Catholics, the Protestants. Today many believe in devils
again and burn them, burn them without trials, and in
the name of Allah or Adonai or the White Race or the
Military or the economic doctrine of choice. When
Ben-Gurion allowed the religious parties a place in the
Israeli government, he clearly thought their power would
wane. He was wrong, because Zionism?which was his
religion, his fundamentalism, his way of avoiding death?
lost its fervor, lost its clear path to utopia. A normal
state, like other normal states, could not be an end-
time, a spiritual fountain, a place to avoid death. The
ultrareligious have become more numerous in Israel
because fundamentalism ?lls the need, carries on an

PAPER: BLACKS AND JEws

Black?Jewish Relations:

ideal, keeps the chosen people from death, keeps them
alive forever.

We nonfundamentalist people have doubts about
our truths. We have positions, but not positions for
which we would harm or silence others. We have opin-
ions, but opinions are not the same as truths; and
for the most part we are people who know we are going
to die, and we are able to live anyway. There is some
honor in that stance but no immortality; and it looks as
if we will be abandoned, with only our honor to defend

us as humankind raises its communal ?st against the
blasphemers. 

A New Vision

 

Claerie Brown

we should recognize that the romanticization of

the civil rights movement as the era of strongest
Black?Jewish cooperation may keep .us from seeing the
signi?cant headway being made today between Blacks
and Jews. We can do effective coalition building only
with true partners. And now, maybe for the ?rst time,
Blacks and Jews are coming to each other as partners
in the dialogue. Coalition building is not always easy. It
often involves painful expression of tough emotions
and issues.

When the Jewish Theological Seminary calls, as it
did last week, to invite me to train rabbinical students
in Black?Jewish coalition building, I realize that there
is for the ?rst time an increased desire for more effective
alliance building between Blacks and Jews.

Twenty years ago, I spoke at synagogues in Los
Angeles, trying to encourage Jews to speak out against
systematic attacks on the Black Panther movement, but
many Jews would not listen. Ten years ago, I tried to
launch an initial Black-Jewish dialogue in the Boston
region, but the leadership links between the Black and
Jewish communities were nonexistent. The dialogue
failed. Many of those leadership links now exist, and
Black?Jewish dialogues are taking place in cities through-
out the United States.

I looking at the history of Black-Jewish relations,

 

Cherie R. Brown is the executive director of the National
Coalition Building Institute in Arlington, Massachusetts.

88 TIKKUN VOL. 4, No. 4

The media have played a role in sensationalizing the
difficulties between Blacks and Jews, convincing many
of us that the tensions are insurmountable. Four years
ago, the Evening News? with Dan Rather decided
to run a short segment about Blacks and Jews. The
American Jewish Committee, in cooperation with the
National Coalition Building Institute, had just produced
a videotape of our work between Black and Jewish
college students at Brown University. We had the only
documented material about Black and Jewish young
people. When the CBS producers arrived in Boston,
even as they were getting out of their car they said to
us, ?The kids hate each other, don?t they? You have
scenes of Blacks and Jews throwing oranges at each
other, don?t you?? When the producers viewed a scene
of two Black students participating in a role play,
practicing how to dispel the in the Black com-
munity that Jews own all the power and wealth, the
producers said to each other, ?We know those kids
really think that.? As it became clear that the producers
were going to distort all the positive efforts presented
in the dialogue, I refused to let them use the video
material. They threatened me, claiming that I was just
like the Israeli censors, trying to hide the truth. I am
aware that the producers visited ten to ?fteen cities
where cooperation efforts between Blacks and Jews
were being undertaken, but the ?nal story that was
broadcast on national television did not include any of
these efforts. All that the report showed was a clip of

Alan Dershowitz, a professor at Harvard Law School,
who claimed that when the Black students at Harvard
Law School invited a PLO speaker, it was ?Get-the-Jews
Week at Harvard.? The other segment on the broadcast
quoted James Baldwin saying that Jews are simply white
and do not care about Black issues any more. It is no
wonder that we are left confused about the status of
Black ?Jewish relations.

