♪ good morning. welcome to mosaic. our faith communities across the country spend a lot of time talking about how to communicate history and values to the community to the next generation. one of the reasons -- ways that they've done that is through writing and reading. i would like to invite you into a conversation with two authors. going to speak with professor mark dollinger. i would like to introduce you to a children's author who has written a wonderful new book. this is the

4th quarter -- children's book. >> was tell me a little bit about what bitter and sweet is. >> i'm delighted to be here with you. bitter and sweet is a children's picture book. it is about a little girl named hannah whose family moves to a new town. at first, and i can only see the bitter. she feels the loss of her friends and her home, which she loved. and a lot of things about the life that the child would notice. eventually, she learns to find the sweet in her situation. for me it is about more than just a move. it is about change. i think it is important for us, as adults, to help kids learn really zillions a -- resiliency about change.

change happens whether we wanted to or not. >> i think we live in a world, even if you stay in the same place, for example, in the san francisco bay area, the transition is all around us. whether it is a transition to a new school or a transition to a new neighborhood or a transition to a near -- new peer group, there's a lot of issues that get stimulated and parents struggle with ways to articulate it, as you just said, ways to understand resilience in behalf -- and reaction behave. was wondering how is a children's author, you kind of conjugate those bigger issues down to the language of a child? >> that is a really good question. personal, you are right. changes all around us. particularly for kids this time of year when we're going to longer days. darker days. the school is just starting just not too long ago for kids. change can be not just a new school, but a new teacher each

year. right new team to be part of. changes definitely around us. in bitter and sweet, i tried to focus on this. a talk about her noticing her arch coming down from the classroom walls. from her noticing that the house that she used to have, she could ride her bike. and her new houses on the hill. as adults, we might not think that these are the big parts of the move, to a child could be very important. the way try to help her feel better and learn some resiliency around this is the first time she starts to feel comfortable in her new surroundings is at shabbat. and i think the shabbat is for all of us where we get to pause and alexa shoulders a little bit. there is sweet wine to taste and there is challah to smell.

i think helping kids adapt to changes about continuing the rituals, whether it is from a jewish family or other cultures, it is part of what would anchor the child to make them feel comfortable. >> and wondered how you think about the ways in which you articulate something universal like adapting to change the things particularly about how you use your own fate tradition , in this case, the end of the work week in the jewish context of the sabbath, or the shabbat. how is it particular to the universal? i think we struggle with that when we face life's challenges. >> i think so many traditions have these beautiful rituals and things about them that can help anchor children. i do think that i anchored this story any jewish family and a jewish tradition. one of the other limits of the

stories that she reaches out to her grandmother when she finds out she has to move and the grandmother shares with her granddaughter that she moved, not just to a new town, but to a new country. she shares her immigrant story. in this country, we are a country of immigrants, so there are so many stories about people coming and adapting and finding their way in a new land and in the new town and in a new community. i think there is a lot that is general about the story, not just particular to the jewish faith. the other way that have a starts to feel better about her situation is when a friend reaches out. that is something that can happen with everyone. >> we're going to take a quick rate of return to nt.

welcome back to mosaic, i am rabbi eric weiss . welcome back. we are having a conversation with a children's author, sandra feder about her book "bitter and sweet", which is about a young girl named hannah who moves because her father gets a new job and she goes through a transition of a new home and a new neighborhood and a new school. the title "bitter and sweet"

gets woven into the story throughout the story and has a very lovely ending. i was wondering if you could give a little bit of a peek into how that involves so that anybody who is listening can be that much more enticed to go out and purchase the book. >> thank you. in the story, "bitter and sweet" refers to how she sees about moving. she sees the hardest parts of the move, but then she is able to find the sweet. at first he does not realize that she needs to add sugar, so at the beginning it is better. she figures out that she needs to add some sweet to a. she figures out the what she needs is not the cocoa, but the friendship and the gift from her friend, which makes a big difference. she reaches out a hand and it is when hannah realizes she needs to reach back out to feel connected that she really

finds the sweet in her new situation. i think that is true for all people when you are new in a situation. having a friend reach out is so important and it is when you invest something of yourself back in the situation that it becomes that much sweeter. >> are you suggesting that resilience has a lot to do with how you understand your own use of self and relationship and the ways in which you receive and give? >> absolute. i think that is a huge part of resilience. and i think resiliency with children is getting them to recognize that their past -- their past experiences and how to apply what they've learned in the future. >> we started out talking about how faith communities try to talk about their own history and values to build resilience and identity into the next generation. here to see you have a children's book that is pushing into that landscape.

