Professor Brett Kaplan Co-Edits Black, Jewish, and Beautiful

September 23, 2026

Black, Jewish, and Beautiful: Contemporary Blewish Voices, published by Syracuse University Press, brings together powerful perspectives and showcases the vastly divergent ways people come to inhabit a shared Blewish, or Black Jewish identity. These voices demonstrate that Black Jewishness is just one dimension of their multifaceted lives as they explore how they feel, think, and make sense of who they are.

Anthony Mordechai Tzvi Russell, Sara Feldman, and Brett Ashley Kaplan bring together an array of oral histories, essays, and interviews of Black Jews by birth, others who converted, and those who were raised one way only to discover later that their identity was not what they had thought. The result is a collection of myriad narratives, told through rocky, sometimes-frayed structures. Contributors are open and frank in their discussion of the good, the bad, and the ugly, the heart wrenching, and the beautiful in their experiences.