PERSPECTIVE ON BLACK-JEWISH RELATIONS : Rejecting Hate, Renewing Alliance : In talks across the country, thousands of young people say they’d be willing to work for a larger social transformation.

For the past three weeks, we’ve been conducting public dialogues between Jews and blacks around the country in the wake of the publication of our book, “Jews and Blacks: Let the Healing Begin.” The results have been encouraging.

In cities from Boston to Atlanta and from Washington to Los Angeles, we’ve discussed some of the toughest issues. Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam. The Jewish role in the slave trade. Crime. Zionism (and whether it has any legitimacy as an issue dividing the two communities). Negative images of blacks in the media--and the role of Jews in Hollywood and other media. Whether Jews are really white? The different socioeconomic positions of Jews and blacks.

Because we disagree on many of these issues, we’ve been able to model a dialogue that does not degenerate into preaching to the converted.

The dialogues in each city have attracted thousands of people from each community, often those in their 20s and 30s who feel most charged up about the issues.

It hasn’t always been easy.

Some callers on talk-radio shows have accused each of us of being overly accommodating, or overly insensitive, to the needs of the other’s community.

Some African Americans seemed unconvinced that there was any point in blacks building an alliance with Jews or anyone else. Others repeated the standard anti-Semitic charges that have been spread by literature circulated by the Nation of Islam or that have been given credence by statements from the Rev. Louis Farrakhan.

Yet we also heard moving statements of pain in both communities. We heard one 25-year-old black woman tearfully describe her experience trying to act respectfully and rationally toward whites. Painfully she recounted coming to the awareness recently that she had never once been treated with respect by a white person or a Jew. Without rancor or guile she turned to Cornel West and said, “It’s obvious that they treat you with respect. But what is it that I haven’t done that you are doing that makes that possible? Please explain to me, because I’ve been trying so hard.”

Some liberal Jews who had risked jail and their careers for the civil rights movement, and who continue to be in the forefront of struggles for economic justice in the 1990s, talked of their pain facing hostility from some blacks. “Jews have been the most loyal fighters for social justice,” one young woman told us, “so it is particularly painful to have our community singled out to receive the rage that blacks might more appropriately address to America’s elites of wealth and power, most of whom are not Jewish. That misdirected rage makes me invisible.”

The good news is this: The overwhelming majority of young blacks and young Jews we met were excited about the possibility of re-creating some kind of connection and even alliance between these two communities. They welcomed our suggestions about a campaign against anti-black racism in the Jewish community and anti-Semitism in the black community. And they rejected the hate speech that pours as much from the mouths of a Howard Stern or Jackie Mason as from the mouths of a Khalid Abdul Muhammad or Leonard Jeffries.

Most of the young people we spoke to wanted the campaign of reconciliation to move beyond fighting racism and anti-Semitism within our own communities to addressing the problems of the larger society. Drawing on the resources of the biblical tradition that has deep roots in both communities, Jews and African Americans could critique the dominant ethos of materialism and selfishness that remains the central motif of contemporary America. The current attempts by a conservative-dominated Congress to scapegoat the most vulnerable, aid and abet the most powerful and manipulate the insecurities of the middle class is only the latest stage in the frenetic evolution of contemporary me-firstism that reaches its fullest expression in overt racist appeals (“My group counts, screw everyone else”). The ultimate logic of a mean-spirited attitude leads to Oklahoma City. Jews and blacks can lead a charge to turn this around.

One obstacle that was pervasive: the attempts by the media to fit our public dialogue into its own “master discourse” that highlights the tensions and underplays the solidarity. Radio and television interviewers insisted on trying to get us to replay for their audiences the areas of disagreement and division, and were resistant to our attempts to emphasize the possibilities for reconciliation and healing. Such a media bias had underplayed the striking results of the 1994 elections and its significance: 78% of Jews voted for Democrats, a higher percentage than any other ethnic group except African Americans.

Arguably, while African Americans were voting their economic interests, Jews were voting against their economic interests, rejecting the tax-cutting rhetoric of Republicans and opting instead for a commitment to social justice. This was solid evidence that an objective alliance remains a salient reality. That so many people in both communities seemed unaware of it was powerful indication that it may not be easy to break through the media’s master-discourse with its insistence on discord and division.

In the trade union movement, in growing relationships between some black churches and Jewish synagogues, in projects like Boston Freedom Summer, the Atlanta Black-Jewish Coalition, the National Coalition-Building Institute in Washington and in a variety of campus student groups, we witnessed the alliance at work.

The good news from our trip was that there are thousands of young people in both communities who are ready and excited about the possibility of solidarity and who would be mobilized by a campaign aimed at larger social transformation.