Dozens of Black clergy members participated in an interfaith luncheon on Thursday in the basement of First Iconium Baptist Church in East Atlanta. In attendance were faith leaders from various Christian denominations, as well as Muslims. Notably, there was scant representation of the third Abrahamic religion.
The goal of the gathering was to thank the more than 200 Georgia pastors who signed onto a November letter to President Joe Biden calling for a ceasefire in the war between Israel and Hamas that has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza.
That call, according to some in attendance, exposed a rift between some Black Christian and Jewish clergy members, many of whom have long been on the same side in battles for civil and human rights in Georgia.
The Rev. Timothy McDonald, First Iconium’s pastor, said local American Jewish Committee leaders were among the dozens of faith leaders he invited to the event. But McDonald says he never got a response from the group, illustrating the depth of the disagreement.
“I’ve reached out, and I’m through with them,” McDonald told Capital B Atlanta on Wednesday of local Jewish Committee leaders. “It’s not what they did. It’s what they didn’t do. They have not called for a ceasefire.”
The American Jewish Committee is a global nonprofit advocacy organization for the Jewish people. An official with the group told Capital B that it did not receive the invitation.
In interviews with Capital B, leaders on both sides noted that the division over a war thousands of miles away risks damaging a voter coalition in Georgia that helped elect Democrats to the White House and U.S. Senate in 2020. But they also stressed that their positions reflect their religious beliefs and those of many of their followers.
Black preachers in metro Atlanta, including McDonald, say they support a ceasefire in Gaza for humanitarian reasons in keeping with their Christian faith, not to mention calls from their congregants.
But some of metro Atlanta’s most prominent Jewish leaders say Hamas must release its remaining hostages before they’ll support calls for Israel to end its attacks.
Rabbi Lydia Medwin of The Temple in Midtown Atlanta stressed that there are still interfaith efforts taking place in Atlanta on issues including ending mass incarceration and defending lessons about racism in schools. She said that Black and Jewish leaders need to continue speaking on Gaza, and that disagreements “are not irreparable.”
“It’s a really hard time,” she said. “God willing, people [will] come soon and we’ll be able to mend any of the bridges that have been damaged.”
The Source of the Impasse
The rift began after Israel began bombing Gaza in response to Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on the Jewish nation, which killed an estimated 1,200 Israelis. An additional 240 people were taken hostage.Â
More than 200 Black pastors in Georgia signed onto a letter to Biden calling for a ceasefire and a related advertorial that ran in the New York Times. That upset some Jewish faith leaders, many of whom have congregants who support Israel’s military action despite its staggering death toll.
As of Thursday, more than 28,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces, most of whom were civilian women and children, according to the United Nations.
McDonald refused to name the Jewish leaders he says called him about the issue last year. But he said they invited him and other Black pastors to view “raw footage” of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
McDonald said he declined to view the footage because the exercise sounded like “propaganda.”
“Are you going to show what the response was and actual footage of [what] the IDF [Israeli Defense Forces] [did] to the Palestinians?” McDonald recalled saying to the Jewish leaders. “Then I’m not coming to that because that’s what I’m about.”
Instead, McDonald said he challenged the Jewish leaders to attend his Thursday luncheon.
Dov Wilker, who serves as regional director for the American Jewish Committee in Atlanta and the group’s national director for Black Jewish relations, says he never received McDonald’s invite despite communicating with him via email in January.
Wilker acknowledged Black and Jewish faith leaders have spent decades working together to advance civil rights causes in the South, including collaborative voter registration drives in 2020 and 2022. He underscored the need for continued dialogue on Gaza to promote greater understanding.
But he also said he and other Jewish Committee leaders won’t participate in a dialogue about a ceasefire with anyone who hasn’t first called for Hamas to release its remaining Israeli hostages.
“If the returning of the hostages is not the number one request made by these leaders, then they will never be able to achieve an anti-violence message,” Wilker said.
New Birth Missionary Baptist Church pastor Jamal Bryant says he and other Black preachers spoke out against Hamas following the Oct. 7 attack while calling for the release of all hostages and impugning violence on both sides of the war.
But the violence, he said, has not been equally distributed.
“Thirty thousand Jews have not been killed in this infraction,” Bryant told Capital B Atlanta on Feb. 9. “We’re calling for [a ceasefire] all the way around. I would just hope that the Jewish faith leaders will also echo their voice to join us in calling for a ceasefire.”
Bryant also underscored that he and other Black folks take exception to the idea that clergy members and protesters who support a ceasefire are anti-Jewish bigots.
“Anti-violence is not antisemitic,” he added.
Another Divide
Thursday’s interfaith breakfast did have at least one Jewish person in attendance.
Ilise Cohen of Jewish Voice for Peace, an anti-Zionist Jewish advocacy nonprofit, was the only Jewish person who showed up at the luncheon Thursday. The former college professor said she previously lost her job over her views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Jews or Christians who refuse to call for a ceasefire in Gaza should be “ashamed of themselves,” she said.
“If you want to be on the right side of history, this is the time to be bold and connect and not back down,” she told those in attendance on Thursday.
Fellow Jewish Voice for Peace organizer Marisa Pyle, 26, of East Lake, is a voting rights activist and one of many young Jewish people who have joined Black Christians and Muslims during interfaith calls for a ceasefire.
She said the sight of dead Palestinian women and children killed by bombs in Gaza on social media has haunted her in recent months. Her opposition to Israel’s continued bombing of the Gaza Strip has also ruined her relationship with her rabbi.
“He called me a terrorist for holding a sign that said ceasefire,” Pyle told Capital B Atlanta on Wednesday. “A lot of Jewish people outside the anti-Zionist spaces that I’m organizing in are horrified to some extent by everything we’re seeing come out of Gaza.”
