good morning and welcome. i'm honored to be your host. our faith communities across the country spent a lot of time talking about how to communicate its history and values to its community to the next generation. one of the ways in which faith communities have done this is with writing and reading. we would like to invite you to a conversation with two authors. one is a children's author and another in academic.

we are going to talk with a professor in a moment. in the meantime,ndraed er who is a children's author who wrote a wonderful new book. this is where fourth children's book. >> my fifth actually. >> this is called bitter and sweet. let's jump in and tell us a little about what bitter and sweet is. >> thank you i'm delighted to be here. bitter and sweet is a children's picture book. it's t oulia new town. at first, hannah can only see the bitter in this move. she feels the loss of her friends and her home which she loved. all of the little things about the life that the child would notice. she eventually does learn to find the sweet in her new situation. the point of the story is about more than just a ve. it's about change. i think it's important for us as adults to help kids learn

some resiliency around change. as we know change happens whether we want it or not. >> i think we live in a world even if you stay in the same place, for example, the san francisco bay area that transition is all around us. whether the transition to a new school or transition to a new neighborhood or transition to a new peer group, there is a lot of issues could stimulated atand parents struggle ways to understand resilience. i'm wondering how in bitter and sweet you is a children's author conjugate those bigger issues down to the language of a child. >> that's a good question. i think you're right, changes all around us and particularly for kids this time of year when

we are going to longer days, darker days, school has just started. change can be not just a move or a new school but a new teacher each year or a new team to be a part of. change is definitely all around. in bitter and sweet i try to focus on that on what a child would focus. i talk about her noticing her art coming down from the classroom walls. her noticing that the house that she used to have and could ride her bike happily on the street enter new houses on the hill. those little details as adults we might not think of the big parts of a move to a child can be imported. the way i try to help hannah feel better and learn some resiliency around this is the first time she starts to feel comfortable in her new surroundings is at shabbat. i think shabbata time for all of us where you get to pause

and relax your shoulders and is a very sensory part of our week where there is sweet want to taste and hollow to smell. it's also helps kids adapt to change and help continue to ritual whether from a jewish family or what would in the child make them feel comfortable. >> i wondered how you think about the ways in which you articulate something universal like adapting to change and things that are particulars about how you use your own faith tradition in this case, the end of the workweek and the jewish context of shabbat. how do you think weaving particular but i think we struggle when we face life's challenges. >> absolutely. as i mentioned, i think so many traditions have these dutiful

rituals and things about them that can help anchor children. i do think that i anchored this story in a jewish family and a jewish tradition. one of the other elements of the story is that hannah reaches out to her grandmother she finds out she has to move. the grandmother shares with her not just to a new town but a new country. she shares her immigrant story. i think in this country we are a country of immigrants. there are so many stories about people coming in adapting and finding their way in a new land in town and community. i think there is a lot that is general about the story not just particular to the jewish faith. i also implemented the way she goes about her situation is when a new friend reaches out. i think that is something that can happen with anyone.

>> we are going to take a quick break and return to children's author sandra feeder in a moment.

good morning and welcome back. i'm honored to be your host. we are in the middle of a wonderful conversation with children's author, sandra feeder about her latest book

called bitter and sweet. bitter and sweet is about a young girl named hannah who moves because her father gets a new job and she is going through the transition of a new home and neighborhood in new school. the title bitter into sweet gets woven into the story throughout the story and has a very lovely ending. into how that evolves so of that anybody who is listening even be that much more enticed to buy the book. >> thank you. in the story and sweet, it reveals how hannah feels about moving. she does learn to find the sweet and the way she finds the sweet is a friend gives her a gift of hot cocoa. at first she does not realize that she needs to add sugar to the cooker so the cocoa turns out bitter. it reinforces her feelings. she figures out she needs to add some sweet to it. it is really what she figures out that what she needs is not

just the cocoa but the friendship. the gift from her friend maia makes a big difference. she reaches out a hand to hannah and it's one hannah realizes that she needs to reach back out to maia to feel connected that she really finds the sweet in her new situation. i think that is really true for all people when you are new to a situation. in a community have a friend reaching out is so important. it's when you invest something of yourself back into the situation that becomes that much sweeter. >> in some was 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. >> absolutely. i think that is a huge part of resilience. i think building resiliency with children is also just getting to recognize their past experiences and what they've learned, able to put in and get back from the situations and how to apply that into the future. >> we started out talking about

