When I asked my daughter to look for recipes for red-velvet cake for Juneteenth, she hesitated. It's not that she's not into red velvet. It's that, though not yet 13, she is aware of the dangers of cultural appropriation. I pushed back: yes, this holiday that marks the freeing of the enslaved people of Galveston, Texas -- the last in the United States -- has also been thought of as African-American independence day and until now observed mostly in black communities. But the end of slavery is something every one of us must celebrate -- and reckon with.

I reminded her of a car-conversation months ago about  the most important event in American history. I'd said the Emancipation Proclamation -- without which we probably wouldn't have a country, and certainly not one we'd want to live in. Part of what's so powerful about Juneteenth is that it marks not the day of the proclamation's signing but the day two years later when it was finally put into effect -- a hint at the complexity of the reckoning still playing out 155 years later.

Mostly convinced, she then wanted to know, why red velvet? As the chef and food historian Michael W. Twitty explained in an interview we published this week, the cake is among the traditional red foods for Juneteenth because red "symbolizes perseverance." Red is "the color of creativity, the color of fire, the color of war, the color of resistance," he added. "When red shows up, you know it's a most spiritual moment." Twitty is one of nine Black Jews whose reflections on Juneteenth are in this week's roundup, which you can also download or print via the blue button below.
 

(We ended up making these red-velvet brownies with a cream cheese swirl --  a metaphor for white allyship? -- which I dug into at noon during our amazing "Zoomversation" about the holiday with Rabbi Sandra Lawson, who wrote so movingly last week about  always being questioned in Jewish spaces, and our contributing columnist Tema Smith, whose 2019 piece about why Juneteenth should be a Jewish holiday still resonates. If you missed the event, watch the video here.) 

Other great reads for this weekend include Jackson Arn's look at the art lost to this pandemic, Rob Eshman's interview with a black-Jewish professor whose brother died in police custody; pieces about Roy Cohn and Gerhard Richter, Batya Ungar-Sargon's look at the growing consensus against racism and the risks of moral panic; and my editorial about (some of) what James Bennet taught me.

Oh, and for Father's Day, "reading the Forward backward" and other memories our readers shared of their dads and our pages. 

If you missed our Zoomversation this week on annexation with David Makovsky and Khalil Shikaki, you can watch the video here, I also was thrilled to talk about the importance and challenges of Jewish journalism in this particular moment on Yehuda Kurtzer;s new Shalom Hartman Institute podcast, "Identity Crisis," (listen here). Sign up here to join Rukhl Schaechter Monday at 2 p.m. EDT for a chat about "Why are Yiddish songs so popular now?" and stay tuned for more details for a Pride Month talk on June 30.

Finally -- phew -- the Forward's latest story on the app Urban Archive
is about a 9-year-old musical prodigy named
Lorin Maazel rehearsing for the 1939 World's Fair!

Shabbat shalom, Happy Juneteenth and Happy Father's Day. 


Jodi Rudoren
Editor-in-Chief
rudoren@forward.com

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