Black Power, Jewish Politics Reinventing the Alliance in the 1960s

Key Question Being Explored in This Insight:

Marc Dollinger charts the transformation of American Jewish political culture from the Cold War liberal consensus of the early postwar years to the rise and influence of Black Power–inspired ethnic nationalism.

View the page of: Marc Dollinger

Institution: San Francisco State University

Explore more insights in:

Books Ethnicity and Racism Social Sciences Sociology

Media Literacy Toolkit

Faculti's Media Literacy Toolkit helps viewers critically engage with academic insights by analyzing the research context, identifying perspectives, and encouraging thoughtful evaluation.

Critical Questions to Consider ▼

What assumptions does the research make?
Are there alternative perspectives not explored?
What are the limitations of the research method?

Bias and Perspective Awareness ▼

This research comes from San Francisco State University . Reflect on how the institution's academic focus and research partnerships may shape the questions being explored.

Further Reading ▼

Read the Study

Image courtesy of interviewee. February 22, 2024

Log-in or Sign-up to Faculti
Currently viewing this subject insight as a guest. You have insight(s) remaining for this month. Login to view 8000+ figures on the platform.

Generating Workspace...

Export as PDF

The speaker reflects on their upbringing in the 1970s during a Jewish ethnic and religious revival, which initiated a journey of self-discovery and research into Jewish identity and politics. Initially titled “Turning Inward American Jews in the 1970s,” the work evolved to explore connections between Jewish identity and broader sociopolitical movements, particularly in relation to black power and civil rights.

The speaker discusses how the question "Is it good for the Jews?" was commonly contemplated among Jewish communities while exploration of Jewish identity became more public. They encountered surprising archival documents, including support from Jewish organizations for the Nation of Islam despite its anti-Semitic stance, leading them to question historical narratives and ethical implications of these findings.

They analyzed rabbinic sermons from the era, noting that many rabbis defended black power and expressed solidarity, challenging the dominant historical memory of Jews as consistent champions of civil rights. The speaker argues that the relationship between Jewish and black communities during the civil rights movement was complex, characterized by moments of unity and subsequent divergence, particularly post-1965.

Using a Y-shaped model to symbolize collaboration during the civil rights era, the speaker shifts to an X model to depict the split post-1965, eventually proposing a Z model to illustrate parallel paths influenced by black power on Jewish political activism, noting that Jewish movements like Soviet Jewry advocacy borrowed strategies from black activism.

The speaker highlights significant shifts in Jewish communal identity, linking Jewish nationalism to parallel sentiments within the African American community, while also critiquing a simplistic view of Jews as solely progressive actors. They call for an understanding of the nuanced relationship between racial privilege and the shared experiences of minority communities in striving for social justice. Ultimately, the speaker advocates for a layered comprehension of Jews' role in social justice movements, acknowledging both their progressive contributions and the complexities of their historical involvement.

Language:

Export as PDF

X-TIMESTAMP-MAP:LOCAL=00:00:00.000,MPEGTS=900000

00:00.365 --> 00:02.685
I was, raised in the 1970s,

00:03.425 --> 00:05.845
and this was a time of sort of a Jewish ethnic

00:05.845 --> 00:09.005
and religious revival, and I wanted to learn about it.

00:09.545 --> 00:13.365
Uh, it was in many ways a journey of self-discovery.

00:14.265 --> 00:17.725
And in fact, my first working title of the book

00:18.265 --> 00:22.165
was Turning Inward American Jews in the 1970s.

00:22.865 --> 00:25.605
And then as soon as I sort of got into the,

00:25.835 --> 00:30.125
into the research, I realized that it's not

00:30.125 --> 00:33.005
so much a book just about the 1970s,

00:33.005 --> 00:34.685
because it's sort of pulling me back to the sixties.

00:35.665 --> 00:39.485
And, there's this question, is it good for the Jews?

00:40.465 --> 00:42.725
And, when I was growing up, you know,

00:42.725 --> 00:44.845
around the dinner table, folks would always

00:45.465 --> 00:46.725
ask if a political issue

00:46.745 --> 00:48.245
or a candidate was good for the Jews.