how faith communities try to talk about their own history and values to build resilience and identity in the next generation. here it is you have a children's book that pushes into that landscape. i'm wondering in a big way, what do you have the book will do in that arena? >> i think all of our faith traditions and family histories have so much to teach our children. if we are trying to help them understand that life is full of change some of which we control and some of which we don't, helping them understand they are part of the longer narrative and traditions of their families and faith traditions can really be a wonderful foundation for them. i think that is hugely important whatever that tradition may be. >> if somebody would like to buy bitter and sweet how do they buy the book? >> i liked to support indy bound which supports independent booksellers. you can also check out my own website.

there are lots of links there as well. >> sandra, believe it or not we have come to say goodbye to this conversation. thank you so much for being here. we encourage you to please go to your website or your independent book site and by this book. thank you so much. in one moment we will melt -- welcome a professor. >> see on page four that...

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good morning and welcome back to mosaic. we are about to introduce you to professor mark dollinger who is a history professor at san francisco state university. welcome. >> good morning you wrote blac

alliance of 1960s. that is a potent title. let's a jump in as an academic you have a lot of freedom to choose what you write about and the content that you put into something. let's start from the beginning and ask you how did you arrive to this particular topic? >> it's a somewhat embarrassing story. from my very first week at cal berkeley as a freshman i was raised in los angeles the suburbs of the 1970s. there i learned about jewish social justice what we now call to repair and heal the world. we learned about dr. king and the civil rights movement. i was so excited to arrive at berkeley. my first stop was the table for the jewish student union. all jewish kids were supposed to do. the second stop was the black

student union table. i walked up and introduced myself and i said let's start a black jewish dialogue. my african-american colleague burst out laughing. he kept laughing until he saw the horrified look on my face and realizing that i did not quite get with the picture. i guess to sort of calm the moment he said, i'm from harlem. when he said that i understood literally that harlem with an african market neighborhood in manhattan but i also understood that that was a much deeper statement to me. his upbringing in my upbringing and certainly his look at african market history in my look at it would be fundamentally different. as i wrote to open the book, that was the moment that started this project. this is my answer to that conversation with him. >> so where did that

conversation go? i don't culminated in this book that we folks to buy into read and contemplate how to that conversation continue? >> i joke because that was the end of the dog -- dialogue. i decided what i to do was educate myself. at beredkeley nei took a lot o black studies class in african market history classes. i began looking at american jewish history into my graduate work. i have been animated by the intersection of jewishness americanness and race. this book is my biggest focused attempt to get some really big questions through a very specific moment. >> each community, the black community and jewish community in the u.s. have a lot of parallel use of faith tradition. a parallel use of using faith tradition to advance their own

respective communities causes. and also in the context each interest in what we might think of as intersecting other communities. that is a big topic i know.thin given a lot of thought. it goes to the content of the book. i wonder if you could talk about the content of the book. >> this is where it gets tricky. what you just offered was a good and accurate depiction of the way in which we tend to understand the relationship between faith-based traditions and social justice. certainlygrtest example we have from the civil rights movement was a hero. when i define a hero is someone who is willing to risk their own power and their own privilege to benefit the ot th case it would have been the african- americans in the south. sadly as i did research i

discovered that even as we have a few genuine heroes between the faith and here was him was inverted. that was to say looking at the civil rights movement those for whom the traditional understanding of judicial all -- jewish law or the least involve injustice work. in terms of african american racial and inequality. it is more liberal and had a little more of the reform movement was actually the least observant and the most engaged. to be honest, it was the jewish alcultist and economist and onur. for me as an academic, i found it fascinating to be raised in a tradition where i understood that my faith is what informed it yet when i looked at the evidence it turned out to be more complicated. >> i think that part of the

complication is that our jewish community of late is coming to reflect on our history as immigrants. we came from a place by and large in which prejudice was based on religion and ethnicity to a place where president -- prejudice was based on skin color. in some ways we were able to succeed because we got to in our own minds, pass as white. in the culture we were white. and issue that we are dealing with the jewish community is how do understand our whiteness which in some ways feels a little out of sync with how we identity. it is part of the american jewish identity. i'm wondering where you are in that thought and then we will take a quick break. >> this is one of the most complex questions and it's animating most of my work now.

