2023 Educational Trip:

ALLIANCE OF TRUST PARTNERS WITH STATE REPRESENTATIVES TO LAUNCH BLACK-JEWISH CAUCUS IN HARRISBURG

The trip, called ‘Civil Rights and Basketball: Perfect Together’, included components of both learning and leisure. The learning portion centered around visits to civil rights historical sites in Montgomery and Selma, Alabama, and the leisure portion centered on the campus of Auburn University and watching Auburn win an exciting basketball game over Mississippi State in the ‘jungle’ of Neville Arena. We were honored to be joined by Alabama State Representative Phil Ensler who attended the game with us, and Coach Bruce Pearl who joined us for lunch on Saturday. Please enjoy the pictures below. So what were some of the key ‘lessons learned’ and ‘takeaways’ from the trip? For me, as a proud and optimistic American, the enormity of the Civil War cannot be overstated. America went to war against itself, resulting in the deaths of 650,000 soldiers, and supposedly to correct an egregious wrong and an “end of slavery”. But it wasn’t the ‘end’, and I was shocked to hear the stories of the lynchings that took place from 1865 through the mid-1990s. It left me with a similar feeling to what I had 10 years ago when I went to Poland and visited the Auschwitz concentration camp—HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE? It is a sad fact that slavery, the Holocaust, and Jim Crow did exist, and hatred of Blacks and Jews continues to this day. Sometimes it is overt, and sometimes it is covert, systemic, and difficult to detect. The Alliance of Trust’ brings together Blacks and Jews to combat racism and antisemitism. We are at the beginning of an important journey, and I thank you for the interest you have shown in the Alliance to date. I will be in touch by phone or email in the coming days and weeks to learn more about your interests, needs, and priorities and see if there are areas of overlap.