Building Bridges at the Super Bowl LX Black-Jewish Unity Summit
The Black-Jewish Unity Dinner series is back — this time out in sunny California!
This past weekend, Hillel International co-hosted the second annual Unity Summit at the San Francisco Marriott Marquis Golden Gate, in partnership with the Blue Square Alliance Against Hate and UNCF. The event brought Black, Jewish, and Black and Jewish student leaders together for transformative conversations on leadership, identity, and standing up to hate. And thanks to additional support from the National Football League (NFL), several professional athletes also joined the program to lend their voices and experiences.
“Building relationships is still one of the most powerful ways to counter hate,” said Adam Lehman, president and CEO of Hillel International. “What we’ve learned from Unity Dinners is that when Black and Jewish students sit down together and share a meal, they often discover they have far more in common than they expected. Students consistently tell us these conversations matter, which is why we are working alongside our partners to continue to expand the Unity Dinner series.”
The Unity Summit is part of an ongoing Unity Dinner program that has brought together hundreds of students to strengthen Black-Jewish partnerships in America. This academic year, gatherings are being held in 14 cities — and as part of the Sports x Unity initiative, many are tied to key sports moments, such as the NBA All-Star Weekend and the Super Bowl. Last year’s Unity Dinner series reached 600 students, and the program is on track to reach more than 1,800 this academic year.
Friday’s program kicked off with an intimate dialogue among student leaders, including participants in the Super Bowl LX Select 25 Experienceship, a cohort of 25 HBCU students from across the country with Jewish student leaders from local campus Hillels. NFL Executive Vice President of Football Operations Troy Vincent delivered opening remarks, before shifting the room into conversations about shared experiences and combating hate on college campuses.
“There is so much misinformation and a lot of stereotypes that are not true,” shared one of the Black and Jewish student participants. Reflecting on a conversation about common stereotypes about Jews, the student continued, “ And after our conversation, [one of] the students was like, ‘I would have never known that this was inaccurate or that this was a stereotype. Thank you so much for educating me.’”
Later, student leaders were joined by ESPN broadcaster Hannah Storm, who moderated a fireside chat between New York Giants’ outside linebacker Kayvon Thibodeaux and former NFL linebacker Emmanuel Acho as they shared their experiences and discussed ways to build unity across differences while leading with purpose.
“Sports have the unique power to unite people across backgrounds and beliefs,” said Robert Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots and founder of the Blue Square Alliance Against Hate. “The Unity Summit is a powerful example of that. It brings student leaders and athletes together at the biggest sporting event of the year to confront hate and division. When we create space for these conversations, we take an important step toward building bridges and defeating hate in America in all its forms.”
Dr. Michael L. Lomax, president and CEO of UNCF, offered a similar perspective. “The Black and Jewish communities have a rich history of collaboration and understanding,” he said. “These Unity Dinners have been monumental in bringing people together under shared experiences to combat hate and discrimination in all forms.”
A student participant from UC Berkeley said she was inspired to take the conversations from the evening back to her own campus, “Hopefully we’ll be able to plan one of our own unity dinners on our campus,” she said. “Although it might seem like from an outside perspective that the Black community and the Jewish community are very different, we do have these important shared values about togetherness and justice.”
Interested in learning more about the Unity Dinners? Check out the overview of this year’s dinners and read about past events on the Hillel blog.