00:48.705 --> 00:50.725
Um, but they never said it in public

00:50.835 --> 00:53.005
because you never wanted to let the public know

00:53.275 --> 00:55.645
that you were showing your, your Jewish identity.

00:56.265 --> 00:58.965
But I was finding that starting, like in, in the mid

00:58.965 --> 01:01.165
to late sixties, this question was,

01:01.265 --> 01:03.125
was all over the published literature.

01:03.745 --> 01:07.445
And Jews were not shy at all about putting their Jewish

01:07.615 --> 01:10.845
identities in the public forefront of political debate.

01:11.505 --> 01:15.405
Um, and then the more I dug deeper, I got to black power.

01:16.225 --> 01:19.605
And the words black power were just showing up everywhere in

01:19.605 --> 01:22.445
the sources, which I found, really surprising.

01:22.745 --> 01:25.605
And then ultimately, the book title we went with,

01:25.875 --> 01:27.045
reflected that moment.

01:27.225 --> 01:29.685
So there's two main archives in American Jewish history.

01:30.065 --> 01:31.245
Um, one on the campus

01:31.245 --> 01:33.245
of the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati,

01:33.705 --> 01:36.565
and one at the Center for Jewish History in Lower Manhattan.

01:36.905 --> 01:40.525
So I sat there and I just pulled up every

01:40.785 --> 01:42.045
box and archive.

01:42.245 --> 01:46.325
I could find archival material that had to do with any

01:46.325 --> 01:49.045
of the themes or subjects, you know, I had on my long list

01:49.265 --> 01:50.925
of things, that I needed to see.

01:51.465 --> 01:52.765
And then I start reading them.

01:53.345 --> 01:55.685
And as I'm sitting there sort of reading

01:55.685 --> 01:59.965
through the documents, I'm finding stuff that is

02:00.645 --> 02:03.165
shocking, in terms of the historiography.

02:03.365 --> 02:05.085
'cause, you know, as an academic, when we're sitting in the

02:05.085 --> 02:09.685
archives and, for example, I found a memo written

02:10.105 --> 02:13.325
by a senior leader of the Anti-Defamation League, the a DL,

02:13.385 --> 02:16.365
the nation's leading organization fighting antisemitism,

02:17.115 --> 02:20.525
sent to the heads of the regional offices across the

02:20.525 --> 02:23.805
country, supporting Elijah Muhammad

02:24.345 --> 02:27.325
and the Nation of Islam in the 1950s.

02:28.575 --> 02:29.795
Elijah Muhammad and the Nation

02:29.835 --> 02:32.115
of Islam were a pure antisemitic organization.

02:32.895 --> 02:37.075
The A DL should be the first group to be condemning.

02:37.895 --> 02:41.875
And then there was a stamp on the top of the document, not

02:41.975 --> 02:44.195
for publication confidential.

02:45.245 --> 02:47.625
As a scholar, I'm like, no, what, what do you do?

02:47.705 --> 02:50.345
I actually, I, I called my doctoral advisor from years

02:50.345 --> 02:52.385
before I said, I said, what are the ethics here?

02:52.725 --> 02:54.345
Uh, this is a really important document.

02:54.345 --> 02:55.985
He said, well, you go to the archive

02:56.365 --> 02:58.865
and you ask if there's any restriction that was

02:59.090 --> 03:01.285
Placed on that collection when it came to the archive,

03:01.785 --> 03:05.165
if there was no restriction placed you, and there was none.

03:05.305 --> 03:06.725
So in the, in the book,

03:06.725 --> 03:08.605
in the Black Power Jewish politics books, I say,

03:08.905 --> 03:12.485
on a document cited confidential, do not publish, comma,

03:12.545 --> 03:15.925
you know, and then I gave the quote, histo graphically,

03:16.665 --> 03:18.605
you know, that it just, it upended me.

