Where did Spill the Honey Originate From?
Spill the Honey™ was inspired by Eliezer “Eli” Ayalon, a victim of the Holocaust. When his ghetto was being evacuated and his mother sent him away so he’d survive, she gave him a cup of honey, a symbol of the sweet life she knew he was destined to lead. This gesture signified light and hopes in the darkest place of their history. Eliezer did not merely accept the cup, but spent his adult life pouring into it, “so that it may spill over into the lives of others.”
Spill the Honey™ recognizes and honors both the Jewish American community’s legacy of self-renewal in the wake of the Holocaust and the African American community’s legacy of freedom struggles during and after slavery as it seeks to bring awareness of the historic connections between these two communities.
Like Eli’s cup of honey, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” Speech has stood as a symbol of hope to humanity that we are capable of making the world a better place!
Spill the Honey™ founder Dr. Shari Rogers had the great good fortune to meet civil rights leader Dr. Clarence B. Jones, a speechwriter and attorney for Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Dr. Rogers recollects, “Dr. Jones and I decided to raise our voices together to help rebuild the historic coalition between African Americans and Jews. We realized that the shared pain as well as unique ordeals of Jews and African Americans can be utilized to encourage and excite other diverse communities to join us in the fight against persecution and oppression that still exist.”
Spill the Honey’s vision is to use the transformative power of the arts to change hearts and minds and seeks to move people to act for social change. It amplifies the voices of the historic African American-Jewish civil rights coalition in order to reinforce shared legacies that can still foster empathy, nurture compassion, and build partnerships transcending divisions of race, class, gender, and ethnicity. Spill the Honey recognizes and honors the Jewish-American community’s legacy of fighting anti-Semitism and surviving the Holocaust and the African-American community’s legacy enduring slavery and fighting for freedom. The historic connections between these two communities can serve as a foundation for teaching acceptance of cultural differences, focusing public attention on present-day injustice, and encouraging young people to become global citizens.
To promote continued dialogue, cooperation, and coalition building among diverse people and communities to achieve social justice, beginning with African Americans and Jews.
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To highlight the alliance between African Americans and Jews that helped America dismantle Jim Crow segregation, though institutional racism still must be vanquished.
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To educate the next generation about the history, relevance, and transformative power of uniting diverse communities that share common values of justice, truth, and equality.
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To elucidate the reality that persecution is not a monopoly of any one people or culture; rather, it is a shared human experience that can only be ended and transcended when people unite across boundaries
Spill the Honey has developed and produced Shared Legacies: The African-American Jewish Civil Rights Alliance, a feature length documentary film that focuses on a proud chapter in modern American history when two communities of different backgrounds collaborated to transform the moral conscience of the nation. The powerful lessons of this crucial history must be remembered. For too many people today, the history of African Americans and Jews coming together has never been shared nor heard. We believe that that this relationship is, and can be, an inspiration that allows for people now to transcend their differences and cooperate so that future generations can participate in a vibrant pluralism. To date, Spill the Honey has captured more than 150 hours of film interviews with living witnesses to history in a 95 minute documentary
