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. 

Troubled Times on the College Campuses

 

Chaim Seidler?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 if I 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, No. 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.
0 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.?

0 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.

a 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

where the majority of African and other third world
youth are denied equal access and opportunity because
they are poor.?
0 And then, there was the Farrakhan visit in March
1988, perceived by the Jewish students as an expression
of Black hostility toward Jews. In response, the Jewish
student leadership organized a candlelight vigil that
was attended by over a thousand students, faculty, and
staff, and that was addressed by representatives of state,
I city, and student government, as well as by a host of
other civic and university personalities?all of whom
denounced Farrakhan?s racism and pledged to muf?e
his voice. The organizational overkill and the vehemence
of the effort appeared to emanate from the special
satisfaction that the Jewish students drew from the
opportunity to turn the tables on the Blacks and to
accuse them of racism (after all those years of taking a
beating, the Jews could ?nally sock it to the Blacks).

Although everyone at UCLA is very much aware of
the fact that the aforementioned confrontations were
planned by a small core of Black political activists,
these encounters bespeak a resentment that is deeply
felt within the entire Black community. There is a curious
and troubling finding in the sociological literature that
suggests that, contrary to the rule that the more educated
one is the less anti-Semitism one will harbor, Blacks
manifest increasing levels of anti-Semitism the more
education they attain.

More than in any other adult environment, Blacks
and Jews confront each other constantly at the university.
And it is precisely at the university that the vast dis-
crepancy between Jewish achievement and apparent
Black failure is so evident. I refer not only to the number
of Jewish students in the best American universities,
but also to the disproportionately large Jewish faculty
contingents and, most especially, to the current pre-
ponderance of Jews in university administration. At
UCLA, for example, the four senior vice-Chancellors
are Jewish, the provost of the college is Jewish, the
assistant vice-chancellor for student affairs is Jewish,
the dean of the graduate school is Jewish, and so on.
Wherever a minority student turns, he or she ?nds a
Jewish administrator sitting in a position of authority,
an administrator whose decisions will determine his or
her fate. This is what the Nommo editor meant in his
revealing assertion that at UCLA they (the Jews) control
the Academic Advancement Program?that is, the Jews
have too much power.

No wonder, then, that in the face of a declining
number of Black college entrants and graduates (at
UCLA six of every ten entering Blacks drop out before
completing their degree), and in light of an absolute
decline in the number of Black Ph.D.s, Blacks feel
dominated and overwhelmed by Jews at the university

and conclude that any system that could produce
such inequity must be prejudicial. (The statistics are
devastating: in 1976 one million Blacks constituted 9.4
percent of the US. total college enrollment, while in
1984, with the number remaining constant, the percent-
age dropped to 8.8 percent; in the same period, overall
minority enrollment increased from 15.4 percent of the
total to 17 percent. At UCLA there were seventy-four
Blacks graduating with professional degrees in 1976,
and only forty-?ve in 1984; there were thirty M.A.s and
M.S.s in 1976 compared with twenty-two in 1984.)

 

There must he a deaana'ation [931
Black leaders of all anti?Jewish
rhetoric, incladmg the ?Zionism is
racism? equation.

 

In and of themselves the numbers are an insuf?cient
explanation for the profound nature of the enmity. It is
only when the statistical reality is considered in light of
the present political propensities of Jewish students
and the larger Jewish community that the source of the
hostility becomes clear. Many Jewish students have em-
braced conservatism?there are twice as many registered
Jewish Republicans among the eighteen to twenty-?ve
group than among the total adult Jewish population?
and they have forged alliances with the fraternities, vot-
ing with them against minority candidates and minority
interests. The Jews on campus have made it; they have
triumphantly entered the white establishment and are
no longer considered to be an ethnic minority. And
they are ?ghting a turf war with the invading outsiders.

The situation is only exacerbated by the fact that the
Jewish community has been so visible in its opposition
to af?rmative action, seeming to take the leadership in
the struggle against what Nathan Glazer once called
?reverse discrimination.? Blacks understandably feel
betrayed. Jews claimed to be their friends and con-
vinced them that the only pathway into American society
was the road of educational achievement (just as they
did it); then, when Blacks tried to enter, Jews appeared
to slam the door in their faces.

