On Sunday morning, May 15, thousands of people strolled, jogged, rollerbladed and sauntered from San Francisco’s Financial District to Ocean Beach, in celebration of diversity and pluralism in the city’s annual “Bay to Breakers” footrace.
Later that afternoon, a much smaller but equally diverse group of 200 gathered to celebrate and investigate similar themes — in a much more sedentary manner.
The afternoon program of panels and workshops at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco was called “Memory, Community and Identity: A Day of Listening and Dialogue Between Communities.” It featured panelists and participants from a multiplicity of backgrounds including Chinese, Latino, Native American, African, Japanese and Jewish. They explored and debated cultural and communal identity.
By bringing together members of diverse communities, the JCCSF hoped to educate the public about Jewish culture while developing intercultural understanding, said Rabbi Yoel Kahn, director of the Taube Center for Jewish Life.
“The success of this day is bringing together people who wouldn’t necessarily think of themselves in cultural conversation,” Kahn said. “All these people were so excited to meet each other and learn what they have in common.”
The keynote speaker was Henry Louis Gates Jr., a professor and chair of Harvard University’s department of African and African American studies.
He regaled the crowd with a remarkable story of recovering an unpublished manuscript of an African American fugitive slave — “The Bondwoman’s Narrative” by Hannah Crafts.
“I have a bit of a Christopher Columbus complex,” Gates said jovially. “I like to discover things.”
Gates came across the manuscript offered in a Swan Gallery Auction catalogue in their “Black History Month Auction.” He realized that if people saw him bidding on the item they would know he was “up to something.” So Gates sent a colleague who “happens to be white.”
His colleague was the only person who bid, winning the manuscript for $8,500. “He went ‘incog-negro,'” Gates said with a laugh. Gates has since authenticated the manuscript which is now valued at over $300,000.
The tale of this manuscript’s recovery offered a window into the ways communities and individuals find and reclaim their own missing histories.
Among the program participants was Rebecca Goldman, 27, of Berkeley, an aspiring journalist who is exploring a lost and recovered history of her own. “My father is Jewish and most of his family was lost either in pogroms or the Holocaust … I have a sense of his loss.”
Goldman said she had recently begun exploring the religious and ritual aspects of her Jewish heritage along with a friend of Japanese and Jewish descent.
“There are a lot of other people [like me] who have more than one identity. I think that’s the future,” she said. “There needs to be a way to hold onto your roots without creating communities based on exclusion.”
Much of the day focused on the challenge of preserving culture while promoting intercultural dialogue.
“If you preserve culture, the next step is to share it not just with your race but with others so you do create a dialogue. There is so much that travels across the equator of human experience,” said Paula Parker, 51, a singer and former journalist.
“The Jewish Community Center didn’t seem obvious to me [for such an event] but now I see it makes perfect sense,” Parker said. “I lift my kinte-cloth off to the [JCC] for doing this. I think it’s great.”
The program was organized by the Taube Center for Jewish Life at the JCCSF. It was co-sponsored by the Human Rights Commission of the City and County of San Francisco, the Heyday Institute, News from Native California, the Museum of the African Diaspora and the San Francisco Black Film Festival.
Throughout the day, the multicultural crowd listened and learned, mixed and mingled, and voiced appreciation for the day’s events.
“I think it is just like the ‘Bay to Breakers,’ in that it is a combination of everything and everybody and anyway you are you can just come,” said Zula Jones, 57, a participant in the program’s activities and a compliance officer with the Human Rights Commission. “It is a wonderful opportunity for people to get together and share stories.”