03:19.025 --> 03:22.285
Um, I had to figure out, how on earth

03:22.515 --> 03:24.245
that document could have been created.

03:24.825 --> 03:28.845
Um, in that moment I started reading Rabbi sermons.

03:29.225 --> 03:31.325
Um, a lot of the rabbis put their sermons in the archives.

03:31.325 --> 03:32.485
Some of them were actually published,

03:32.485 --> 03:33.565
you know, they published 'em in books.

03:34.345 --> 03:37.085
And I'm finding like high holiday sermons

03:37.535 --> 03:40.325
where rabbi white male, middle-aged

03:40.325 --> 03:42.045
or older rabbis of

03:42.705 --> 03:46.765
big synagogues are defending black power to begin with.

03:47.265 --> 03:50.605
And then even encouraging Jews to emulate black power.

03:50.625 --> 03:53.005
And I'll tell you, in my scholarship,

03:53.785 --> 03:55.165
and in my growing up years,

03:55.645 --> 03:58.765
I have never either heard rabbis defending a group,

03:58.765 --> 04:02.125
which is largely anti-Zionist, and oftentimes anti-Semitic.

04:02.545 --> 04:05.405
Uh, and I thought, historic graphically, there, there,

04:05.405 --> 04:06.925
there is something going on.

04:07.585 --> 04:11.085
So I began in the archives, I started going backwards.

04:11.845 --> 04:13.325
I was supposed to be on the seventies.

04:13.545 --> 04:14.765
I'm already now in the sixties.

04:14.905 --> 04:17.085
And I, I said, just keep going back to the fifties.

04:18.025 --> 04:21.245
And now I find white male, senior leaders

04:21.345 --> 04:25.205
of national Jewish organizations publicly stating things

04:25.235 --> 04:28.485
like, there are essential differences between white Jews

04:28.745 --> 04:31.325
and black Americans on racial privilege.

04:32.225 --> 04:34.045
It may seem in public, like

04:34.045 --> 04:35.805
with all these marches in the black Jewish Alliance

04:35.805 --> 04:39.125
that we're getting along, but there will come a day when

04:39.125 --> 04:41.915
this is gonna end and it's not gonna be pretty.

04:42.535 --> 04:44.195
And a lot of heat's gonna come on Jews,

04:44.385 --> 04:45.635
they didn't say white Jews, but that,

04:45.635 --> 04:46.675
that, that was the implication.

04:47.095 --> 04:50.475
And I'm like, holy cow, in terms of historical memory

04:50.495 --> 04:54.235
and historiography, they, they are publicly announcing

04:54.825 --> 04:56.475
what scholars in the previous

04:56.475 --> 04:57.915
generations of writing on this.

04:57.915 --> 04:59.715
It's like these documents are not hard to find.

04:59.955 --> 05:01.275
They, they were there. Um,

05:01.375 --> 05:03.875
and that gets into the question of historical memory,

05:04.285 --> 05:06.155
which is, what are we as scholars

05:06.175 --> 05:10.275
and what are we as readers, remembering

05:10.375 --> 05:11.435
and what are we forgetting?

05:12.295 --> 05:14.075
And, what are the implications of that

05:14.135 --> 05:16.195
for the visual learners amongst us?

05:16.215 --> 05:17.675
And I am one of the visual learners.

05:18.255 --> 05:22.995
Um, I offer the historiography of this topic, with,

05:23.235 --> 05:24.595
actually three letters of the alphabet.

05:24.615 --> 05:28.035
So if we can visualize the letter Y here for a moment,

05:28.535 --> 05:30.235
we can have white Jews up here

05:30.415 --> 05:33.035
and, African Americans black community here.

05:33.415 --> 05:34.955
And they're apart. They're separate.

05:35.575 --> 05:38.155
But in the civil rights movement, they come together,

05:39.215 --> 05:41.675
the middle of the Y and then they march together.

05:41.675 --> 05:45.355
Like Heshel and King, the first histo graphic generation

05:45.355 --> 05:46.955
of books were all that.

