Since the Hamas terrorist attacks against Israel on Oct. 7, many American Jews have taken some measure of comfort being in the company of family and friends who share our views and communal trauma.
But a new exhibition at the Meyerhoff Gallery of the Gordon Center for Performing Arts in Owings Mills asks us to put aside our feelings of grief, fear and hopelessness, if only for one evening, and embrace the possibility of creating connection, culture and community with those whose experiences may be different.
Opening on Thursday, Oct. 26, “Healing Bridges Across the Divide” is a visual and literary exhibition meant to inspire dialogue and discover commonality between Baltimore’s Jewish and African-American communities. At least that’s how Baltimore-based actress, artist and activist Rain Pryor views it.
A Jew of Color and daughter of the late comedy icon Richard Pryor and Shelly Bonus, a Jewish dancer-turned-astronomer, Rain Pryor is co-curator of the “Healing Bridges” exhibition.
“I definitely feel there is a need to bring the Black and Jewish communities together,” says Pryor, who first raised the possibility of the exhibition when she and Barak Hermann, CEO of the Jewish Community Center of Greater Baltimore, met during a Schusterman Fellowship retreat to Israel.
“There are still a lot of people that don’t recognize that Jews of Color exist in our culture and religious practice,” Pryor says.
She says she hopes recent events in the Middle East don’t keep people away from the opening.
“This should be an event where people are eager to come and have an experience, see the artwork, read the poetry and start building connection and healing,” Pryor says. “But I feel we’re at a time where people are afraid to cross the line. People are afraid to reach out to give an olive branch. People are afraid of understanding and communication.”
The exhibition, which will be on display in the Gordon Center lobby through Dec. 14, includes commissioned work by six poets and six artists –- white Jews, Jews of Color and non-Jewish African-Americans.
Artists included in the exhibition include Anson Asaka, Dominique Butler, Schroeder Cherry, Juston Orlando Fair, Valerie A. Smith and Jude Asher. Poets included are Michael S. Glaser, Jadi Z. Omowale, Jay Lee Ray, Slangton Hughes, Benjamin Shalva and A’niya Taylor.
Pryor curated “Healing Bridges” with her former mother-in-law, noted Baltimore artist and poet Lenett Partlow-Myrick (aka, Mama Nef). The exhibition was co-produced by Dr. Harriette Wimms, a local psychologist and Jews of Color Engagement fellow at The Associated: Jewish Federation of Baltimore, and JCC Chief Arts Officer Sara Shalva.
“The exhibit is about Jewish identity and non-Jewish African American identity, and how interdisciplinary art can be a catalyst for conversations,” says Shalva. “We asked [the artists and poets] to create art that inspired them and was symbolic of complicated intersectional identities, and maybe a bit of a love letter to Baltimore.”
Shalva says that exhibitions such as “Healing Bridges” are part of the mission of the JCC and the Gordon Center to combat antisemitism and intolerance.
“The JCC and the Gordon Center have a role in fighting antisemitism and building bridges across divides,” she says. “Using art to build those bridges is a really important and valuable sphere of work. I really believe in this project’s ability to do that, and I hope that it will be replicated in other places and that this exhibit might travel.”
In addition to viewing the exhibition and hearing a poetry reading, those who attend the Oct. 26 exhibition opening will see improvisational storytelling with Playback Theatre and a short concert from hip-hop artist Y-Love. (A VIP grand opening breakfast reception with First Lady of Maryland Dawn Moore, which is not open to the public, will take place on Oct. 23.)
The “Healing Bridges” closing event on Dec. 14 will feature an experiential program with psycho-dramatist Joshua Lee.
“People forget that blacks and Jews stood side by side during the civil rights movement,” says Pryor. “Then, after the [Vietnam] war and things happened politically, the neighborhoods separated and divided, and it became racially strained because white Jews had an opportunity for upward mobility while their Black counterparts did not. And there was a lot of [Blacks asking Jews], ‘Why didn’t you help?’ And so, there’s still those old feelings.
“I think that that’s why this conversation [should happen] through art, because art really brings people together to continue these hard conversations, because we can’t heal if we don’t find commonality.”
The “Healing Bridges” exhibition is free but registration is required. For information and to register, visit gordoncenter.com/event/healing-bridges-opening.
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