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 anti-Semitism 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. Political Arena Barney Frank 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 Frank is a member of the 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 acknowledging that America is a Christian nation. Once, when Congress held an all-night session to deal with a school prayer amendment, I was a newer member of the House and hence was drafted to chair one of the sessions in the middle of the night. It was six in the morning and I was in the chair when Congress- woman Marjorie Holt told the House: ?Mr. Chairman, we must have school prayer to demonstrate that this is a Christian nation.? A reporter later asked me how I felt, hearing that, and I told him?for publication?that my thoughts were, ?If this is a Christian nation, why do they have to get a poor Jewish boy out of bed so early in the morning to chair the House session?? A friend of mine said, ?Because it is a Christian nation, that?s why they got you out of bed?they don?t want to do it themselves.? Later, after the press had made this a big story, the Congresswoman apologized to me and said, meant to say this is a Judeo-Christian nation.? I responded, ?Marjorie, I?ve never met a Judeo-Christian. What do they look like? What do you send them in December?ewhat kind of card?? My view is that this is not a Christian nation, or a Judeo-Christian nation, or a Buddho -Judeo-Christian nation, or anything of that sort; it?s a plain old do-whatever?you-want nation, and that's a good kind to have. The point is that America is a country in which there is no majority, and in which each of the many minorities has rights fully equal with those of everyone else. When Irving Kristol says that we should agree that this is a Christian nation, he is giving an example of a very unfortunate tendency on the part of many of the con- servatives to indulge the right in sentiments and actions that they would severely criticize if they came from the left. Consider the relative tolerance with which a large number of our conservative Jewish friends have re- sponded to many of the recent policy moves of the Reagan and Bush administrations that have gone counter to traditional Jewish positions. Suppose that Morris Abram, former head of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, had fallen victim to a sleeping sickness in May and had not been awakened until January, at which time we told him: ?Look, Morris, the president has announced that we should begin conversations with the he has also ruled that Soviet Jews are no longer automatically entitled to refugee status, and in fact our Executive Branch has been rejecting the refugee applications of many Soviet Jews, refusing to admit them to the United States; and by the way, the new chief of staff at the White House is the only governor among ?fty who refused to criticize the UN resolution that said Zionism is racism.? My guess is that Morris?s response would have been, ?0y, Jesse Jackson won the election.? If the left had done what Bush has done, there would have been an incredible outcry. I still want to hear from these Jewish conservatives about Richard Nixon?the man who sent one of his chief of?cials, Frederic Malek, to count the Jews (he didn?t do that because he wanted to know how many places to set for the Seder). He sent Mr. Malek to count the Jews so that they could be fired. When Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League pooh?poohs that and says that Nixon?s man was only following orders (which I can hardly believe he said, though he apologized for it), we must realize that if any Black mayor in the country had sent a chief aide to count Jews in the local government for the purpose of reducing their numbers, Jewish leaders would have been outraged, and justi?ably. The lack of protest against Nixon?s action indicates an incredible double standard. Or consider the move by the Department of Education not to fund a video about the Holocaust. One of the reviewers said the video wasn?t fair because it didn?t give the Nazi or Ku Klux Klan point of view. Yet there has been little protest from the conservatives in the Jewish world about this statement. In the one area of current concern w/aere Jewry/9 interests really are threatened?from tbe Sclalafly and Jerry Falwell types?we nave Blacks up to help us, our interests. Today we face a strong offensive from the Christian right. Even some Orthodox Jews who do support school prayer are beginning to understand that the agenda of these Christian rightists is very narrow: if these people succeed, if we do have school prayer, it will not be the Sh?ma. If they impose their religion, it will not be our religion. Black leaders join with us on this issue, stand with us in Congress, and send their local leadership to join us. So here, in the one area of current