TIME FOR JEWISH AND AFRICAN AMERICANS TO REAFFIRM COMMON GROUND (1/6/04)

The yearly commemoration of Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday evokes a rush of bittersweet recollections and emotions. Among those poignant memories, I as a Jew am fixated on the picture of Dr. King and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel locked arm-in-arm, marching together for social justice and human decency. They shared fully in the nobility of their mission as they shared fully in the jeers, brickbats, and spittle of their detractors. As Dr. King was the “Drum Major for Justice,” Rabbi Heschel was the quintessential Biblical prophet: humble, selfless, and yet indignantly outspoken in the face of evil. He was for us the very symbol of the Jewish commitment to social justice and social conscience.

The memory of Dr. King and Rabbi Heschel locked arm-in-arm brings a modicum of pride for a time when Jewish and African Americans proudly marched together with unity of purpose. My deepest emotion, however, is grief over the mutual distrust that has since placed enormous tensions on the special relationship between African Americans and Jews, but has not, I believe, injured it beyond repair.

Some Jewish organizations deny support to affirmative action and other legitimate initiatives for equity . . . Jesse Jackson’s motives toward the Jews are, at best, suspect, while Minister Louis Farrakhan’s are blatantly anti-Semitic . . . Revisionist historians in both camps rewrite the story of the civil rights struggle to depict African Americans and Jews as motivated solely by opportunism and self-interest . . . So the litany goes.

If we are looking, we will find myriad excuses for the breakdown of black-Jewish relations. Neither side is entirely right, nor is entirely wrong. The crime is that we have come to see each other as “sides,” always demanding a quid pro quo, always vigilant lest the equities go unbalanced, always cynical of the other side’s motives.

I cannot deny that the differences are there and that they are compelling. But I refuse to accept the image of Dr. King and Rabbi Heschel as a fossil of a bygone era. The time has come to reaffirm that the experiences and ideals that bind Jewish and African Americans together are strong and are still stronger than the difference that threaten to pull us apart.

What common ground do African and Jewish Americans share?

We both know the bitterness of oppression and persecution.

Negative forces are not the ultimate glue that cements lasting relationships. But one cannot deny that there must be some natural affinity, some innate empathy and common vocabulary, between two peoples whose histories so closely parallel each other’s: enslavement, exile, displacement, ghettoization, massacres, subversion of family ties, severance from cultural identity, scapegoatism, political, social, educational, and economic disenfranchisement. Moreover, significant segments of both our people still suffer from these horrors. African Americans and Jews share a bitter common knowledge of the ravages of hatred and inhumanity.

Shouting matches of “who’s had it worse” are not merely counterproductive; they demean and trivialize the ravages that both our peoples have sustained. Let us simply acknowledge that there has been more than enough anguish to go around.

Persecution has taught us to be more, not less, humane and compassionate.

A persecuted people may learn one of two lessons from its persecution: callous cynicism (Why shouldn’t others feel the pain I once felt?) or heightened compassion (I must ensure that no one else will ever suffer what I have suffered!). All in all, African Americans and Jews have repeatedly chosen the latter path. The ancient Hebrews were exhorted time and again that the ultimate lesson of their Egyptian bondage was to be kind to the stranger in their midst. The exhortation became a consistent theme of the Prophets, the rabbis, and great Jewish moralists to this day.

Elie Wiesel’s years in Nazi death camps taught him to champion the rights of all who are oppressed. Rabbi Heschel spoke out indignantly for social justice because he knew that the only appropriate response to millennia of Jewish suffering is a redoubled commitment to human decency.

Dr. King, his colleagues, and disciples embraced the same ideal and could speak of the African American struggle for self-determination only in the larger context of justice for all the world’s oppressed. Their message was overwhelmingly universalistic. All told, persecution has left Jews and African Americans with the same indelible message: Pain must be replaced with compassion.

We both believe that we overcome oppression through an amalgam of faith and human initiative.

It is no idle coincidence that the great black and Jewish spokespeople for social justice have almost invariably been great masters of faith and spiritual calling. African Americans and Jews, more than any other groups, share in the understanding that faith and determination are totally interrelated, not mutually exclusive.

Neither Jews nor African Americans have ever embraced a theology of waiting helplessly until God miraculously redeemed us from our woes. Yet, neither group has ever maintained that the transition from oppression to freedom could be accomplished solely by human devices. Divine guidance and providence are equally crucial elements of the equation. Despite our overt religious differences, Jewish and African Americans share a deep and abiding common belief that God and humankind must work together in full partnership if the world is to be set on a more righteous course.

True equality comes through educational, political, and economic empowerment.

Jewish and African Americans have learned that real self-determination and prosperity do not come as a benevolent gift of the societal mainstream that then also determines precisely how prosperous and assertive “outsiders” may and may not become. True equality, we now know, comes from entering the mainstream through processes that make African Americans and Jews total participants in shaping social destiny and in the production and distribution of the American pie.

Jewish Americans in the first half of the 20th century and African Americans in the second half have both rightfully concluded that their energies must be directed to attaining the educational tools, political influence, and economic vitality that bring real empowerment, not continued dependency and subservience.

Family and heritage are central to our destiny.

No two peoples place more emphasis on the family as the wellspring from which the health of all our other endeavors must emanate. Our detractors have always known that the surest way to demoralize us was to subvert our family unity. More importantly, African Americans and Jews both recognize that the integrity of our families is the single most important factor in determining whether we as a people will flourish or deteriorate. We are thus both determined to keep our family bonds strong.

We also recognize that our respective heritages are the primary source of our moral guidance, personal identity, and sense of dignity and self-respect. Jewish and African Americans have largely rejected the notion that we must renounce our heritage in order to conform to the social mainstream. To the contrary, we have come to realize that our heritage is the most humanizing and ennobling force at our disposal.



The cynic would say that we could just as easily identify five or ten points on which African and Jewish Americans are at absolute odds. I harbor no illusions: Any number of important issues are certainly pulling African Americans and Jews in opposite directions. And, I admit that the situation of African and Jewish Americans are somewhat asymmetrical in that Jews are presently counted among society’s “haves,” while African Americans are still largely numbered among the “have nots.”

Nonetheless, if we review the values, experiences, ideals, aspirations, and modus operandi that African Americans and Jews do have in common, we realize that there are profound and substantive principles that go directly to the very soul of these two peoples. They form an undergirding of shared purpose and destiny far more enduring than the superficial, transitory grievances and flash points that cause tempers to flare and tug us to opposing corners.

We could reestablish a tremendously potent force for human decency and social justice were African and Jewish Americans to focus on the important, deep-seated values and ideals that we hold mutually dear. We would recognize that the call for black-Jewish reunion is not a contrivance, but the natural, logical conclusion to which those shared values and ideals irresistibly lead.

The first attempts at rapprochement should be low-key and modest. Some cities, Atlanta most noteworthy among them, have established coalitions of African and Jewish Americans for precisely this purpose. African Americans and Jews must put aside the “waxy buildup” of years of neglecting, even sabotaging, that compelling relationship, and find our ground for dialogue and renewed purpose.

The picture of Dr. King and Rabbi Heschel arm-in-arm is so compelling because I know implicitly that they deeply trusted the nobility of each other’s motives. They understood, perhaps without speaking a word, that the experiences, values, and ideals that African Americans and Jews share compel us to strive together for a world that is truly fair and free and just.

I reminisce bittersweetly over that magnificent image and all that it symbolized. And I aspire to a time when, in memory of those two righteous men and for the sake of all the struggles that yet lie ahead, we will find the renewed conviction to march forward together, arm-in-arm again, as it should be.