When they co-founded the Rekindle Fellowship in 2019, Matthew Fieldman and Charmaine Rice figured they’d draw on his nonprofit expertise and her diversity, equity and inclusion credentials to jumpstart what Fieldman called “a national network of Black and Jewish changemakers,” starting in their home city of Cleveland.

Rekindle’s name comes from a vision of reigniting the collaborative energy lost in the decades since the civil rights movement, when Blacks and Jews worked closely toward collective goals. In today’s largely suburbanized, social-media-bubble landscape, “once-a-year interfaith seders are not going to move the needle,” explained Fieldman, part of a four-generation family of Hadassah life members. Rice and he wanted to bring the communities together for face-to-face conversations and, more important, service projects to advance understanding.

In 2021, the post-George Floyd racial reckoning had provided a subtext for Rekindle’s first cohorts; now, the backdrop is the Israel-Hamas war.

“There’s a hunger to discuss, to learn,” reflected Fieldman, a non-profit professional who worked for a decade at Jewish organizations, including Hillel and several federations. When he first conceived of Rekindle, Fieldman reached out to Rice, a Black friend who is a leader in Ohio diversity organizations, including the Cleveland NAACP.

With its $150,000 budget funded by private philanthropy, Rekindle operates two cohorts a year, often in partnership with local Jewish federations or synagogues. Each engages 16 adults—eight Jewish, eight Black—for four, three-hour curriculum-driven conversations, interfaith holiday celebrations and a collective action project around themes like education. One team arranged for a nonprofit to teach African singing and traditional goombe drum-making to Cleveland schoolchildren. Then local Jewish chef Jeremy Umansky (a Rekindle alumnus) taught the kids how to bake babka.

Beyond Cleveland, there are chapters in Rochester, N.Y., Metrowest New Jersey and, soon, in Baltimore, Omaha, Akron, Tampa, Detroit and New Orleans. Participants, many of whom are recruited through synagogues and churches, range in age from 30to 75 and represent diverse back-grounds and professions.

After the October 7 Hamas terror attacks and subsequent spike in antisemitism, Fieldman said, Rekindle responded with a retooled version of its Israel discussion-points curriculum, which presents viewpoints across the Zionist political spectrum.

Rekindle’s numbers are small—120 graduates thus far—but its ambition to establish a national organization to support local chapters is large. Fieldman and Rice believe that small groups facilitate meaningful conversations that can breed not only mutual empathy, but also cross-cultural advocacy.

Fieldman notes a recent discussion he had with a Black program participant who told him that although he protests Israel’s actions in Gaza, he won’t chant “From the River to the Sea” because, through Rekindle, he has learned how painful that sounds to his Jewish friends. Such insights, Fieldman said, offer hope.

“There will always be challenges in both communities,” Fieldman said. “But this change is going to happen by people meeting neighborhood to neighborhood, one city at a time.”

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