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Reconstructing Judaism Grows
Opportunities for Black and
Jewish Community-building
L ast October, a minyan of Jews of African
descent traveled to Montgomery,
Alabama, with the Wyncote-based
Reconstructing Judaism. Specifically
for Black Jews across the country, the
Reconstructing Judaism pilgrimage is
believed to be the fi rst trip of its kind.

Though the trip was months ago, the
impact among participants is palpable.

“It was really powerful, not just to
be able to engage with other Jews of
African descent, but to be able to do
so while being held in a Jewish frame-
work,” said Amanda Beckenstein Mbuvi,
Reconstructing Judaism’s vice president
for academic aff airs, of the pilgrimage.

6 FEBRUARY 16, 2023 | JEWISH EXPONENT
“That really made tangible for me the
commitment of Reconstructionist
Judaism to really receive people of color
as Jews and as whole people.”
The pilgrimage is part of Reconstructing
Judaism’s intention to build commu-
nity for Black Jews both within the
organization and in the greater Jewish
community. On Feb. 9, the Weitzman
National Museum of American Jewish
History hosted “Deconstructing Racism
to Reconstruct Judaism: The Story of a
Pilgrimage Down South,” a panel outlin-
ing the event’s signifi cance.

The pilgrimage was a way to consider
the experiences of Black Jews in the
greater Jewish American context, partic-
ularly looking at the relationship between
healing, teshuvah and anti-Black racism.

Calling the trip a pilgrimage draws on the
Jewish tradition of pilgrimage for Pesach,
Sukkot and Shavuot, according to Koach
Baruch Frazier, a Reconstructionist
Rabbinical College student and Tikkun
Olam Commission representative who
co-organized the trip.

“In the Torah, it says that you must go, so
that you can be seen and, some say, so that
you can be seen by God and that you see
God,” Frazier said. “... What does it mean
to show up and see God in Black people?”
During the pilgrimage, participants
visited the National Memorial for Peace
and Justice and Legacy Museum: From
Enslavement to Mass Incarceration,
as well as met with civil rights activist
Joanne Bland, who took part in the
“Bloody Sunday” march.

For participants, the pilgrimage was an
opportunity to explore the depth of both
grief in the American legacy of racism
and celebration in Black resilience.

Without white counterparts, participants
felt they were able to bring their identi-
ties to the experience without inhibition.

“It was so nice to be in a place where
you didn’t have to explain your Judaism,
your Jewishness,” said Wilbur Bryant II,
a Kol Tzedek member who attended the
pilgrimage. “As Black people in this country, we
have to go about our day not being
angry, outwardly being angry, about
what’s been done to us and what is still
being done to us,” he said.

On the pilgrimage, Bryant continued,
“I didn’t have to smile if I didn’t want
to, like we have to do in our everyday
lives, because, you know, God forbid
someone thinks we’re angry.”
The purpose of the all-Black and
Jewish pilgrimage was to provide an
opportunity for participants to feel
present and whole, without having to be
privy to the potential guilt and judgment
of white Jews on the trip grappling
with their complicity in racism, according
Amanda Beckenstein Mbuvi at the
National Memorial for Peace and
Justice in Montgomery, Alabama
to Rabbi Micah Weiss, Reconstructing
Judaism’s assistant director for thriving
communities and tikkun olam specialist.

“We want people to have as much
sholem, and wholeness, in space with
many lines of diff erence,” he said. “But
the more that we can access our whole
selves in particular spaces, it empowers
us to bring as much of our full, healthy,
as-healed-as-possible selves to group
spaces across lines of diff erence.”
Reconstructing Judaism is planning
another pilgrimage from March
16-19 open to Jews of any race. The
March pilgrimage is another piece of
Reconstructing Judaism’s eff orts to think
critically about Jewish identities.

“We’ve been doing a lot of work as a
community, thinking about engaging with
accessibility, engaging with class, and a lot
of diff erent ways of really thinking about
identities and experiences that are often
marginalized,” Mbuvi said, “Not only to
make our own community more inclusive,
but also to really think about how we can
really see and receive and respond to the
full diversity of experiences that people
are bringing to Jewish community.”
Outside of pilgrimages, Black Jews
are looking to connect in Philadelphia,
experiencing delight in both fi nding
similarities in ancestral narratives and
diff erences in Jewish practices. Frazier
attends a monthly “Black Folks Shabbat”
and is looking to build relationships with
Black Jewish communities in the Greater
Philadelphia area, such as Congregation
Temple Beth’El in North Philadelphia.

