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Black and White and Jews All Over

Date:
-
Location:
Hilary J. Boone Center
Speaker(s) / Presenter(s):
Miriam Libicki

Operation Solomon, when Israel airlifted nearly the entire population of Ethiopian Jews into Israel over two days in 1991, is called a "miracle" and one of Israel's proudest moments. But twenty years later, Ethiopian-Israelis occupy a significantly lower social and economic position than the average Jewish Israeli. They regularly face discrimination in employment, housing, and religion (the Israeli government recognizes Ethiopian Jews as Jews, but does not recognize their religious practices as "Judaism").

Miriam Libicki explores why this came about, and how American Jews-- who have a fraught history with "blackness," but largely financed the airlift, and many social-welfare organizations for Ethiopian-Israelis to this day-- are intimately bound up in the situation. Libicki, a "graphic essayist," uses photos, cartoons, interviews, memoir, irreverent humor, and historical research as rhetoric. This talk constructs an overarching theory of the intersections of Jewishness and Blackness, and a moral course forward.

BIO:
Miriam Libicki is a graphic novelist living in Vancouver, Canada. Her short comics have been published by Alternate History Comics, Rutgers University Press, and the Journal of Jewish Identities, and her 2008 Israeli Army memoir “jobnik!” has been used in over a dozen university courses. Her book of drawn essays, TOWARD A HOT JEW was published fall 2016 by Fantagraphics.