organization of its kind serving Jews of color, Jews In
ALL Hues does not receive funding from the Jewish
Federation, he said.

Instead, many Jewish organizations hold work-
shops about race and racism or invest in initiatives
and task forces to conduct research on racism in the
Jewish community, Jackson said. Th ese eff orts are
oft en helmed by white people and do not fully take
into consideration the needs of the people of color
they intend to help.

“We need more than just people, mostly white peo-
ple, studying us,” he said.

Th ough Jackson advocated for better funding of
eff orts led by Jews of color to address racism and
build community, he’s quick to diff erentiate between
funding and reparations.

“It’s beyond the dollar you put in your JNF box,”
he said.

When organizations fund Jews of color-led eff orts,
similar to philanthropy, they receive a return on their
investment in the form of a tax deduction of commu-
nity programming the organization can hold with
increased funding.

With reparations, white institutions and individ-
uals must give back to people of color with the trust
that the recipients will use the money for what they
need it most, which may be invisible to the repara-
tions giver, or it may not align with the giver’s values
or agenda.

“If you’re giving reparations to Jews of color, the
people to decide where the money is going, the people
to decide the process, the distribution, all have to be
Jews of color,” Jackson said. “Th ere needs to be that
trust that we will make the right choices for us, in a
way that will look diff erent than what white supremacy
tells us is professionalism or philanthropic excellence.”
Before monetary reparations are given, there must
fi rst be teshuvah, Wasserman said.

Within the Jewish community, there must be an
understanding of the harm infl icted on a group of
people to know how to address it.

For the white Jewish community, this process is
hard, Wasserman said. To begin with, many Jews
don’t know about reparation eff orts in the larger
political climate. Others may not fully grasp the
breadth and depth of anti-Black racism or don’t see
addressing it as a Jewish issue.

Being a group that also experiences discrimination
adds to the challenges of recognizing and addressing
racism, Wasserman said.

“We have lots of concerns about antisemitism that
take up a lot of our attention and energy,” she said.

In white Jews’ eff orts to combat antisemitism, they
can forget that anti-Jewish hatred comes from the
same white supremacist roots as anti-Black hatred,
Wasserman argues.

“In a sense, anti-Black racism and antisemitism are
just sort of two faces of white supremacy and white
nationalism in this country,” she said.

Before the recent Jewish interest in reparations for
Black Americans, Jews tackled the topic of repara-
tions aft er the Holocaust. Even then it was met with
mixed opinions.

In 1952, Israeli and German offi cials signed
the Reparations Agreement between Israel and
the Federal Republic of Germany, in which West
18 JULY 7, 2022 | JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin
protests the 1952 agreement giving
reparations to the budding state of Israel.

Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons via the
National Photo Collection of Israel
Germany was to give money and resources to the
budding state of Israel. Germany would also give
payments to Holocaust survivors and direct descen-
dants of survivors through the Conference on Jewish
Material Claims Against Germany.

While German offi cials and citizens were either
in favor of or indiff erent to reparations, Israel had
some of the most signifi cant opposition to repara-
tions, according to Th omas Craemer, a University of
Connecticut professor of public policy who studies
reparations. Jews worried that accepting reparations from
Germany would mean that the trauma and pain
from the Holocaust would be “fi xed” — addressed
enough for Germany’s hands to be wiped clean of the
genocide. Wasserman uses the example of the Holocaust to
point out that reparations go beyond just the individ-
ual receiving compensation.

“Th e reparations aren’t only for victims but for
the whole society to recognize the wrongs and the
society’s complicitness in wrongs,” Wasserman said.

“I get the feeling that reparations probably do have
the power to change perspectives and repair relation-
ships,” Craemer added.

Even aft er overcoming ideological barriers to
address reparations, Americans have become para-
lyzed with how to practically approach reparations.

Members of Green Street Friends, a Quaker meet-
ing, shared their blueprint for giving reparations in
the Philadelphia area at the Juneteenth interfaith
event. “Our meeting house is located in Germantown,
which is a predominantly Black neighborhood where
the average household income is below the poverty
line, but most of our members are upper-middle class
white,” said Afroza Hossain, a founding member of
the Green Street Reparations Committee. “So it felt
like a very personal thing for our meeting to make rep-
arations and repair some of the wounds of racial injus-
tice that have been done in this country historically.”
Quakers draw on a similar value as teshuvah, using
the value of “repair” to guide their reparations move-
ment. Th ey have had to undergo their own reckoning
with racism as a predominantly white institution;
William Penn, a Quaker who founded Quakerism in
the commonwealth, owned enslaved people.

Th e meeting made a 10-year plan to give $500,000
in reparations over the next 10 years. For the past six
months, the meeting held six legal clinics at the meet-
ing house, partnering with Philadelphia VIP and
providing pro bono legal counsel for Black residents.

Th ey give money to residents who need home repairs.

Th e goal is to keep Black residents who have lived
in the neighborhood for generations from being dis-
placed. Th e Black members of the meeting decided
on the eff ort to invest in this past year and will be the
only meeting members to decide where reparations
go, Hossain said.