05:47.055 --> 05:50.155
Why, whether it was a local or national or memoir or,

05:50.455 --> 05:53.995
or biography, they all talked about two different groups,

05:54.615 --> 05:56.755
blacks and Jews who came together in

05:56.755 --> 05:57.805
The Civil rights movement

05:58.425 --> 06:01.645
and then arm in arm fought together for racial justice.

06:01.865 --> 06:05.085
And, and in the historical memory, this is the most favored.

06:05.825 --> 06:08.525
So, earlier in, in my research,

06:08.685 --> 06:09.685
I argued against this

06:09.705 --> 06:12.485
and I said, okay, let, let's not use a Y let's use an X.

06:13.665 --> 06:15.465
'cause if we're gonna be honest with the sources,

06:16.275 --> 06:19.105
white Jews here and blacks here, they do come together

06:20.145 --> 06:23.965
for about 10 years from 1954, brown decision,

06:23.965 --> 06:27.645
Montgomery Bus boycott, until

06:29.045 --> 06:32.445
1964 Civil Rights Act, 1965 Voting Rights Act.

06:32.445 --> 06:36.565
When the legal protections were put in, a whole lot of,

06:36.625 --> 06:39.125
you know, white Jews declared victory and went home.

06:39.865 --> 06:42.365
And for African Americans, institutional racism

06:42.545 --> 06:44.925
and white supremacy, of course, had not been addressed.

06:45.305 --> 06:48.565
So they went and split, I'll do it this way.

06:48.825 --> 06:51.045
So today, blacks

06:51.045 --> 06:55.125
and Jews have split in, are separate again, like, like an X.

06:55.865 --> 06:59.005
Um, what black power Jewish politics, does,

06:59.025 --> 07:00.445
is moves us to a third letter.

07:00.825 --> 07:04.645
And since we had X and Y, I figured, let's go for z blacks

07:04.645 --> 07:06.245
and Jews at the top marching together.

07:06.345 --> 07:08.045
Oh, great. Isn't this wonderful? Oh, no.

07:08.065 --> 07:11.125
Mid sixties, there's that big split and they break off.

07:11.865 --> 07:16.175
But now, because of black power informing Jewish politics,

07:16.875 --> 07:19.495
we have blacks and Jews on a parallel path on

07:19.495 --> 07:20.535
the top and bottom of the Z.

07:20.885 --> 07:22.255
Even though they split in the middle,

07:22.405 --> 07:26.175
they're actually doing the same thing apart in the 1970s

07:26.175 --> 07:27.495
when I was growing up, you know,

07:27.515 --> 07:30.575
and like, you're gonna be a good Jewish activist,

07:30.675 --> 07:32.775
you fought for the Soviet Jewry movement.

07:33.595 --> 07:36.895
Um, it was a national movement. It was quite successful.

07:37.475 --> 07:39.655
Um, we had cases where thousands

07:39.655 --> 07:41.855
and sometimes 10,000,

07:41.915 --> 07:44.015
Jewish people would be marching in the streets.

07:44.635 --> 07:46.655
They'd be going to the Soviet embassy

07:46.655 --> 07:48.655
or Soviet consulates around the country

07:48.715 --> 07:51.815
and protesting Jews were getting on airplanes

07:51.815 --> 07:53.375
and getting flights to Moscow

07:53.375 --> 07:55.495
and secretly meeting with the Refuseniks

07:55.515 --> 07:57.495
to bring them religious articles.

07:57.995 --> 08:01.535
Um, there were, it's, senatorial action

08:01.715 --> 08:05.175
to bring the US government through the Cold War,

08:05.175 --> 08:06.815
to support Jewish efforts,

08:06.815 --> 08:09.095
because anything that makes the communist look bad,

08:09.095 --> 08:10.335
you know, is good for America.

08:11.355 --> 08:13.105
And in my life.

08:13.105 --> 08:15.505
And growing up, I internalized that

08:15.645 --> 08:18.265
as an extraordinary expression of Jewish solidarity.

