This January 18 marks the first celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day since the killing of George Floyd kindled a wave of mass demonstrations in cities and towns across the United States. The Black Lives Matter protests confronted Americans with painful evidence of the persistence and pervasiveness of racism in this country. Alongside the growing list of black victims of police brutality is the devastation of COVID-19, which has disproportionately affected people of color.

“This one hurts more,” my seventy-something congregant, a Philadelphia native, tells me as we observe  that the new cemetery monument to the three men killed in an attack at our Pittsburgh synagogue in October 2018 is in the direct sightline of one dedicated in 2012 to those lost in the Shoah.

The year 2020 has been a transformative one for American society, but what is America becoming? And what role do Jews play in the changes underway?

Even as the country struggles with a pandemic and massive unemployment, many Americans have at the same time been newly awakened to racial injustice and economic inequality. Much of the change now underway has been tragic; some of it is hopeful; and the combination may yet produce a very different America.

The idea that “America is different”—that American Jewish experience has been marked by success and progress in a way that was unprecedented, unexpected, and wildly impactful—is well entrenched. This year at the Katz Center, a diverse cohort of visiting research fellows is looking again at the American Jewish story, not necessarily to overturn a narrative but to reframe the question; in fact, to frame a new set of “America’s Jewish questions.”

Earlier in July Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver DeSean Jackson unleashed a firestorm of controversy when he posted a quote falsely attributed to Hitler that claimed that Blacks, and not Jews, were the real children of Israel. 

This week, design-minded types around Philadelphia are celebrating and exploring the city’s architecture, fashion, interior design, graphic arts, digital innovation, and more in the Design Philadelphia festival. Although the Katz Center is not officially participating, we are watching closely, since design plays a prominent role in our theme of “the Jewish home” this year.