In the 1970s and ’80s, Hymie and Freda Soroko enjoyed free security for their grocery store, one of several Jewish-owned businesses on Norfolk’s Church Street. Their protectors: The Black Panthers, who had an office a few doors down.
Wearing dark sunglasses and black pants, “They would always be standing outside their door,” recalled Norman Soroko, the owners’ son. When Hymie closed the store at 7:30, “they would stand right by the truck until my father locked the door and got in.”
It wasn’t just the Panthers. Soroko, now president of Temple Israel in Norfolk and the Jewish Museum and Cultural Center in Portsmouth, recalled Black customers filling six rows at his father’s funeral. “It was a mutual love. They looked out for my parents, and my parents looked out for them.”
Billy McKinney, a former employee who became a supervisor for the city of Norfolk, said of the Sorokos: “If you needed anything, they would try to help you out.”
A new PBS documentary released this week examines the complex relationship between Blacks and Jews. “Black and Jewish America: An Interwoven History,” hosted by Henry Louis Gates Jr., airs on WHRO-TV at 9 p.m. Tuesdays through Feb. 24. The first episode can be streamed on the WHRO+ app.
In Hampton Roads, “that relationship was real,” said Norfolk Mayor Kenneth Cooper Alexander, who is Black.
“I saw how the Jewish community interacted with my family” in the Berkley neighborhood, Alexander said. “No one can ever point to an incident in Berkley that came out of race or anti-Semitism.”
But today, “the conversation is not as robust as it once was,” he said. “I don’t think it’s lost. I think it’s just quiet.”
Before Southern Jews were allies, they were slaveholders.
“There didn’t seem to be any difference between white society involvement with the slave trade and Jewish society involvement,” said Cassandra Newby-Alexander, a Norfolk State University history professor. Moses Myers, Norfolk’s first Jewish resident, owned slaves and processed their shipment.
Many Southern Jews also supported the Confederacy, with about 2,000 serving in the military, Shari Rabin, chair of Jewish studies at Oberlin College in Ohio, wrote in her book “The Jewish South.” Likewise, in the mid-20th century, “most rabbis and communal leaders were too fearful of angering or endangering their constituents to make a public stand” for integration, Rabin said.
But that wasn’t the case at Ohef Sholom Temple in Norfolk. At a meeting at the synagogue in 1945, Black activist Vivian Carter Mason launched the Women’s Council for Interracial Cooperation, which sought to remedy unequal treatment.
“Some of the leading members were Jewish women,” Newby-Alexander said. “These women were powerful and outspoken in their own right, and they began to pressure their husbands.”
In 1951, the synagogue’s rabbi, Malcolm Stern, organized an interracial service with a mixed choir. He and Rabbi Joseph Goldman of Temple Israel publicly opposed Massive Resistance, which in 1958 shut six of Norfolk's public schools to avoid integrating them.
Nationwide, Jews and Blacks also built strong alliances. W.E.B. DuBois, a leading Black intellectual figure in the early 20th century, and Joel Spingarn, a Jewish educator, co-founded the NAACP. Booker T. Washington, another prominent Black thinker, and Jewish philanthropist Julius Rosenwald collaborated to build 5,000 schools for Black students in the South.
During the Civil Rights Movement of the ’60s, that spirit of partnership was captured in the image of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel marching with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma in 1965. Since then, “Some really strong and deep partnerships have been created and fostered between the African-American and Jewish populations in Hampton Roads,” said Jonathan Zur, president and CEO of the Virginia Center for Inclusive Communities.
One was Operation Understanding Hampton Roads, which took Black and Jewish teens to sites including Ellis Island in New York and Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. “We wanted them to go out and be advocates for diversity, and many of them did,” said Lois Einhorn, who led the program with her late husband, Barry.
“It definitely played a role in who I am,” said Danny Rubin, who is Jewish. He attended Operation Understanding in 2001-02. His Virginia Beach-based company, Rubin, provides online resources to school systems to prepare teens for the work world. “I’m helping people, especially disadvantaged people, gain skills to promote and present themselves so they can pursue opportunities.”
Wesley Newsome, Rubin’s friend since preschool, also graduated in 2002. He’s Black. The visit to New York made him realize that “some of their ancestors experienced some of the same horrific moments,” said Newsome, a real estate processor in Jamestown, N.C. “It opened my eyes and showed that if you take a moment and see beyond the surface of people, you see more similarities than differences.”
Operation Understanding ended in 2007. In 2016, the Rev. Antipas Harris, president and CEO of the Urban Renewal Center, and Jeffrey Arnowitz, then-rabbi of Congregation Beth El, launched Hands United Building Bridges, bringing together religious leaders “to learn about each other’s faith.” That led to Harris speaking at Beth El about Kristallnacht, the Nazis’ rampage against Jews in 1938. That coalition also disbanded, but Harris hopes to revive it with the United Jewish Federation of Tidewater to focus on safety at houses of worship.
Harris and Alexander were among nine Black leaders who signed a letter condemning anti-Semitic reactions after the 2023 Hamas attacks. But the wider response after the Israeli counterattacks in Gaza “revealed that the relationship locally between the Jewish and African-American communities was not as strong as it once was,” said Zur, with the Virginia Center for Inclusive Communities. “The conflation of American Jews with Israeli government policy has been misplaced, and that contributed to a further fraying.”
Gilbert T. Bland, president and CEO of the Urban League of Hampton Roads, offered a partial explanation for the disconnect: “The younger generation too often are informed by social media, which values outrage over discussion and learning lived history together.”
Citing King’s quote that “our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter,” Bland added: “It’s incumbent upon leaders such as myself to create those kinds of forums and further those kinds of conversations. Engagement grounded with dignity is the key.”
The communities, Harris said, must return to “sharing stories,” whether of the friendship between King and Heschel or the mutual pain of experiencing prejudice. “Everybody’s in our own silo, and when something blows up, nobody understands why.”
Retelling history is crucial but not sufficient, said Rabbi Michael E. Panitz, who leads Temple Israel. With the recent growth of the white supremacy movement, “Jews and Blacks share a common enemy, more so than at almost any time since before the Holocaust. Part of the conversation we should have is dwelling not on past alliances but on present shared dangers.”