08:19.365 --> 08:20.945
And then I started researching

08:21.125 --> 08:22.985
for the Black Power Jewish Politics book,

08:23.885 --> 08:28.665
and I began to see, how much of the thinking

08:28.765 --> 08:33.305
of Soviet Jewry activism was born in the ideology

08:33.365 --> 08:36.505
and tactics of black power, which is,

08:36.965 --> 08:38.625
you can't sit back and be passive.

08:39.445 --> 08:40.985
You've gotta speak your mind.

08:41.445 --> 08:43.465
You've got to center your own ethnic,

08:43.705 --> 08:44.865
religious racial identity,

08:45.725 --> 08:48.625
and you gotta go into the streets to get it done.

08:50.195 --> 08:52.085
Jews, who in the 1950s and

08:52.085 --> 08:54.725
before were bashful, that is a good for the Jews

08:55.085 --> 08:57.605
Question about being public in their Jewishness.

08:58.255 --> 09:00.285
Watch the 1960s go by now.

09:00.975 --> 09:02.605
Black, you know, black nationalists

09:02.605 --> 09:03.805
weren't the only ones in the streets.

09:03.805 --> 09:05.605
You know, women in the new wave feminist movement in the

09:05.605 --> 09:07.965
early 1970s, Asian Americans,

09:07.965 --> 09:09.925
indigenous peoples took over Alcatraz Island.

09:10.385 --> 09:13.485
All these ethnic racial gender groups were out there

09:13.485 --> 09:17.605
with identity politics and, the Black Power movement.

09:17.705 --> 09:19.085
Um, they were in the vanguard

09:19.505 --> 09:21.365
and they were the ones who originated it.

09:21.745 --> 09:25.005
So I argue in Soviet Jewry were not for black power,

09:25.755 --> 09:29.085
Jews would not have been able to or had the confidence

09:29.085 --> 09:31.085
or the understanding on on that.

09:31.995 --> 09:34.285
Another example, I have a chapter dedicated

09:34.345 --> 09:35.885
to American Zionism.

09:36.755 --> 09:37.975
So black power,

09:37.985 --> 09:40.335
black black power is connected to black nationalism.

09:40.795 --> 09:41.935
And this notion of

09:42.075 --> 09:43.815
how could you be a black person in America

09:43.995 --> 09:45.415
and ever achieve equality

09:46.035 --> 09:47.735
and sort of what are the responses gonna be?

09:47.765 --> 09:49.815
Well, that's Zionism.

09:50.765 --> 09:53.945
How can Jews living in the diaspora ever be fully secure

09:54.005 --> 09:55.585
and fully realized as Jews,

09:56.405 --> 09:59.145
if they're living in a majority non-Jewish country?

10:00.045 --> 10:03.345
So after the 19 67, 6 day war especially,

10:03.915 --> 10:08.025
there was a huge increase of enthusiasm on American shores

10:08.365 --> 10:11.225
for American Zionism college students going

10:11.225 --> 10:12.625
to do their junior year abroad.

10:12.625 --> 10:16.625
In Israel, public opinion polls showed 97%

10:16.625 --> 10:18.105
of American Jews supported Israel.

10:18.105 --> 10:20.225
You're not gonna get those kind of numbers today

10:20.485 --> 10:21.945
by any stretch of the imagination.

10:22.485 --> 10:23.905
And,

10:24.285 --> 10:29.045
and this enthusiasm for Jewish nationalism, I argue,

10:29.145 --> 10:31.805
and through the evidence, is, is

10:31.805 --> 10:35.085
that blacks were enthusiastic about black nationalism.

10:35.565 --> 10:37.485
I call it Rabbi Dove PERTs Elkins.

10:38.105 --> 10:41.125
And in a sermon he said, black power,

10:41.345 --> 10:42.965
and he's using the terminology of the era.

10:43.045 --> 10:45.725
I just wanna say that black power is nothing more

10:45.825 --> 10:48.085
and nothing less than Negro Zionism.

