January FC LIFE 2021

BARBARA WILDSTEIN and her Husband, Michael, are overjoyed to talk about her daughter, Dr. Shari Rogers, a clinical psychologist, who is the Founder of “Spill the Honey” Foundation. After eight years in the making, she has produced a documentary entitled, “ Shared Legacies,” which was shown at the JCC January 14, 2021 in connection with the observance of Martin Luther King Day.

The Foundation and documentary focuses on the connection between the African-American community and its experience with slavery and the Jewish community and the Holocaust. The documentary shows how the Jews supported Martin Luther King. With the Black Lives Matter movement and Anti Semitism on the rise, her documentary is very important and her wish is to have it shown in schools and Jewish institutions. When Shari went to Israel and met the Holocaust survivor who led her group on a tour of Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, he told her a story of his mother shoving a pot of honey into his arms telling him to “take it, be sweet and survive,” as the Nazi’s separated them. To Shari “Spill The Honey” was a natural for her Foundation. For her, the honey was most similar to hope and knowledge. If anyone has ever given hope, it was Dr. King. He guided the nonviolent civil rights movement and, as Shari strives to remind everyone, was aided by many Jews. The reason her documentary is so important today is because those in the Civil Rights Movement are dying out and the new generation is not connected emotionally to their stories of how TWO Communities used to be entwined. Apropos to Barbara’s exciting news, in Sunday January 24, 2021 Palm Beach Post, there was an article by Eliott Kleinberg who wrote about what happened when Dr. King called in Rabbis– when he came to St. Augustine– one of the most racially charged cities in Florida in 1964. He was arrested for refusing to leave a restaurant. King realized one of his most powerful tools was to have people who did not look like him tell the world that what was happening was wrong. So he put out a call to Rabbis! The civil rights struggle contained numerous instances of a strong bond between Blacks and Jews who also knew a little bit about slavery and oppression. 17 Rabbis from across the nation came to St. Augustine, as many Rabbis (including my , Bobbe Wiener, Rabbi) marched with Dr. Martin Luther King crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama that momentous day of March 21, 1965. The 17 Rabbis were arrested as well. “They came because they could not stand quietly by their brother’s blood.”

For a trailer, go to “Spill the Honey.” It is a wonderful experience.

bobbe wiener

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