Next Synaplex Speaker, February 20

You are invited to our next Synaplex speaker on Saturday, February 20 at 1:15PM, when Larry Rubin will discuss "Let My People Go: Reflections in Black and Jewish"

Compare the Jewish Exodus story, as traditionally understood, with an adaptation of it written by James Weldon Johnson, a leader of the Harlem Renaissance, entitled “Let My People Go”. This writing is one of a series of folk sermons that were published in 1927. The talk will examine how and why Johnson overlaid the Exodus story with the idiom of the nineteenth-century Southern black church.

Dr. Larry Rubin is an adjunct in the English Department of Fordham University’s Lincoln Center campus. His Columbia University doctoral dissertation focuses on the work of three outstanding poets of the Harlem Renaissance period. He has consulted on the Jewish Museum’s landmark exhibit, “Bridges and Boundaries: African Americans and American Jews”, advised on Dreamworks picture “The Prince of Egypt” and was invited by President Clinton to the White House to discuss affirmative action policy.