10:49.095 --> 10:51.445
Rabbi Roland Gitelson, temple Israel of Boston,

10:51.595 --> 10:52.965
this is like old white man

10:52.985 --> 10:55.725
and one of the biggest, you know, reform movement,

10:55.925 --> 10:58.205
synagogues of Boston, the black power

10:58.685 --> 11:00.405
advocate is the Negroes.

11:00.475 --> 11:03.365
Zionist Africa is his Israel.

11:04.935 --> 11:08.325
If black is beautiful, Jewish is beautiful too.

11:09.105 --> 11:13.805
And blacks and Jews share a diaspora experience about living

11:13.865 --> 11:17.325
as minorities wanting to gain a sense of,

11:17.505 --> 11:21.045
if not national sovereignty, at least an idea that each

11:21.045 --> 11:23.525
of these two communities can have greater agency in their

11:23.535 --> 11:24.565
lived experiences.

11:25.465 --> 11:29.445
Um, so I argue that American Zionism ironically would,

11:29.445 --> 11:30.845
would not have been as strong, were not

11:30.845 --> 11:32.925
for the anti-Zionist black power

11:33.245 --> 11:34.365
movement, you know, to see that.

11:35.025 --> 11:36.765
Um, and I also wanted to say

11:36.765 --> 11:38.565
that it's not just on the political left.

11:39.145 --> 11:40.925
Uh, the neo-conservative movement of,

11:40.985 --> 11:45.405
of Jews in the late 1960s who were rejecting liberalism

11:45.955 --> 11:49.485
were actually embracing a lot of black power tactics that

11:50.285 --> 11:52.725
probably the most famous or even infamous is

11:52.725 --> 11:56.165
Mayor Kahani, the racist, bigoted founder

11:56.225 --> 11:59.325
of the right wing, militant Jewish Defense League.

12:00.305 --> 12:04.725
And when he created armed Jewish,

12:04.945 --> 12:09.045
groups going through inner city neighborhoods that used

12:09.045 --> 12:11.285
to be predominantly Jewish and now we're black

12:11.285 --> 12:14.685
and brown to, to protect the Jews who were there,

12:15.795 --> 12:18.935
he wrote that this was following the Black Panthers in

12:18.935 --> 12:21.825
Oakland, California, who armed themselves

12:21.925 --> 12:24.145
to protect black citizens from police violence.

12:25.715 --> 12:28.615
So when you have a right wing racist Jew arming Jews

12:28.635 --> 12:31.975
to protect Jews following the Black Panther Party in

12:31.975 --> 12:35.295
Oakland, and they famously brought their guns into city

12:35.295 --> 12:37.655
hall, I'm sorry, to state capital in Sacramento.

12:38.155 --> 12:39.655
Um, because as long as your gun was not

12:39.655 --> 12:40.775
loaded, you were allowed to do that.

12:41.315 --> 12:43.055
Um, to me was just remarkable

12:44.115 --> 12:46.015
and untold in the historiography.

12:46.215 --> 12:48.655
I I also think untold in, in the public intellectual world,

12:48.715 --> 12:51.535
it was just sort of synagogues and JCCs

12:51.555 --> 12:55.215
and the, the general Jewish reading public, a new sense

12:55.395 --> 12:56.815
of Jewish historical memory.

12:59.005 --> 13:03.625
And that is this idea that what I grew up

13:03.625 --> 13:04.865
with in the seventies and eighties

13:04.865 --> 13:07.745
and what I think is really sort of the dominant memory

13:07.805 --> 13:10.705
of blacks and Jews in the Civil Rights Alliance and race

13:11.165 --> 13:15.705
and, and whiteness, is, is is part of the story.

13:15.805 --> 13:17.945
You know, there is, there is a part of the historiography

13:17.945 --> 13:18.945
that of course is accurate

13:18.945 --> 13:21.545
because j white Jews were, Jews were the, the,

13:21.545 --> 13:23.465
the most liberal and progressive white group in America.

