical work. Their legacy
inspires my belief that, rather
than solely focusing on the guilt
and shame of historical sins, the
best recourse is to take action to
repent for and rectify them.

As for the woman my ancestor
All of my grandparents — and all four of my
American-born great-grandparents — hailed
from the South, and social justice activism was
not baked into my DNA.

Founded in 1866 on the heels
of the Civil War, B’nai Israel
counts Confederate veterans
among its earliest leaders, men
who had risked their lives to
maintain chattel enslavement
of Black Americans. But the
synagogue’s subsequent history
shows how a commitment to
justice can emerge even in places
where racism and inequity
might initially have been baked
into its DNA.

When I joined the congre-
gation, members shared with
me the storied legacy of the
late Rabbi Ira E. Sanders, an
early hero of the civil rights
movement. During his first
months in Little Rock in 1926,
Rabbi Sanders lent his body to
the struggle against segrega-
tion, refusing to move from the
back of a streetcar. He would
go on to lead the integration
of Little Rock’s public library.

enslaved, my distant cousin has
been working to identify her, in
the hope of locating descendants
in order to offer at least some
form of reparations. I do not
know if we will ever be able to
name her or her descendants.

I dedicate “The Social Justice
Torah Commentary” and any
social activism I can muster to
her memory. And I pray that
the work we all do to advance
social justice today may serve
as tiny measures of atonement
for the grievous damage caused
by our nation, including my
ancestors, to her and millions
of Black Americans across four
centuries and counting. l
Rabbi Barry H. Block is the rabbi of
Congregation B’nai Israel in Little
Rock, Arkansas, and the editor of
“The Mussar Torah Commentary”
and “The Social Justice Torah
Commentary.” DECEMBER 16, 2021
15