“I make it my duty to be around all
Black folks, all Black, Jewish folks to
continue that joy and that exuberation
and that experience of being with my
kin,” they said. ■
srogelberg@midatlanticmedia.com Courtesy of Reconstructing Judiasm
Sasha Rogelberg | Staff Writer



local
Jewish Phillie Dalton Guthrie
Tries to Make Big League Club
Jarrad Saff ren | Staff Writer
Courtesy of Miles Kennedy/The Phillies
B y the time the 2023 Major League
Baseball season begins on March
30, the Philadelphia Phillies might
be a step closer to making a minyan.

Outfi elder Dalton Guthrie, 27, has a
chance going into spring training to join
Jewish backup catcher Garrett Stubbs
on the team’s opening-day roster.

If he does, he will enter a baseball season
as a big leaguer for the fi rst time. Guthrie
reached the majors last September after
an injury to right fi elder Nick Castellanos.

Playing for a team in a playoff race, Guthrie
went 7-for-21 at the plate with a home run
and six walks. He fi nished with a perfect
fi elding percentage in 70 combined
innings in the outfi eld (62), at third base
(seven) and at second base (one).

“I’m excited,” Guthrie said. “Whenever
I’ve come into spring training, even in
the minors, I’ve always been fi ghting for
a spot.”
Guthrie grew up in Sarasota, Florida,
with a Jewish mother, Andrea Guthrie, and
a Catholic father, Mark Guthrie, the MLB
pitcher for 15 seasons (1989-2003) with
several teams. During the holidays, Guthrie
and his two brothers were among the kids
who celebrated Chanukah and Christmas.

That, according to the 27-year-old, was
“the best of both worlds.”
But for the rest of the year, religion
was not a daily presence in the family’s
life. Dalton Guthrie attended the Goldie
Feldman Academy at Temple Beth Sholom
in Sarasota for kindergarten and fi rst
grade. Andrea Guthrie said she sent her
son there because she had heard from
friends that it was a good school. At Goldie
Feldman, Dalton Guthrie went to temple
and practiced reading Hebrew along with
his secular schooling. But before second
grade, he tested into Pine View Elementary
Magnet School in Land O’ Lakes, and his
formal Jewish education was over.

Dalton Guthrie did not have a bar
mitzvah. It was also diffi cult for the family
to observe the High Holidays during the
MLB season when his father was travel-
ing. Andrea Guthrie’s mother would call
her and remind her that it was Yom
Kippur, and she would say, “OK, I’ll try to
fast!” The Jewish mother made sure that
her children got a Chanukah dinner each
year with her parents.

But beyond that, she believed in
teaching her kids about her religion
and then letting them make their own
decisions. It was a philosophy that the
Guthrie parents shared. Mark Guthrie
took his son to midnight mass one year
to show him what Catholicism was like.

But he did not force his son to practice.

“I’ve had friends whose parents push
things on them, and then they go off to
college and do the opposite,” Andrea
Guthrie said. “I wanted to let them learn
it and, if that’s the way they felt, they’ll
continue that.”
Today, though, Dalton Guthrie’s religion
is baseball. The 2017 sixth-round pick
of the Phillies spent years surviving and
advancing through the franchise’s minor
league system. Andrea Guthrie said her
son has always loved to play all positions,
and he has used that mindset to make
himself useful in the minors, too, playing
at every spot but catcher and fi rst base.

But while Dalton Guthrie was always
a useful fi elder, his hitting didn’t catch
up until June 2021. Guthrie, then at
Double-A Reading, was in a slump, so
hitting coach Tyler Henson reviewed fi lm
with him going back to his high school
days. They discovered that the player’s
hands had fallen too low to catch up to
fastballs and react to breaking balls.

Henson asked his pupil if he wanted
to sit out to work on his new stance. But
Guthrie said he wanted to play. He went
out that night and ripped two hits.

“You could see him start to free up
mentally,” Henson said.

Later that year, Guthrie got called up to
Triple-A Lehigh Valley, where he fi nished
with a .292 average. The next season at
Triple-A, he hit .302 with a .363 on-base
percentage, earning his call-up.

“A lot of guys that get through the
minors, what they do is adapt,” Guthrie
said. “Find new ways to succeed.”
Guthrie has gotten through the minors.

But now the challenge is staying in the
majors. He knows that all he can control is
his approach. He said his father “was never
the overbearing dad.” The only times Mark
Guthrie got mad at his son growing up
were when he didn’t try his hardest.

“If I can give all my eff ort, I can live with
that every day,” Guthrie said. ■
jsaff ren@midatlanticmedia.com
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