JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

Black-Jewish Relations in the united states
The Black Death not only resulted in the immediate destruction
of thousands of Jewish lives and the loss of Jewish
homes and property in hundreds of communities, but had
more far-reaching consequences. Popular imagination invested
the already odious image of the Jew with even more
horrible characteristics. It was this image that helped to shape
the stereotype of the Jew represented by *antisemitism and
racism in modern times. After the Black Death the legal status
of the Jews deteriorated almost everywhere in Europe.
Although Jews were frequently received back into the cities
where many had been killed or driven out, sometimes within
a year of the decision to expel them for good, they usually
only gained permission to resettle on worse terms and in
greater isolation than before. The position of the Jews in Aragon
and Castile (*Spain) deteriorated sharply after 1348–49.
The only countries in Europe where the events of the Black
Death did not leave a permanent scar on the Jewish communities
were Poland-Lithuania. The reconstruction of the Jewish
communities and of Jewish life and cultural activity in the
second half of the 14th and the beginning of the 15th century
clearly evidence the social and spiritual vitality of the Jewish
people in Europe in the period.
Bibliography: P. Ziegler, Black Death (1969); R. Hoeniger,
Der schwarze Tod in Deutschland (1882); J. Nohl, Der schwarze Tod
(1924), 239–73; L.F. Hirst, Conquest of Plague (1953); E. Carpentier,
in: Annales, 17 (1962), 1062–92; E. Littmann, in: MGWJ, 72 (1928),
576–600; J. Trachtenberg, The Devil and the Jews (1943, repr. paperback
1961), 97–108; S. Guerchberg, in: S.L. Thrupp (ed.), Change in
Medieval Society (1964), 208–24; Baron, Social 2, 9–12 (1965–67).
[Haim Hillel Ben-Sasson]
BLACK-JEWISH RELATIONS IN THE UNITED STATES.
Black-Jewish contacts, and thus black-Jewish relations, date
from the earliest years of settlement. Many of the tiny number
of Jews who came to America in the colonial period, especially
those from Spain and Portugal, engaged in international
trade and thus were directly involved in the triangle trade of
slavery, sugar, and rum. Others settled in many of the American
colonies. In northern cities like Newport, New York, and
Boston, Jewish merchants and early industrialists found their
livelihoods intertwined with various aspects of slavery and the
slave trade; in the South a few Jews owned or traded slaves. By
and large, these early Jews reflected the views of their white
Gentile neighbors; most Northern Jews opposed slavery, while
most Southern Jews supported it. Few were outspoken or active
on either side, although there were notable exceptions like
abolitionist August Bondi; Rabbi David *Einhorn, who spoke
out against slavery in Baltimore and had to leave the city for
his own safety; Judah *Benjamin, Jefferson Davis’s secretary
of war and later state; and Rabbi Morris *Raphall, who used
biblical passages to justify slavery. By and large, however, there
was very little direct “relationship” at all between them. Most
African Americans lived in the rural South, and Jews clustered
in the urban North.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, however, they
began to meet in Northern urban centers as two major
migration streams intersected: African Americans moving
North and into cities in a decades-long flight from oppression,
violence, and discrimination called the Great Migration,
and East European Jews fleeing the same forces in a different
setting. Both groups often ended up in the same cities, sometimes
even in the same neighborhoods. Similarly poor, they
had few housing options. And Jews, who were considered not
fully white themselves, who had had less exposure to American
racism, were less violent than others, and by and large
more radicalized by egalitarian ideologies like communism,
socialism, and trade unionism, put up less resistance when
African Americans moved into their neighborhoods. This is
why, over time, many Jewish neighborhoods became black,
not without tension but generally without violence.
These migrations enabled both communities to organize
politically to address concerns about opportunity and
equality. At the same time blacks and Jews met one another
face to face, often for the first time, in economic interactions
that more often revealed differences between the two communities
than any sense of common cause. Both developments
were critical in shaping what we call black-Jewish relations.
Migrants from both communities needed help settling
in. Both were poor, subject to discrimination and bigotry,
and both needed to help others left behind. So both communities
established defense and protective organizations. Mutual
aid societies, fraternal and trade union groups such as the
*Workmen’s Circle and the National Association of Colored
Women’s Clubs encouraged economic development and sustained
social and community ties; other agencies like the NAACP
and *American Jewish Congress concerned themselves explicitly
with political issues affecting their group. Others joined
multiracial political organizations like the Communist, Socialist,
Democratic and Republican parties, and brought their
community’s social and cultural values with them. The political
Left in particular participated actively in civil rights efforts
benefiting blacks and Jews, and stressed interracial action.
Faced with similar challenges, however, there was virtually
no cooperation between organizations from the two
communities except on the Left. On the individual level, elite
or politically well-connected Jews and African Americans often
cooperated with one another. Black socialist labor leader
A. Philip Randolph considered Jews among his most reliable
supporters; Jews were disproportionately represented on the
founding boards of the NAACP and National Urban League.
The NAACP’s first two presidents, Joel and Arthur Spingarn,
were Jewish. African American Judge Hubert Delaney defended
Jewish interests; Jewish Julius Rosenwald underwrote
black educational endeavors; before his appointment to the
Supreme Court Louis *Brandeis offered his legal services and
his contacts to the NAACP. The black press described East
European pogroms and the Jewish press covered lynchings.
Beyond these individual or informational contacts, however,
734 ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 3