OBAMA'S CANDIDACY USHERS IN A TIME FOR
AFRICAN AND JEWISH AMERICANS TO REAFFIRM COMMON GROUND

The emergence of Barack Obama as a serious presidential candidate raises again, if only by inference, the oft tenuous relations between African and Jewish Americans. While the issue may not be of widespread gravitas, it again precipitates the uncomfortable question of whether Jews and African Americans share common values or mutual distrust.

The cynic would say that the case for distrust can be easily made. Yet, the alliance between African and Jewish Americans is long, deep, and shaped by shared values and visions.

Rather than leave shared values and visions as a matter of blind, axiomatic faith, why not pause for a moment and examine the ground that African and Jewish Americans do share?

We both know the bitterness of oppression.

Negative forces are not the glue that cements lasting relationships. But one cannot deny that there must be some natural affinity between two peoples whose histories so closely parallel each other’s: enslavement, exile, ghettoization, subversion of family ties, severance from cultural identity, educational and economic disenfranchisement. African Americans and Jews share a close-up, bitter knowledge of inhumanity. Shouting matches of “who’s had it worse” demean the ravages that both our peoples have sustained. Let us acknowledge that there has been more than enough to go around.

Persecution has taught us to be more humane.

A persecuted people may learn one of two lessons from its persecution: callous cynicism or heightened compassion. All told, African Americans and Jews have chosen the latter. The ancient Hebrews were repeatedly that the ultimate lesson of bondage was kindness to the stranger in their midst. Abraham Joshua Heschel, Elie Weisel and their coreligionists cried out for social justice because a redoubled commitment to human decency is the only divinely-ordained response to the inhumanity that any one people has suffered.

Dr. King embraced would speak of the African American struggle for liberation only in the context of justice for all the oppressed. The message was overwhelmingly universalistic. Persecution has left us with the same indelible message: Pain must be replaced with compassion.

We overcome oppression through an amalgam of faith and initiative.

The loudest voices crying for social justice among African Americans and have almost invariably been ones of spiritual calling. We, more than any other people, share in the commitment that faith and determination be totally interrelated.

Neither Jews nor African Americans have ever waited helplessly until God redeemed us. Yet, neither of us has maintained that freedom could be attained solely by human devices. Divine providence is an equally crucial element of the equation. We share an abiding belief that God and humankind must work in partnership if the world is to be set on a righteous course.

Real equality comes through empowerment.

Jewish and African Americans have learned that real self-determination comes not from benevolent gifts of outsiders but 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 have concluded that their energies must be directed to attaining the education, political influence, and economic vitality that bring true empowerment, not continued subservience.

Family and heritage are central to our destiny.

No peoples place more emphasis the family as the taproot from which our personal and communal health must emanate. Enemies always knew that the surest way to demoralize us was to subvert our families. We both know that our families are ultimate in determining whether we will flourish or deteriorate.

We have also both rejected the notion that we must renounce our own “families” to conform to the societal mainstream. To the contrary, we now know that our families are the most ennobling force at our reach.

Let’s harbor no illusions: Important issues still pull Jewish and African Americans in opposite directions. Nonetheless, if we review the values, experiences, and aspirations, that African Americans and Jews do share, we realize that substantive principles go directly to the soul of our two peoples. They form an undergirding of purpose far more enduring than grievances and flash points that tug us to opposing corners.

We could reestablish a potent force for social justice, were African and Jewish Americans to focus on the deep-seated values that we hold dear. We would recognize that our reunion is the natural conclusion to which our ideals lead.

Win or lose, if Barack’s candidacy leads us to reconciliation, then the reunion of African and Jewish Americans, as his candidacy itself, will be the sweet denouement of a hard-fought struggle that has been too long in coming.