i wondg, in a big hope that the book will do in that arena? >> i think all of our faith traditions, all of our family histories, have so much to teach our children. if we're trying to help them understand that life is full of change, some of which you control and some of which you do not, helping them understand that they are part of a longer narrative and that the traditions of their family and their faith traditions can really be a wonderful foundation for them. i think that is hugely important, no matter what the tradition may be. >> if someone would like to purchase "bitter and sweet", how would they do that? >> i like to support indie bound, but it is also available in lots of different bookstores. >> believe it or not, we have come to say goodbye to this conversation.llpurcha "bitter

and sweet" by sandra feder. in one minute, we will welcome professor mark dollinger. [ cell phone rings ]

>> yeah, i'm watching it too. i see them every day. >> the curtains, they're always drawn in this place. >> i know. >> that guy, it seems like he's in charge of them. i don't know, i don't feel very good about this. >> we have to report this. >> yes, absolutely.

a good morning. i am rabbi eric weiss and we are about to introduce you to professor marc dollinger . he is a history professor at san francisco state university. you wrote a wonderful book called black power, jewish politics. that is a potent title. let's jump in. as an academic, you have a lot of freedom to choose what you

write about. how did you arrive to this particular topic? >> it is a somewhat embarrassing story. from my very first week as a freshman, i was raised in los angeles in the suburbs of the 1970s. i learned about jewish social justice. and we learned about doctor king and the civil rights movement in the march from selma. i was so excited to arrive at berkeley that my first stop was the hillel table. like all good jewish students are supposed to do. and then i went to the black student union table and i signed up and i said let's start a black-jewish dialogue. and then my colleague was laughing until they saw the

horrified look on my face realizing that i did not quite get the picture. and i guess, to calm the moment, he said, i am from harlem. and when he said that, i understood literally that harlem was an african-american neighborhood in manhattan, but i also understood that it was a much deeper statement that he was making to me. that his upbringing and my upbringing, and certainly his look at african-american history and my looking at it would be fundamentally different. as i went to open the book, that was actually the moment it started that particular project. this is my answer to that conversation with him. >> where did that conversation go? i know that culminated in a marvelous book that we want folks to purchase and that conv continue? >> i joke because that was the end of the dialogue at uc berkeley in at i needed to

do was educate myself. at berkeley and took a lot of african-american history classes and started looking at american jewish history, ultimately, and did graduate work in jews and social justice . i've been fascinated by the disposition of jewishness, social justice, and race. >> in each community, the black community and the jewish community in the u.s. have a lot of parallel use of faith tradition and a parallel use of using faith tradition to advance their own respective communities causes and within the context, each interest in what we might think of intersecting other communities. that is a big topic, i know, but i know that it is something

that you've given a lot of thoughts about. the ghost of the content of the book. is wondering if you could talk a little bit about the content of the book. >> this is where it gets tricky. what you just offered was a very good and accurate depiction of how we understand the connection between faith- based traditions and social justice. the greatest example we have from the civil rights movement was with a hero. and i defined a hero is someone who is willing to risk their own power and privilege to benefit the other. in this case, it would be african-americans in the south. sadly, as i do the research, i discovered that, even as we have a few genuine heroes, the connection between the faith tradition and activism were inverted. which is to say, look at the civil rights movement, those for whom traditional understandings of jewish law are most applicable, the

orthodox community, where the least involved in justice work outside of the jewish community in terms of african-american racial inequality. the conservative movement, which is more liberal, had a little bit more. the reform movement was the least observant and the most engaged, but to be honest, it was the jewish socialist and communist and secular jews and cultural jews who were most out there. as an epidemic -- academic, it was was interesting that my faith informed it, but when i looked at the evidence, turned out to be much more complicated. >> i think the complication is something like to talk about. our jewish community is coming to reflect on our history as immigrants. we came from a place, by and large, which prejudice was based on religion and ethnicity, to a place where it was based on skin color.