one reason i love the discipline of jewish studies is the question of and racial definition. whiteness is what we call social construction. beeot there are imes where times which are white . most scholars have concluded that by 19 60s american became white. which of the story of social justice becomesa place of whiteness and power and privilege. even as so many jewish do not define themselves as white. because they point out rightfully that there is anti- semitism and sadly it's been spiking in recent times. >> we are going to take a quick break and return to this conversation.

good morning and welcome back. we are in the middle of a wonderful conversation with professor mark dollinger who occupies the jewish studies at san francisco state university. let's talk about the core thesis of the book. >> there are three parts of the book. it evolved backwards. i was really interested in how american became more ethnic in

their judaism in the late 60s and in the 1970s. the soviet jewry movement picked up in the mid 60s when it should've came in the mid- 1950s.rediscovered their faith in the religiosity and the became kosher and more traditional even who turned to the far right did it at this moment. the more i looked at it the more i realized they were emulating a mottled created by the black power movement. in fact, black nationalist and young generation of african- americans proclaimed it was okay to be public with your identity and i was interested to see that actually followed that model more than they actually authentically created something jewish. from that, i worked backwards to the mid-1960s when black jewish alliance of the dr. king years was put up. i was raised that that was a horrible and te anit was a

disappointmentt the alliance dissolved. i then read the primary sources and was covered that jewish leadership saw it coming and understood it in appreciated it. the discounted the impact of black anti-semitism because they understood thatwere white and privileged and enjoying middle-class status. for fun and to push the thesis i moved back into the 1950s. to see how much of what happened in the 60s and 70s, 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 jewish and what it meant to be african- american and they were predicting not only a nice interfaith alliance but that it there is no way this alliance could survive given the different american experiences. >> when you say, they with any

jewish leadership context, who were that they seeing and thinking and writing? >> that's an excellent question. i elected to study leaders of national jewish organizations and the regional offices. for this reason, they are mostly men, mostly white, mostly middle-aged. there is pro and cons to doing this. the pros are that the our jewish leaders claiming to act in their jewishness on what they were doing. i wanted to see what someone claiming jewishness was claiming. the challenging part for historians was that most of the involved in the movement were not actively identified with jewish organizations. someone deny that jewishness had anything to do with it. i wanted to focus on them. >> i think every historian classically looks to the future and i'm wondering given all of this, all of what's in our world at large, but the

difference is, bay area in the u.s. and beyond, what is our jewish black future? if that is a way to even ask the question. >> i have to say i am a historian it's tough enough to predict the past. the book is about historical memory. it's about the way we elected to remember a history that was actually quite different. in the epilogue, i try to critique myself to say what have i failed this book in looking to the future what can we do. to meet square, of color. we have an increasing population of of color and to read a book about the black jewish alliance, and relationship when one is both black and jewish. it complicates our enti i think the next generation is actually two critically examined how much jewishness and judaism is actuallycode

for whiteness and privilege. the extent to which it's actually coming from the faith tradition. i think here we have to look to our brethren anthe of color community to guide us . >> fascinating how does someone actually bite your book? >> the regular press and websites. >> are you in the middle of a book tour? >> yes, i'm in the middle of a big tour across the country. on my website we will have the details. >> wonderful. certainly your classes at san francisco. >> yes. >> that's fascinating. we are going to stop in a moment and say goodbye but i'm 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? >> excellent question. the first two words of the book are black power. it is not about black power it's about jewish politics. i'm using the frame of the black power movement in order to get into an understanding of what is jewish and what is american and how it is that american are culture rating to this culture. for scholars they will have their own questions. >> thank you so much. we hope you have enjoyed this morning the together on a conversation about resilience. please buy books from sandra feeder and mark dollinger. thank you for being with us. >>ã

the government shutdown. but democrats say no deal.. plus- a rare show in the sky tonight: it's a super blood wolf moon lunar eclipse.. now on k mis news president trump has a path to end down the government shutdown. and tonight a rare solar eclipse. >> king tides bringing about dangerousous swells. >> good morning and thank you

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