Hossain believes that reparations is an active pro-
cess. While larger bodies like corporations can give
money, their ability to invest time and emotions into
the practice of repair is limited. Th e “holy” nature of
reparations — its foundation on community, trust
and repair — is what makes it an obligation for faith-
based organizations.

“Th is is spiritual work,” she said. JE
srogelberg@midatlanticmedia.com Green Street Friends Reparations Committee created a 10-year plan to give reparations to the Black
residents in their Germantown neighborhood.

Courtesy of Green Street Friends Facebook page



arts & culture
Leonard Cohen
Doc will have You
Saying ‘Hallelujah’
F JARRAD SAFFREN | STAFF WRITER
or a documentary to be worth
your while, its subject needs to
have historical weight. I think of
some of the better documentaries or
docuseries I’ve watched in recent years.

“Fiddler’s Journey to the Big Screen”
was about one of the great movies of
all time; “Woodstock 99” portrayed the
ominous zeitgeist of the late 1990s; and
“Th e Beatles: Get Back” showed the fi nal
days of an iconic band.

Going into “Hallelujah: Leonard
Cohen, A Journey, A Song,” I was not
sure if Cohen, a Jewish musician defi ned
by a single song, would fi t into that cate-
gory. Was this man important enough for
me to spend two hours learning about?
By the second half of this Sony Pictures
documentary, the answer was surprisingly
yes. Cohen was a vivid songwriter and a
spiritual seeker who, with “Hallelujah”
and its multiple versions and covers,
captured something essential about the
human experience. Who Cohen was, how
he did that and why he was able to do it
can be explained in three quotes from this
movie, out nationwide on July 8.

“Leonard, we know you’re great, but
we don’t know if you’re any good.”
According to Cohen in interview foot-
age included in the fi lm, this line was
spoken to him by Walter Yetnikoff , the
president of Columbia Records from
1975-1990. It was Yetnikoff who refused
to put out the 1984 album “Various
Positions” that included “Hallelujah” in
the United States.

Yetnikoff didn’t like the mix, Cohen
said in additional interview footage, and
was convinced it wouldn’t sell. Before
“Various Positions,” the singer-song-
writer released fi ve albums through
Columbia Records. Yet the one that
would include his greatest song was not
even good enough to release.

Th e song and album, of course, came
out in the United Kingdom, Canada and
several other countries before becoming
iconic in the U.S., too. But it was the
type of classic that, through its many
lives and recreations, from Jeff Buckley’s
1994 cover to its inclusion in the 2001 hit
movie “Shrek” to Alexandra Burke’s UK
chart-topping rendition from the reality
show “Th e X Factor” in 2008, transcended
a single album release and radio cycle.

Th is was true of Cohen, too. He never
had an album reach No. 1 on the U.S.

charts. He never won a Grammy Award
until his lifetime achievement honor in
2010. He may not have been any good,
but he was great.

“It evokes some of the most primitive
human desires, and it marries it with a
concept that so many of us struggle with,
which is spirituality.”
Brandi Carlile, the critically-acclaimed
singer-songwriter, is one of the best inter-
viewees in this fi lm. About 75 minutes
in, she explains why Buckley’s cover of
“Hallelujah” gets to her when she sums it
up with the quote above.

Earlier in the documentary, another
interviewee says a review he was read-
ing described Cohen’s career as “pulled
between holiness and horniness.” Pulled
between the spiritual and the primitive,
in other words.

His lyrics in “Hallelujah,” which dig
into both the transcendent desire for
spirituality and the primitive desire for
human connection, connect these two
desires more than any of his other songs,
and perhaps more than any song. And
in their unifi cation, as Cohen, Buckley
and so many others sing, we can only say
Hallelujah. “You’re getting things that are so deep
and so resonant in your own spiritual
journey that you are benefi ting from his.

And that’s of course the highest compli-
ment to a poet or a songwriter.”
Another good interviewee is Judy
Collins, the singer-songwriter whose
career spans more than half a century.

Collins knew Cohen in the 1960s before
he was a singer — back when he was a
poet. She recorded her version of a song
Cohen wrote on one of her early albums.

In the line above, Collins explains
why Cohen was able to marry the
primitive and the spiritual. He was, to
Leonard Cohen performing later in life.

Courtesy of Leonard Cohen Family Trust
put it simply, a poet.

Cohen published four poetry col-
lections and two novels between 1956
and 1966, before his fi rst album, “Songs
of Leonard Cohen,” came out in 1967.

While you can’t really answer the ques-
tion of why poets and prose writers write,
as there’s a certain inherent value and
beauty to creation, Collins’ quote above
gets about as close as you can to doing so.

But really, as Collins herself was allud-
ing to, the answer was in “Hallelujah”
itself. It’s a song that, for a reason that’s
hard to express, gets people to stand and
cheer and feel, in place aft er place, decade
aft er decade, from singer aft er singer.

Th e man who created that is well worth
two hours of your time. JE
jsaff ren@midatlanticmedia.com
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