13:23.925 --> 13:25.865
And in many cases, the majority of the civil,

13:26.085 --> 13:27.825
the white civil rights activists were Jews.

13:28.405 --> 13:30.545
Um, they also tended to be on the political left

13:30.605 --> 13:32.905
and not associated with Jewish organizations, you know,

13:32.905 --> 13:33.945
which is a little problematic.

13:34.445 --> 13:36.865
Um, I'd love them to take away with the idea

13:36.865 --> 13:38.025
that racial difference matters,

13:38.865 --> 13:41.075
that racial difference has always mattered,

13:41.615 --> 13:44.955
and that even middle-aged white men in Jewish leadership

13:45.065 --> 13:48.715
knew it and understood it, even though we have sort

13:48.715 --> 13:51.275
of conveniently, forgotten, forgotten it.

13:52.015 --> 13:53.115
Um, I want them to know

13:53.115 --> 13:54.915
that even the rabbis praise black power,

13:55.735 --> 13:58.275
and especially now in a time of such great division,

13:58.665 --> 14:00.835
when everyone's sort of going to their lanes and,

14:01.095 --> 14:03.515
and, you know, trying to protect themselves,

14:04.065 --> 14:07.355
that we actually have a precedent that even in another time

14:07.355 --> 14:09.595
of anti-Zionism and even antisemitism,

14:10.175 --> 14:13.915
we have mainstream Jewish religious leaders,

14:13.915 --> 14:17.355
finding ways to make, connections,

14:17.525 --> 14:19.875
which ultimately goes, I guess to the biggest thing I like

14:19.875 --> 14:22.675
to have people take, which is a, a more layered

14:23.295 --> 14:26.075
and complicated understanding of Jews and social justice.

14:27.135 --> 14:31.035
On the one hand, Jews were in the vanguard of white America.

14:31.955 --> 14:34.175
And on the other hand, not all of us were Rabbi Hessel.

14:35.005 --> 14:36.465
And how is it that we mediate

14:36.645 --> 14:38.425
and understand the interaction

14:38.425 --> 14:40.745
between enjoying racial privilege,

14:40.835 --> 14:44.825
while also being the white group that is the one most aware

14:44.825 --> 14:45.785
of racial injustice.

Quick Answers

Exploring Jewish Identity and Political Dynamics

00:00:00 - I was, raised in the 1970s, and this was a time of sort of a Jewish ethnic and religious revival, and I wanted to learn about it. it was in many ways a journey of self-discovery. And in fact, my first working title of the book was Turning Inward American Jews in the 1970s. And then as soon as I sort of got into the, into the research, I realized that it's not so much a book just about the 1970s,
00:00:35 - And, there's this question, is it good for the Jews? And, when I was growing up, you know, around the dinner table, folks would always ask if a political issue or a candidate was good for the Jews. but they never said it in public because you never wanted to let the public know that you were showing your, your Jewish identity. But I was finding that starting, like in, in the mid to late sixties, this question was, was all over the published literature.
00:01:07 - identities in the public forefront of political debate. and then the more I dug deeper, I got to black power. And the words black power were just showing up everywhere in the sources, which I found, really surprising. And then ultimately, the book title we went with, reflected that moment. So there's two main archives in American Jewish history. one on the campus of the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, and one at the Center for Jewish History in Lower Manhattan.
00:01:40 - box and archive. I could find archival material that had to do with any of the themes or subjects, you know, I had on my long list of things, that I needed to see. And then I start reading them. And as I'm sitting there sort of reading through the documents, I'm finding stuff that is shocking, in terms of the historiography. 'cause, you know, as an academic, when we're sitting in the archives and, for example, I found a memo written
00:02:13 - the nation's leading organization fighting antisemitism, sent to the heads of the regional offices across the country, supporting Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam in the 1950s. Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam were a pure antisemitic organization. The A DL should be the first group to be condemning. And then there was a stamp on the top of the document, not
00:02:45 - As a scholar, I'm like, no, what, what do you do? I actually, I, I called my doctoral advisor from years before I said, I said, what are the ethics here? this is a really important document. He said, well, you go to the archive and you ask if there's any restriction that was Placed on that collection when it came to the archive, if there was no restriction placed you, and there was none. So in the, in the book, in the Black Power Jewish politics books, I say, on a document cited confidential, do not publish, comma,

