Does anyone remember Julius Lester? – Civil rights activist, radio personality, professor of African American studies photographer, folk singer, lay leader of a synagogue, professor of Judaic Studies, and award winning  author of over 40 books for children and adults on both Jewish and African-American themes.

This protean personality died at the age of 78 on January 18.

Despite this impressive resume, Marjorie Ingall said, “He managed, at one point or another, to enrage everyone.”

Lester was the son of a minister and grew up steeped in Christianity. He attended Fisk University, a historically Black college. He went to Mississippi during the Freedom Summer of 1964.

Jews became aware of Lester when, as the host of a show on WBAI, during the teachers’ strike of 1968 which rose out of issues about who would control the schools, he asked a high school teacher to read a poem written by a student. The poem expressed negative feelings toward Jews who made up a large part of the teacher population.

Jews were outraged.

Surprisingly, Lester had always felt pulled to Judaism. When he was a young child, he discovered that his maternal great-grandfather was a German-Jewish immigrant; his great-grandmother was a freed slave.

Later as an adult he began to explore Judaism more deeply and converted in 1982. Some people felt that one could not be both black and Jewish.

In the 1980s he riled the Black community by criticizing Jesse Jackson’s use of the term “Hymietown” and novelist James Baldwin for what Lester considered anti-Semitic remarks. At the time he was teaching at the University of Massachusetts in the Afro-American Studies Department. He was forced to resign after being called “an anti-Negro Negro.” He did continue to teach Judaic studies, English and history at the University.

Richard Michelson, author of As Good As Anybody: Martin Luther King and Abraham Joshua Heschel’s Amazing March Toward Freedom, which won the Sydney Taylor Book Award, asked Lester to do the audio book recording.

Sam and the Tigers: a new telling of Little Black Sambo, Lester’s version of the racist Victorian tale, was illustrated by the distinguished artist Jerry Pinckney and received much praised including being named a Notable Book in 1996.

Lester also was a cantor and lay leader of Beth El Synagogue in St. Johnsbury, Vermont. Jeffrey Salkin, author and rabbi, said that the most beautiful rendition of Yigdal he had ever heard was sung by Lester.

“Who am I?” asked Lester. “There are not enough words to describe who I am, who any of us are, because we all carry within us traces of lives going back 10,000 years and more. What a shame that there are those who would reduce the wonder of being human to such a narrow and restrictive concept as race.”

Ironically, according to the obituary in The New York Times, when Lester went looking for his Jewish ancestors, he found that they had all converted to Christianity. He was the only Jewish family member left.

Books by Lester available in the synagogue library or public library include:

Lovesong: becoming a Jew (Nonfiction)

The Autobiography of God (Fiction)

When the Beginning Began: stories about God, the creatures and us. (Juvenile)

Pharaoh’s Daughter (Juvenile Fiction)