A Jewish reflection on Juneteenth

Juneteenth demands honesty from us, especially in Milwaukee

Juneteenth marks a delayed freedom. More than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation, on June 19, 1865, enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, were finally informed that they were free. It is a holiday that resists easy celebration. It reminds us that freedom in the United States has never arrived all at once, and never equally. 

That tension is not foreign to Jewish civilization. The Torah does not tell the story of liberation from Egypt as simply a moment of triumph. Freedom is not a single event but an ongoing process: It comes with wandering in the desert, uncertainty, and repeated failure. 

This pattern continues beyond the Biblical story. The emancipation of Jews in Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries granted formal civil rights, but antisemitism continued in new forms. And even in the United States, where Jews have enjoyed legal equality longer than in most other countries, antisemitism has persisted. In recent years, antisemitism in the U.S. has become even more visibly present in public life, reminding us that freedom is a process, and as such, not a linear one. 

Juneteenth demands that same honesty from us today, especially in Milwaukee. Data from the 2020 Census reconfirmed Milwaukee as the second-most segregated metropolitan area in the United States for Black and white residents. This is not accidental; it is the result of policy decisions, economic structures, and communal choices over generations. 

Segregation in Milwaukee also shows up in the criminal justice system. In ZIP code 53206, incarceration has become so concentrated that it is often cited as among the most extreme examples of mass incarceration in the U.S. If housing segregation marked one phase of unequal freedom, mass incarceration represents one that continues to limit mobility, economic opportunity, and civic participation. 

When it comes to the Jewish community’s relationship to Black rights, it has become commonplace to reference Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel marching alongside Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at Selma as the definitive proof of Jewish commitment to Black dignity. While that moment remains a powerful symbol of solidarity, relying solely on that image can become a way of avoiding more difficult conversations about our own participation in systemic inequality. 

A reckoning with Juneteenth requires acknowledging that Jews, like other Americans, have at times participated in and benefited from systems of racial inequality; and it asks us not to look away from that history. Historically, some Jews in the United States, especially in the antebellum South, were among slaveholders. In Northern cities, Jewish individuals were sometimes involved in housing practices that reinforced segregation. 

In Milwaukee, Jews were often victims of restrictive covenants themselves, barred from certain neighborhoods. However, as those barriers fell for Jews but remained in place for Black residents, the eventual move to the suburbs became a moment of “conditional whiteness” in action. Jewish communities inadvertently helped reinforce the geographic and economic divides that define our city today. 

These dynamics are not only external; they shape Jewish communal life itself: Jews of Color, including Black Jews, make up 12-15 percent of the American Jewish population. And yet many report feeling marginalized in Jewish spaces. This should trouble us not only because it violates the Talmudic principle that “all Jews are responsible for one another,” but because it reveals how deeply racial hierarchies have shaped even communities that experience discrimination themselves. 

What would it mean to approach Juneteenth as a moment of accountability as well as solidarity? This calls for sustained engagement with Black-led organizations in Milwaukee, not only symbolic participation. It invites us to support policies addressing housing, education and economic inequality. It encourages us to explore the idea of reparations as an act of teshuvah by looking at how we might invest our communal resources to help repair the specific economic and social geographic divides that our history helped create. And it means doing the internal work of making Jewish spaces genuinely inclusive of Jews of Color. 

As the Mishna teaches: “It is not your duty to finish the work, but neither are you free to desist from it.” Juneteenth offers not only commemoration, but a call to deepen honesty, and to participate more fully in the unfinished work of freedom. 

Armin Langer is the Rabbi of Congregation Shir Hadash in Milwaukee. He was ordained by the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Philadelphia and holds a PhD in Sociology from the Humboldt University of Berlin. His writing has appeared in academic journals like the “Journal of Black Studies” and “Journal of Jewish Ethics,” as well as in popular outlets like“The Forward” and “Evolve: Groundbreaking Jewish Conversations.”