Examining the Tangled Ties That Bind Jews, Blacks

Few subjects are more charged in contemporary society than relations between American blacks and American Jews. In the 1960s, Jews were at the forefront of white efforts to aid the cause of civil rights, while in the 1990s, black-Jewish relations were a touchstone of ethnic and racial tensions. The animosity between Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam and Jewish groups such as the Anti-Defamation League, and the violence between Hasidic Jews and neighboring African Americans in Brooklyn, N.Y., affected attitudes, local elections and national politics.

Then there is the legacy of the Hebrew Bible on African American identity, a legacy examined by several of the authors in “Black Zion,” a collection of essays on the theological influence of Judaism on African American religions. During the late 18th and early 19th centuries, African American slaves looked to the Old Testament for inspiration, seeing in Moses and the Hebrew prophets the prospect of redemption and salvation even in the midst of oppression. The belief that God would one day lead the slaves to a promised land of freedom just as he had led the slaves out of Egypt in Exodus was a ray of hope. In our century, the struggle for civil rights was articulated in the metaphor of the Old Testament prophets, as Merrill Singer shows in his essay on a sect called the “Black Hebrew Israelites,” and Susannah Heschel describes in her work on the relationship between her father, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Unfortunately, the authors of the essays in “Black Zion” manage to make a fascinating topic extraordinarily dull, and for that, the editors deserve a share of blame. Both are junior professors at Swarthmore College, and they conceived of the book as a way to look at theological aspects of black-Jewish interaction that have not received much attention. Other than the essay on Heschel and King and another on the Nation of Islam, the chapters are characterized by turgid language that somehow passes muster in contemporary academia. The desire to say something new about topics that have received short shrift is admirable, and some of the essays might have been compelling were it not for stultifying academic conventions that all but snuff the life out of an otherwise intriguing inquiry.

One particularly fertile topic is the way in which African American groups have identified themselves not just with Jews, but as Jews. Kathleen Malone O’Connor’s essay on the Nubian Islamic Hebrews dances around the perplexing issue of blacks who have claimed to be the real Jews, as does Ethan Michaeli’s essay on the Hebrew Israelites who immigrated to Dimona in Israel’s Negev Desert. These groups went much further than traditional black Protestant churches and actually claimed that the true inheritors of biblical Judaism are black Africans. In fact, as both authors show, these groups claim that the original Jews came from Africa and that their legacy was usurped by European Ashkenazim who illegitimately donned the mantle of the chosen people and then distorted the teachings of God.

That is one example of how blacks and Jews have competed for the mantle of most oppressed. Both groups have, in the words of historian Salo Baron, tended to adopt a “lachrymose” view of history, in which negative experiences are emphasized while other, more positive events are downplayed. Though touched on in “Black Zion,” that theme is largely missing from the book. American Jews have identified themselves both as chosen by God and chosen by society for persecution, as if the latter were a price to pay for the former. The sense of victimization has been a source of strength, and African Americans have tried to emulate the Jews in synthesizing both chosen-ness and victimhood. That has led to an unfortunate competition, in which blacks and Jews try to one-up each other for the status of most victimized and most special.

The wariness that characterizes contemporary black-Jewish relations has religious overtones but, at heart, this is a cultural conflict rooted in American history and in the larger panoply of European history. Attempting to examine solely the theological and religious aspects of black-Jewish interaction in America, the editors avoid the central dilemma, which makes the book obscure and far less interesting than its subject. Lachrymose or not, Jews have succeeded as few groups have in American society. That African Americans have looked to them as an example of how a once-marginalized group can excel, that they have resented Jews for somehow squaring the circle of oppression, isn’t surprising, but the story of their interaction is as American as apple pie and as provocative as a good Sunday sermon.

Zachary Karabell is a contributing writer to Book Review.