The symbolic signi?cance of the perceived Jewish
rejection of af?rmative action cannot be underestimated.
Af?rmative action is for the Blacks what Israel is for the
Jews. Therefore, although Israel?s military trade with
South Africa is most certainly another factor in the
hostile relationship between Blacks and Jews, the anti-
Israel rhetoric is merely a code for a hurt that is being
suffered directly, right here at home. There is a type of
symmetry to the argument of ?if you deny us- our af?rm-
ative action, we will condemn your Israel.?

RELATIONS 93

o, notwithstanding the history of cooperation

between Black and Jewish congressional caucuses

and the limping Black?Jewish dialogues and the
recent public attempts at promoting a process of healing,
the animosity, anger, and resentment expressed by young
Blacks and Jews is very real. Neither group of students
has any historical perspective, and both groups? knowl-
edge of the dynamics of the civil rights movement is
woefully de?cient and biased. These students are the
?generation without memory,? to quote Anne Roiphe;
?the orphans of history,? as Paul Cowan, may he rest in
peace, so felicitously called them. These students lack
the basis for coalition building: the Blacks don?t seem
to care much, and the Jews?who until recently were
guiltily concerned?are growing impatient. To quote
Henry Kissinger, ?If they want to go it alone, let them
try.? Well, they have tried and, in Jonathan Kaufman?s
words, ?the Rainbow Coalition is the only progressive
movement in recent American history that was created
and sustained with no meaningful Jewish involvement.?
(Maybe that explains the acute aversion of Jews to Jesse
Jackson: he had the Chutzpah to do it without Jewish
support and to almost get there before ?one of our
own? even had a chance.) The prospects of the continued
alienation of Blacks from Jews, however, casts a shadow
over the vision of a pluralistic tolerant America; and it
most de?nitely jeopardizes the future viability of the
Democratic party. For there is no evidence that the
next generation of Blacks and Jews, those presently
being educated on the campuses, will have any inclina-
tion to join as allies.

What, then, are some of the ingredients needed to
facilitate the recovery of mutual respect, as well as a
commitment to Black?Jewish cooperation on campuses
and in the society at large?

0 There must be a reversal of the organized Jewish
community?s opposition to af?rmative action. Now that
Jews have made it, they can afford to be generous.

 

94 TIKKUN VOL. 4, N0. 3

0 There must be a denunciation by Black leaders of all
anti-Jewish rhetoric, including the ?Zionism is racism?
equation. Engaging in self-criticism is an important com-
ponent of a trusting relationship, and leading Blacks?-
including Jackson?have not demonstrated their capacity
to be self-critical.

- There must be the establishment of a nationwide net-
work of campus-based progressive Jewish alliances that
can reach out to Black students and rebuild the bridges.
- There must be a Black willingness to make the Jewish
issue a community priority.

- There must be, among Jews, a de-demonization of
Jesse Jackson; in other words, Jews must come to terms
with him as a legitimate American leader.

In addition, it is necessary for both Blacks and Jews
to refrain from organizing their identity around their
victim status, because of the following reasons:

0 It tends to make suffering the organizing metaphor
for each group?s identity.

0 It traditionally functions as a justi?cation for aggressive
and even violent behavior.

0 It promotes what Glenn Loury calls ?comparative
victimology? ?the competition between the two groups
as to whose suffering is greater. Jews must begin to
accept the fact that they are no longer victims and that
their never-ending claim that they are is a defense against
the accusation that they are sometimes victimizers.

Once the repair work has commenced, a new coalition
that is action- and project-oriented ought to be consti-
tuted. Such a body might do the following:

It might consider an economic development venture,
jointly funded and administered by Blacks and Jews,
for the purpose of generating entrepreneurial oppor-
tunities in the Black community.

0 It might sponsor and subsidize trips to Africa and
Israel for groups of Black and Jewish students.

0 It might work to reconstitute the Democratic party.

Finally, in this new environment, Blacks and Jews
could reassess the meaning of their ethnicity and con-
struct an identity that is composed of an intense particu-
larity that is not separatist, and of a broad universalism
that is not assimilationist.

This brings to mind a mishnaic teaching from Tractate
Sanhedrin: ?Therefore was Adam created alone, to teach
that no one can say that my father was greater than
yours, for we are all the children of one father and
mother.? But the Mishna continues: ?Great is God: for
a human stamps many coins with his/her seal and they
all look the same, whereas God placed God?s stamp on
Adam and every human being is different. Therefore
must one say, ?For my sake was the world created! Cl