On April 20, 1939, Billie Holiday recorded the song Strange Fruit. Written by a Jewish schoolteacher, Abel Meeropol, it became an instant hit and to this day serves as a poignant protest song against injustice. It is also an example—along with images of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel walking arm in arm with Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma—of one of the more celebrated characteristics of the peculiar African-American/Jewish-American relationship: that of two groups bonded by a history of persecution working together to fight injustice.

Unfortunately, the distance between Jews and blacks grew both in geography (suburbs vs. inner city) and class. As a result, the compassionate relationship was replaced to a certain degree by a Louis Farrakhan-influenced, more antagonistic one.

It is this enmity that The Black Jew Dialogues, written and acted by Ron Jones (“The Black”) and Larry Jay Tish (“The Jew”), attempts to cure through a series of semi-improv’d skits, videos, monologues, and even a rap. Although envisioned as a comedy, the play is first and foremost a political production—with the “objective” being to address Jewish and Black “feareotypes” and fix them through open self-expression.