concern where Jewish interests really are threatened?from the Schlafly and Jerry Falwell types?we have Blacks lining up to help us, supporting our interests. The Commentary crowd doesn?t understand how dangerous a person like Pat Robertson is. Here?s a man who tells us he prayed a hurricane away. How many other adult Americans do you know who think ?Rain, rain, go away? is a serious statement? The right wing threatens the civil equality that Jews have achieved?and Blacks are one of our strongest allies in resisting that threat. Although there has been hostility toward Israel amongst Blacks, the majority of Black members of BLACK-JEWISH RELATIONS 91 Congress have been very supportive of Israel. From our side, Jewish members of the House, because they care about supporting Israel, have sought seats on the Foreign Affairs Committee; and in that position they have played an important role in advancing the antiapartheid legis- lation, legislation that has been led by a coalition of Blacks and Jews. There were meetings between Black and Jewish members of Congress about how to increase aid to Black Africa without cutting aid to Israel, and about how to put pressure on Israel to stop selling arms to South Africa without adding to illegitimate anti-Israeli feelings. I think it?s important for Blacks to continue to speak PAPER: BLACKS AND JEws Blacks and Jews: out strongly against Louis Farrakhan and anti-Semitism. And it?s also important for Jews to resist people in the Jewish world who, for their own political purposes, want to exacerbate Black?Jewish tension. If there really were more things that divide us than unite us, if the underlying constituencies in the Black and Jewish communities really opposed an alliance, that alliance would not be around for long. What you see in Washington is a re?ection of reality: the actual social, political, and economic agendas of the great majority of Jews and the great majority of Blacks are perfectly congruent in this country. Cl Troubled Times on the College Campuses Chaim Sezdler?Feller espite my numerous commitments as a Hillel director to teaching, counseling, and promoting an array of possible modes of Jewish expres- sion, the problem of interethnic tensions in general, and Black?Jewish relations in particular, has compelled an increasing amount of my attention during the past three years. It is indeed true that UCLA is the most ethnically diverse campus in the country, with more than half of its student body representing people of color. Yet, I would be disingenuous ifI were to blame demographic factors for a con?ict that has asserted itself both on campuses and in major urban centers throughout the country. The issue, then, is a societal breakdown that features discord between Blacks and Hispanics; between Asians . on the one hand and Blacks and Hispanics on the other; and, also, between Blacks and Jews. This tension has been nurtured, in part, by an economic program during the Reagan years (the period during which the con?ict has surfaced and intensi?ed) that widened the gulf between the haves and the have-nots, and a social Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller; a member of the Tikkun editorial board, has ministered to students and faculty at UCLA for the past thirteen years. He is an instructor in rabbinics at the University of Judaism, is the founder of the Streisand Center for Jewish Arts at UCLA Hillel, and serves on the executive board of the Fellowship of Traditional Orthodox Rabbis. 92 TIKKUN VOL. 4, N0. 3 policy that reversed the halting progress made toward racial equality in the 19605 and early 19705. The con?ict is the legacy of a determined effort to promote the value of self-interest, and it is the function of a climate of increasing intolerance that surrounds us. I cannot help but imagine that there are people who relish the disharmony and who are in reality orche- strating the factionalization and fractionalization of American society. As to the particular aspects of the rift between Blacks and Jews, the experience at UCLA is most instructive. - Last year, the Black Student Alliance sponsored an educational forum on Zionism, at which the main speaker declared to the resounding applause of the Black attendees: ?The best Zionist is a dead Zionist.? - When Cherie Brown came to the campus to lead a workshop on intergroup relations, the Black students staged a walkout together with their Latino allies, leaving the Jews to talk to themselves. - In an editorial published in the Black student news- paper, Nommo, two years ago, the editors wrote: ?Zionists are buddies with the fascists in South Africa and the US. They are not only responsible for the repression of Arab people, but African people as well. Here at UCLA, they control the Academic Advancement Program. This is the main reason why AAP has become ?mainstreamed.? The result is an institutional apartheid