Between the Local and the Global: Blackness, Race and Ethnicity in Contemporary Israel
Between the Local and the Global: Blackness, Race and Ethnicity in Contemporary Israel
The debate surrounding Blackness, race, and ethnicity in Israel is overwhelmingly influenced by American discourses and histories, but it still lacks the same degree of intensity. In Israel, the concept of racism is largely associated with the memory of the Holocaust and makes discussions about its relevance to today's Israeli Jewish society highly controversial. Yet, concepts such as whiteness and blackness have been evident in the history of early Zionism in the late nineteenth century, Israel’s approach to the immigration of Ethiopian Jews in the early 1990s, or in the country’s policies toward African refugees and work immigrants in the 2010s. In this talk, prominent activist, writer, poet, and cultural entrepreneur, Efrat Yerday, will ask questions about the fluidity of blackness and whiteness in the Israeli context, especially within the Israeli Jewish community, which reflects diverse as well as conflicting histories and legacies that revolve around race and ethnicity.
Efrat Yerday is an artist-researcher, poet, writer, activist, and cultural entrepreneur who leverages the capacity of art to forge dialogue and social change. Yerday has performed her poetry for public and television audiences and is a prolific editor and translator who has led and initiated poetry workshops for young writers and teachers. In addition to her leadership in the arts, Yerday is a Ph.D. candidate in Sociology at Tel Aviv University, serves as chairwoman of the Association for Ethiopian Jews, and is a recipient of the “Guardian of Democracy” Gallanter Prize (2020) for her leadership and activism.
This talk is co-sponsored by the Department of African American Studies and will be moderated by George Kintiba. Kintiba is a Lecturer and a Coordinator of a Certificate in African Studies in the African American Studies Department at the University of Maryland, College Park.