We need to stop talking about Black anti-Semitism.
It is not Black anti-Semitism; it is anti-Semitism, and it
exists within the Black community. When we under-
stand anti-Semitism more accurately from a progressive
analysis, we ?nd the tensions between Blacks and Jews
to be more understandable and therefore easier to
reduce. Blacks and Jews are systematically pitted against
each other. Jews in the United States have risen eco-
nomically to ?ll what might be called ?middle-agent?
roles within the class structure. Jews are the teachers,
social workers, managers, professionals, shopkeepers.
We exert daily control over the lives of other oppressed
peoples, among them Blacks. To Blacks it appears as if
Jews are the major power. Jews are not a part of the
corporate elite, but in their current jobs they become
an easy target for Black resentment.

Both Blacks and Jews have mythical, unreal visions
of the other group?s power. I wish Black people in the
United States had the kind of power that those Jews
who feared Jesse Jackson?s presidential campaign claim
they have. I wish Jews had the kind of permanent,
unshakable political voice that Blacks claim they have.
By exaggerating each other?s power and in?uence, both
groups are weakened; they fail to join to defeat the
major forces of corporate power in the United States.

dynamics that go hand in hand with the class dif-

ferences. At one workshop at Columbia University,
I listened to a dialogue between Black and Jewish
students that I think captures many of the 
barriers preventing Black?Jewish understanding.

Most of the Black students participating in our work-
shop had recently attended a rally at Madison Square
Garden at which Reverend Louis Farrakhan spoke. They
were eager to tell Jewish students how meaningful it
had been for them to be in an audience of twenty
thousand fellow Blacks. The Jewish students responded,
?Do you know what it is like for us to hear Blacks being
encouraged to chant, ?Who killed Jesus? The Jews killed
The Black students shot back, ?Don?t insult
us! Do you think that we?re that stupid to buy all those
slogans about Jews? We ignore his anti-Jewish remarks.?
The Jewish students answered, ?Do you think, with all
of our history of anti-Semitism, that we can easily say,
?Oh, great! We?ll just trust 

I is also important to identify the 

When we Jews come at Blacks with our anxieties,
concerns, and mistrust, Blacks think that we?re being
paternalistic, that we do not believe they are smart
enough to do their own thinking. When Blacks try to
reassure us that there is no real danger, we hear their
reassurance as a blanket dismissal of our legitimate
concerns. We hear in their comments an unaware anti-
Semitism and a lack of understanding of the historic
basis for our insecurities.

 

Blacks and Jews can be won over
to e?ective alliance building, not by
denying tbe very real
economic anal barriers
between tbe groups but
by tackling tbese barriers bead on.

 

Five years ago at the University of Black
students told Jewish students that they did not have
time for Black ?Jewish dialogue because they wanted to
focus their primary attention on Black concerns. Blacks
often fear that linking racism with other issues becomes
a convenient way not to have to deal with racism. Too
often, these fears have been justi?ed.

For Jews, the decision of Blacks not to engage in
Black?Jewish dialogue reinforces Jewish isolation. Other
oppressed groups have not always understood the on-
going nature of Jewish oppression and have left Jews
out. As a result, Jews react to their increased fears of
isolation by making further demands on Blacks. Blacks
experience these demands as unaware racism.

We need to understand how these intergroup dynamics
are played out in daily relationships between Blacks
and Jews. When I ?rst began to co-lead workshops with
a Black colleague, we had a challenging time working
together. Whenever I became anxious during a workshop,
I would try to take charge of the situation and offer
remedies to the problems at hand. As a Jew, I had been
trained to respond quickly to dif?culty. When I acted
like this around my Black colleague, she perceived my
behavior as racism?which it was: I was not trusting
ber competence. The more anxious I became, the calmer
she became. As a Black raised in Harlem, she had been
trained to remain calm when faced with dif?culty. I
resented her reassurance, feeling that she was dismissing
my anxiety and leaving me alone to deal with it; and I
experienced this as her unaware anti-Semitism. Until
we understood each other?s histories and learned how
to be helpful to each other, we were unable to work
together as effectively as we wished.

