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While this approach coincides with President Nixon's plans for "black capitalism," it is not the only solution. The Jew has ample resources within his religious tradition to eliminate inequities that cause interracial tension. Last year, for example, at the suggestion of some Boston Jews, a group of Negro tenement dwellers presented their grievances against their Jewish landlord to a beth din, or religious court. "This was a bunch of very old guys who haven't read James Baldwin or Rap Brown," says Boston's Leonard Fein, "and they wouldn't know a social-action council if they fell over it. But they know the Talmud and the Bible." Using these texts, the judges improvised a solution that satisfied both sides. The landlord agreed to make overdue repairs, and his tenants promised to do their share in good housekeeping. So far the bargain has been kept.
Tuition Paid by Tolerance
What this modest example suggests is that the American Jew is capable of responding creatively to the challenge presented by black antiSemitism. "We Jews, of all peoples," says Rabbi Arthur J. Lelyveld of Cleveland's Fairmount Temple, "should be able to feel empathy with Negro frustration and anger. When we look deep into our Jewish conscience, we admit that it is right that the Negro should expect more of us." Lelyveld has given his share; as a civil rights worker in Hattiesburg, Miss., five years ago he was attacked and severely beaten by two white men. Says Charles E. Silberman, author of Crisis in Black and White: "Justice is an act, not a state of mind. Our obligation in no way hinges on the merits of the person or the people to whom justice is owed." To expect or solicit the love of the black, he says, is both pathological and pathetic.
However negative black anti-Semitism may be, it can have a positive aspect for both democracy and the Jew. If the U.S. is to be a genuinely pluralistic society, then its goal is not to assimilate minorities, but to let them—within reason—live together, each in its own way. The Jews have had practice in this. The black is just beginning the course, and it is unfortunate that part of the cost of his tuition must be paid by Jewish tolerance. But so long as U.S. society repudiates the anti-Semitic hostility of the black and prevents it from bursting into open, physical violence, the Jew is in no real danger.
Many Jewish religious leaders are worried about another danger—that the Jew may be losing his identity. Today's militant black asserts his identity, and this, they argue, is a message that the Jew should understand and apply to himself. If the blacks succeed, and if in the process the U.S. learns better to tolerate diversity, Jews will be among the gainers, because they will be that much freer to assert their own identity. That will be the moment, many Jewish leaders feel, when Jews will come back into the civil rights movement—out of self-interest, not out of charity.
In the meantime, even if their help is now repudiated, all white Americans, Jews included, must work toward a goal —the goal of raising the condition of the Negro in American society, thereby eliminating many, if not all, of the causes of black antiSemitism. When that is achieved, the alliance of the two communities, now near the breaking point, should be stronger than ever.