Jack Salzman, Cornel West Struggles in the Promised

THE CURSE OF HAM
A Case of Rabbinic Racism?
DAVID M. GOLDENBERG
n 1604 Fray Prudencio de Sandoval had this to say about the Jew and the
; Black:
Who can deny that in the descendants of the Jews there persists and
endures the evil inclination of their ancient ingratitude and lack of understanding,
just as in the Negroes [there persists] the inseparable quality of
their blackness. 1
one
His linking of Jew and Black was not unusual. Indeed, the explicit and implicit
comparison of these two peoples is found throughout western literature over
many centuries. Leslie Fiedler may have been right when he said, "Surely the
Negro cannot relish.. .this improbable and unwanted yoking any more than the
Jew." Nevertheless, yoked they are, at least in the minds of the rest of the world.
At various times and in various places, both peoples were said to be genetically
diseased, physically and intellectually inferior, cursed by God, oversexed, more
animal than human, ugly, smelly, and, of course, associated with the devil. From
Jerome and Augustine, who saw biblical Ham as typologically the Jew while biologically
the Black, to the 1930s American graffito "A nigger is a Jew turned
inside out," these two peoples have been typecast as reflections of one another, and
as substitutes for one another in society's categorization of the Other. Voltaire put
it succinctly: "One regards the Jews the same way as one regards the Negroes, as
a species of inferior humanity." 2
This introductory backdrop highlights the Black-Jewish tension of our times.
How ironic that these peoples, seen as mirror images of one another, have become
modern-day antagonists. And, as we see again and again, the spring-taut tension
of Black-Jewish relations has not left the academic world untouched.
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