Jack Salzman, Cornel West Struggles in the Promised

Introduction \\ 7
work. (The importance of the relationship between domestic workers and their
employers has yet to be adequately considered.) Memory, too, struggles with days
in Brooklyn when I was a "Jew bastard" who somehow had killed Jesus; it tries
to make sense of a scene in New Orleans in which a Black boy of about ten does
a dance for three men who, instead of giving the boy money, ask that he dance
some more, and the boy, with some exasperation, asks: "What are you, a Jew or
something?" Where, one wonders, did he learn that, and what is to be done with
such knowledge? And what is to be made of the haunting memory of a walk
through a concentration camp, and the knowledge that grandparents, aunts,
uncles, and cousins who did not leave Germany in early 1938 as I did, did not
leave at all?
Memory of a somewhat faded past, of course, becomes entangled with more
recent events: the murder of a rabbinical student in Brooklyn's Crown Heights
and the killings in early 1996 in a Jewish-owned store in Harlem recall the worst
of the tensions between African Americans and American Jews. Other moments
equally convey a sense of bewilderment about the relationship between Blacks
and Jews. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., publishes a piece in the New York Times on Black
Anti-Semitism and is immediately revered by numerous Jews: money and invitations
to speak on the subject flood his office at Harvard. But who will address the
subject of Jewish racism? It is more difficult to document, more private in its
manifestation, but no less corrosive. (Cynthia Ozick, wonderful wordsmith that
she is, would have us believe that though there are Jewish racists, there is no such
thing as Jewish racism. That's an important distinction, of course, but it really
does beg the issue. It doesn't lessen the impact, for example, of Dick Gregory's
contention that "Every Jew in America over 15 years old knows another Jew that
doesn't like niggers.") 11 Equally disturbing: I am asked to convene a closed door
session between some prominent Jews and African Americans to consider what
might be done to improve the relationship between the two groups. Everything
and anything is open to discussion, until someone wants to discuss Israel. Then,
suddenly, there is no room for discussion. Israel and Farrakhan are breaking points
of meeting after meeting. Soon, meetings seem superfluous.
Is another book on Black-Jewish relations superfluous too? Obviously, West
and I think not. What I did find superfluous was a collection of essays that would
expound on what should be done to make the relationship a strong one. 1 briefly
discussed the idea of such a book with a prominent African American scholar, who
wanted to see a volume by such personalities as Elie Wiesel and Wole Soyenka.
"We all know the history," he said to me. "Let's put together a volume that will
really get attention." But to what end, I wondered? What of significance do people
like Wiesel and Soyenka have to say about Blacks and Jews at this point? That
we must be more tolerant of one another—more accepting? That we must look
for common ground? Maybe, finally, it is time that we stop talking about common
ground and begin to confront, if we can, those differences that are as central
to the way we define our lives as is the common ground we so desperately seek.