This leads me to my ?nal point: the need for a

BLACK-JEWISH RELATIONS 89

systematic methodology that can identify and help Blacks
and Jews work through their unconscious negative atti-
tudes and behavior toward each other. Research that I
have done has shown that personal storytelling was the
most reliable method of altering negative stereotypes.
Stories that included the honest sharing of speci?c
encounters with racism and anti-Semitism, especially
when those stories were told with emotion, were the
most effective.

For example, my Black colleague, Arlene Alan, and
I were invited to lead a program last year at the University
of Maryland, following six months of tension between
Black and Jewish students. Cuome Toure (formerly
Stokely Carmichael) had been invited six months earlier
to address the students. During his presentation he
said, ?The? only good Zionist is a dead Zionist.? A
Jewish student in the audience stood up and said, ?I?m
Jewish and I am proud to be a Zionist!? The Jewish
student was assaulted, and a large scuf?e broke out
between Black and Jewish students which made the six
o?clock and the eleven o?clock evening news. Neither
Black nor Jewish students had been able to speak to
each other for the next six months.

At one point in our workshop I brought up to the
front of the group the very Jewish student who had
claimed six months earlier to be a proud Zionist. I
asked him to share what it had been like for him the
day Cuome Toure had come to campus. He responded,
?My father left Germany in 1939; the whole time I was
growing up he tried to tell me how frightening it had
been to be in Germany in the late thirties. I didn?t
understand what he was talking about. After all, I?m
twenty-one, and I have never felt that kind of fear as a

PAPER: BLACKS AND JEws

Blacks and Jews in the

Jew living in the United States. But the day I heard
Cuome Toure speak I felt the kind of fear that my father
had been talking about.? The Jewish student was visibly
shaken, and he began to cry.

After he sat down, a Black student, the head of the
Black organization that had brOught Cuome Toure to
campus, stood up, looked over at the Jewish student,
and said, ?When you were speaking, I felt that I could
remove your face and put a Black face there; and he
would be saying the same thing.? The Black student
also had tears in his eyes.

Following this storytelling, participants were taught
speci?c skills for effectively interrupting racist and anti-
Semitic slurs and jokes. Then the participants were
taught how to take emotionally charged political issues
that have divided Blacks and Jews, such as af?rmative
action, and to seek common concerns.

All of my experience demonstrates that Blacks and
Jews can be won over to effective alliance building, not
by denying the very real economic and 
barriers between the groups but by tackling these barriers
head on. Such alliance building will require two major
efforts: ?rst, an accurate understanding and analysis of
antivSemitism and racism that outlines the particular
way in which Blacks and Jews are pitted against each
other in a class system; and second, a method of healing
that enables Blacks and Jews to listen fully to each
other, to understand from their hearts the pain of each
other?s past and present oppression, and then to learn
concrete, speci?c tools for becoming more effective
advocates for each other. Only then will an effective
coalition, a coalition between equals, be formed. El

Political Arena

 

Barney Fran/e

and Jews on college campuses and in some other
arenas. And we must defend ourselves in them.
But I am not so pessimistic about the relationship
between Blacks and Jews in the political arena. The
efforts by people on the right to break up the liberal
Black?Jewish coalition have, on the whole, been unsuc-

I understand that there are problems between Blacks

 

Barney Fran/e is a member of [be House of Representatives.

90 TIKKUN VOL. 4, No. 3

cessful. I read an article by Irving Kristol printed in
Commentary in which he basically says, Look, Jews,
we?ve got to knock this off with Black people, because
they?re not really such good friends of ours, and let?s
line up with the right wing instead.?

These conservatives argue that the right will be best
for Israel and that we can make strong alliances with
people like Jerry Falwell. There are, they admit, small
concessions that must be made to these allies, like