From the archives: Honoring MLK through unity

This story was originally published in Newsday on January 20, 2002

Stephanie Bangura and Roslyn Wiener, a black woman and a Jewish woman, sat in the back of Temple Beth-El Synagogue in Great Neck Friday night, waiting their turn to take the stage.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton was scheduled to speak an hour later at the synagogue's annual Martin Luther King Jr. birthday commemoration, and they were both glad to have her.

But what really excited them was the gospel concert the two of them would perform in after Clinton's speech, something members of the choir looked forward to.

"Don't miss it - we're great," said Bobbie Rosenzweig, a fellow choir member who happened by. "We've been singing together for quite a few years now."

The black-Jewish gospel choir is just one of the fruits of a 15-year dialogue between the synagogue and the Mt. Olive Baptist Church in Manhasset - a dialogue designed to build closer relations between the black and Jewish communities.

Leaders of the two congregations formed the dialogue after becoming concerned that the amity that had blossomed between blacks and Jews during the civil-rights movement had become choked with the weeds of suspicion and bigotry.

In her speech, Clinton said that she hoped dialogues like these could be duplicated elsewhere "because it's as important and more important today than it was when Doctor King appeared here shortly before his death."

Members of the two congregations meet about once a month to get to know each other better and to talk about things that might threaten to poison relations between them.

"It wasn't enough just to pray together, we needed to get to know each other," said Rabbi Jerome Davidson, who established the inter-congregational dialogue along with Mt. Olive's pastor, the Rev. Edward Corley.

Sometimes, the topics have been uncomfortable ones. Jews have asked blacks to help them understand the appeal of Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan and other controversial black figures. Blacks have asked Jews to consider the Palestinian point of view with respect to poverty and violence in the Middle East.

At first, few congregants bothered to participate. But the idea caught on.

Members began inviting each other into their homes. Children went to summer camp together. Some members even went south to trace the steps of Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner and James Chaney - two Jews and a black - who were lynched in Mississippi in 1964 while doing civil-rights work.

The pastor's son, Michael Corley, 32, went on the trip when he was a teenager. As he traveled, he spent much of his time with Rabbi Davidson's son, Jeremy.

"We got to see that together and talk about it together as we rode the bus," Corley said. "They say the dot-com generation doesn't appreciate what happened for us, but this helped open my eyes. We are riding on the backs of those who went before us."