![Michelle Millben, MTS ’26, and Sarah Zemelman, MTS ’26](/sites/g/files/omnuum5526/files/styles/hwp_21_9__1920x825/public/2025-12/121125_Michelle%26Sarah_22.jpg?h=bcd63640&itok=BTmDCJd4) # HDS Students Awarded Building Bridges Grant for Black-Jewish Pluralism Project A student-led initiative at Harvard Divinity School (HDS) will bring communities together through dialogue, history, and shared commitments to justice. December 18, 2025 Office of Communications In its second year, the [Building Bridges Fund](https://www.harvard.edu/president/building-bridges-fund/), a Harvard presidential initiative administered by Community and Campus Life, [awarded grants](https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2025/12/our-students-are-seeking-not-just-to-coexist-but-to-understand/) to eight student-led projects across the University focused on building a culture of pluralism and community across difference at Harvard. Michelle Millben, MTS ’26, and Sarah Zemelman, MTS ’26, received one of these grants for their HDS-centered Black-Jewish Pluralism Project, a new dialogue series designed to foster connection, healing, and historical understanding across Black and Jewish communities. Millben and Zemelman’s prior research on Black and Jewish identity shaped their vision for a program that could bring these conversations into the HDS community. The project, Millben said, is grounded in an academic venture incorporating reading, discussion, and film that will encourage critical inquiry and constructive arguments around the histories of Black-Jewish solidarity. The project advances pluralism as a lived, relational practice and amplifies Harvard’s commitment to dialogue, restorative justice, and moral leadership. It will be facilitated in cross-school sessions around Harvard with students, faculty, and staff engaging in sessions. It will be supported by the work of scholars at HDS and Harvard, including Professors [Henry Louis Gates, Jr.](https://hutchinscenter.fas.harvard.edu/henry-louis-gates-jr), [Susannah Heschel,](https://www.hds.harvard.edu/people/susannah-heschel) [Terrence L. Johnson,](https://www.hds.harvard.edu/people/terrence-l-johnson) [Shaul Magid](https://www.hds.harvard.edu/people/shaul-magid), as well as Professor [Masua Sagiv](https://jewishstudies.berkeley.edu/people/masua-sagiv) at the University of California Berkeley. “The Black-Jewish relationship in America has a long history and is far more complex than many people realize," said Magid, Professor of Modern Jewish Studies in Residence at HDS. "In this time of division and the breakdown of allyship, a program like this helps students, and our community, to rigorously navigate that complexity while learning how historical memory shapes contemporary community life. It’s an invaluable contribution to the intellectual culture of HDS.” Rev. Doctor Howard Thurman, Rev. Benjamin Mays, and Rev. Mordecai Johnson were inspirations for the project, said Millben. Thurman modeled pluralism religiously and socially in his leadership at Howard and Boston University. The latter two figures were the long-serving presidents of Howard University and Morehouse College, centers of higher education that are “historically known as bastions of pluralistic engagement for the world in the early and mid-twentieth century,” said Millben. In this time of division and the breakdown of allyship, a program like this helps students, and our community, to rigorously navigate that complexity while learning how historical memory shapes contemporary community life. It’s an invaluable contribution to the intellectual culture of HDS." Shaul Magid Professor of Modern Jewish Studies in Residence “Because of antisemitism that barred many Jewish scholars from majority white American universities in the early twentieth century, many Jewish scholars found a home at HBCUs," Millben said. "This ultimately made participation with Blacks in the struggle for racial justice a compelling expression of Jewish ethics.” These figures’ approach to pluralism informs the structure of the series, which will include opportunities for historical education—including, in one planned session, an exploration of the solidarity between Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. "As part of our work at HDS's [Religion and Public Life](https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/), we encourage students to engage histories of solidarity and tension that continue to shape public life," said Johnson, director of Religion and Public Life at HDS. "The Black-Jewish Pluralism Project offers a powerful space for that kind of inquiry by inviting the community and participants to practice the relational and ethical commitments needed for leadership across difference.” The series will also “offer the opportunity for communal healing.” Providing this space through the project is part of understanding pluralism as a practice, and in strengthening that practice, Millben said, particularly in a moment when many communities are grappling with heightened tension and grief. “The way that we're defining pluralism is creating a foundation where people can remain in relationship despite difference,” said Zemelman. “Even if one feels that their identity is incompatible with another identity, the conversation doesn't stop. People don't turn away.” The series is invested in building the leadership and conflict resolution skills that participants need and preparing students to carry those abilities beyond HDS. In articulating the pair’s goals for the series, Zemelman hopes to explore questions such as: How do we build tools in order to have these conversations? How do we educate in a way that is accessible to people of many different backgrounds and different emotional reactivities coming into the room? The project aims to build leadership and cultivate the values necessary to work against “performative kinds of allyship or ideological rigidity, and create a space where dignity can be taught, shared, and also experienced, with intellectual humility, relational courage, and the moral imagination necessary for pluralism to thrive across faith, race, and ideology,” Millben said. *Banner photo of Michelle Millben and Sarah Zemelman by Alex Bayer.* ## More Student Awards [ HDS Students Win Harvard Culture Lab Grant for Deep Listening Project arrow\_circle\_right ](https://www.hds.harvard.edu/news/2025/10/30/students-win-harvard-culture-lab-grant-deep-listening-project) [ From Saints to Serpents: HDS Students Win 2025 Buechner Prize arrow\_circle\_right ](https://www.hds.harvard.edu/news/2025/05/22/saints-serpents-hds-students-win-2025-buechner-prize) See also:- [ Student Activities and Interviews ](/discover-stories-about/student-activities-and-interviews)