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My first roommate at college in the US, was a Rich from Long Island. We lived in an intentional community styled dorm on campus. The living experience was distinguished by weekly meetings intended to provide us with opportunity to explore communal living and counter cultural values. Rich and I shared a mutual love for 80s British music and spent hours of free rime dissecting lyrics by obscure American and British bands. He introduced me to the radical African American poet, Gill Scot Heron, and Rich’s awareness of SKA music and rude boy band, The Specials, came from me. Not all of our conversations were as easy to pursue and embrace as those about music. Our discussions about ethnic identity were particularly difficult, but encouraged by the open atmosphere of college, we found they drew us closer together. Rich was an American Jew, and I a pan African Christian. So, the fractious historical relationship between Jews and blacks was always in the background, and subliminally informed our points of view, and beliefs. Eventually we decided as friends to tackle head on the contentious issues between our two peoples. The relationship between Jews and blacks made the news this week, when an influential black television presenter used an offensive Jewish slur s in a podcast. The presenter duly apologies and as an act of contrition, has taken time out to reflect. It seems to me that there are still some important conversations to be had between Jews and blacks. Rich and I discussed the hidden black presence in the Hebrew Bible and the obvious Jewish identity of Jesus. We debated the contemporary implications of the Maafa, the African genocide in the Caribbean, and the Shoah, the Jewish holocaust during WW 2. We pontificated why two peoples with histories of oppression found it so difficult to form alliance to combat bigotry and racism. We struggled through the difficult claims and counter claims of economic exploitation, and the dangerous controlling stereotypes each community had of the other, and their negative outcomes. The telling and listening to stories is central to Jewish and Christian scriptures. Stories have the power to shape us and challenge us, and even inspire us do more than we thought was humanly possible, including forging alliances against insurmountable odds. But unless we take time and find ways to hear the stories of other peoples and embrace their struggle, contention rather than commitment will be the order of the day.