which he characterized as the "first book about the black power movement by someone inside the black power movement". Conversion to Judaism In 1982 Lester converted to Judaism. He has said that his conversion journey began when he was seven and learned that his maternal great-grandfather, Adolph Altschul, was a Jewish immigrant from Germany, who married a freed slave. He adopted the Hebrew name Yaakov Daniel ben Avraham v’Sarah. He was a leader of the Beth El Synagogue in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, from 1991-2001. Academic career From 1968 to 1970, alongside his activities as a radio host in New York, Lester taught Afro-American history at the New School for Social Research. In 1971 he began teaching at the University of Massachusetts Amherst as a visiting lecturer in the Afro-American Studies department; he became an associate professor in the department in 1975 and a full professor in 1977. In 1988, Lester came into conflict with his colleagues in the Afro-American Studies department upon the publication of his book Lovesong, which chronicles his conversion to Judaism. In the book he refers to a lecture at the university by the renowned author James Baldwin several years earlier, and characterizes certain remarks that Baldwin made as antisemitic. In March 1988, in a unanimous step, the Afro-American Studies faculty wrote a letter to the university administration recommending that Lester be reassigned to a different department. Following negotiations that involved the chancellor of the university, the dean of the faculty, and Lester himself, Lester transferred to the Judaic and Near Eastern Studies department (where he had held a joint appointment since 1982), and remained there for the rest of his university career, until his retirement at the end of 2003. During his 32 years at the university, Lester taught courses in five departments: Comparative Literature ("Black and White Southern Fiction"), English ("Religion in Western Literature"), Afro-American Studies ("The Writings of W. E. B. Du Bois"), ("Writings of James Baldwin"), ("Literature of the Harlem Renaissance"), ("Blacks and Jews: A Comparative Study"), and Judaic Studies ("Biblical Tales and Legends") and ("The Writings of Elie Wiesel"), History ("Social Change and the 1960s"), one of the university's largest and most popular courses. Lester was awarded all three of the university's most prestigious faculty awards: the Distinguished Teacher's Award, the Faculty Fellowship Award for Distinguished Research and Scholarship, and the Chancellor's Medal, the university's highest honor. The Council for Advancement and