in some ways, we were able to assimilate and succeed because we got to, in our own minds, pass as white, though even though in the culture, were not white. how did youse understand our whiteness, which feels a little out of sync with how we internalize, but it is part of the american jewish identity. i am wondering where you are in that thought. that i want to take a quick break. not to be on the spot. >> this is one of the most complex questions and it is animating most of my work now. one reason i love the discipline of jewish studies is the question of jews and racial definition. whiteness is what we call socially constructed. there have been times in history where jews have not been considered white, even in terms of the skin color. and then there are times when

jews are definitely white. scholars have determined that by 1960, american jews became white and much of the story of social justice comes from a place of whiteness and power and privilege even as so many jews, at least generationally, do not define themselves as white as the point out, rightfully, that there is anti- semitism and sadly, it has been spiking in recent times. >> we're going to take a quick break and return to this question. professor marc dollinger.

good morning and welcome back it to mosaic. we're in the middle of a wonderful conversation with professor marc dollinger, who occupies the goldman chair at the department of jewish studies at san francisco state. welcome back. let's talk about the core thesis of the book. >> the three parts to the book and it evolved backwards. i was really interested in how american jews became more ethnic in their judaism in the late 60s and 1970s. the soviet jewry movement picked up. jews rediscover their faith.

they became kosher and more traditional. even jews who turned to the far right did it at this moment. the more i looked at it, the more i realize that they were emulating a model created by the black power movement. black nationalists and forget americans proclaimed that it was okay to be public with your identity. i was interested to see that jews followed that model more than they authentically created something jewish. from that, i worked backwards to the mid-1960s, when the black jewish alliance of the dr. king years split up. i was raised believing that that was a horrible terrible time of discord and it was at this appointment that it dissolved and that i read the primary sources and found that jewish leadership saw it coming and understood it and appreciated it. the discounted the impact of

black anti-semitism because he understood that jews were white and privilege and a joint middle-class status. just push the thesis, move back into the 1950s to see how much of what happened in the 1960s and 1970s that the jewish leadership was aware of even before. i found out 10 years before, even 50 years before, they understood fundamental differences between what it meant to be white and a jewish and what it meant to be african- american. they were predicting, not only a nice interfaith alliance, but that it would have to split up. there is no way that this alliance could survive, given the different american experiences between the groups. >> when you say they within a jewish leadership context, who were they talking about? >> that's an excellent question. i elected to study leaders of national jewish organizations and the regional offices.

they are mostly men, they are mostly white, they are mostly middle-aged. there are pros and cons to doing that. the pro is that these are jewish leaders proclaiming to act in their jewishness. i wanted to see what someone who is claiming jewishness would say. the challenging part for historians is that most of the jews involved in the movement did not identify as jewish. >> i think that every historian classically looks to the future. i am wondering, given all of this and all of what is in our world at large, both in the san francisco bay area, the united states, and beyond, what is our jewish, black, future? >> have to say that i am a

historian . it is tough enough to predict the past, but the book is about historical memory. it is about the way that we have elected to remember a history that was actually quite different. in the epilogue, i sort of try to critique myself and ask how did i fail in this group. and actually would be jews of color. with an increasing population of jews of color. we have people who are black and a jewish, it complicates things. we need to critically examine how much jewishness and judaism is actually code for whiteness and privilege and the extent to which it is actually coming from the faith tradition. i think we have to look to our jews of color community to guide us. >> fascinating. how does someone purchase your book? >> brandeis university press

and their website, and also locally at alfie kohn in the east bay. >> are in the middle of the book tour? >> i'm in the middle of a book tour across the country right now. i website will have the details. >> so wonderful. and your classes at san francisco state. that is fascinating. we will stop in just a moment and say goodbye, but i am wondering if you can reflect on a particular piece of this, which is that is the narrative that you wrote a jewish narrative? i wonder to what degree african- american history classes would have even the same understanding or not. >> this is an excellent question. the first words of the book are black power, but it is not about black power. despite jewish politics. i'm using the frame of the black power movement to get

into an understanding of what is jewish and what is american and how it is that american jews are in cold trading to this culture. they will have their questions. >> thank you so much. we hope that you have enjoyed this morning together in this conversation about resilience. please purchase books from sandra feder and professor marc dollinger. thank you for joining us.

live from the cbs bay area studios, this is kpix 5 news. we have got to end that hatred. the bigotry that is sweeping this country. >> vermont senator bernie sanders making an emotional plea at an oakland rally. this after a man shouting anti- semitic slurs opens fire on a synagogue in pennsylvania. an apology from twitter about how they handled a threat from the suspected package bomber. and two women in the hospital after san francisco balcony fell under them. we will start off with a quick check of the weather to get you out the door this morning. it's a fog and low clouds. there is reduced