Historical Memory: Jews and Black Power

00:03:16 - you know, that it just, it upended me. I had to figure out, how on earth that document could have been created. in that moment I started reading Rabbi sermons. a lot of the rabbis put their sermons in the archives. Some of them were actually published, you know, they published 'em in books. And I'm finding like high holiday sermons where rabbi white male, middle-aged or older rabbis of
00:03:47 - And then even encouraging Jews to emulate black power. And I'll tell you, in my scholarship, and in my growing up years, I have never either heard rabbis defending a group, which is largely anti-Zionist, and oftentimes anti-Semitic. and I thought, historic graphically, there, there, there is something going on. So I began in the archives, I started going backwards. I was supposed to be on the seventies.
00:04:14 - And I, I said, just keep going back to the fifties. And now I find white male, senior leaders of national Jewish organizations publicly stating things like, there are essential differences between white Jews and black Americans on racial privilege. It may seem in public, like with all these marches in the black Jewish Alliance that we're getting along, but there will come a day when this is gonna end and it's not gonna be pretty. And a lot of heat's gonna come on Jews,
00:04:45 - that, that was the implication. And I'm like, holy cow, in terms of historical memory and historiography, they, they are publicly announcing what scholars in the previous generations of writing on this. It's like these documents are not hard to find. They, they were there. and that gets into the question of historical memory, which is, what are we as scholars and what are we as readers, remembering and what are we forgetting? And, what are the implications of that for the visual learners amongst us?
00:05:18 - I offer the historiography of this topic, with, actually three letters of the alphabet. So if we can visualize the letter Y here for a moment, we can have white Jews up here and, African Americans black community here. And they're apart. They're separate. But in the civil rights movement, they come together, the middle of the Y and then they march together. Like Heshel and King, the first histo graphic generation of books were all that.
00:05:50 - or biography, they all talked about two different groups, blacks and Jews who came together in The Civil rights movement and then arm in arm fought together for racial justice. And, and in the historical memory, this is the most favored. So, earlier in, in my research, I argued against this and I said, okay, let, let's not use a Y let's use an X. 'cause if we're gonna be honest with the sources, white Jews here and blacks here, they do come together

Jewish Solidarity and Black Power Dynamics

00:06:23 - Montgomery Bus boycott, until 1964 Civil Rights Act, 1965 Voting Rights Act. When the legal protections were put in, a whole lot of, you know, white Jews declared victory and went home. And for African Americans, institutional racism and white supremacy, of course, had not been addressed. So they went and split, I'll do it this way. So today, blacks
00:06:55 - what black power Jewish politics, does, is moves us to a third letter. And since we had X and Y, I figured, let's go for z blacks and Jews at the top marching together. great. Isn't this wonderful? no. Mid sixties, there's that big split and they break off. But now, because of black power informing Jewish politics, we have blacks and Jews on a parallel path on the top and bottom of the Z. Even though they split in the middle,
00:07:26 - when I was growing up, you know, and like, you're gonna be a good Jewish activist, you fought for the Soviet Jewry movement. it was a national movement. It was quite successful. we had cases where thousands and sometimes 10,000, Jewish people would be marching in the streets. They'd be going to the Soviet embassy or Soviet consulates around the country and protesting Jews were getting on airplanes and getting flights to Moscow
00:07:55 - to bring them religious articles. there were, it's, senatorial action to bring the US government through the Cold War, to support Jewish efforts, because anything that makes the communist look bad, you know, is good for America. And in my life. And growing up, I internalized that as an extraordinary expression of Jewish solidarity. And then I started researching for the Black Power Jewish Politics book,
00:08:28 - of Soviet Jewry activism was born in the ideology and tactics of black power, which is, you can't sit back and be passive. You've gotta speak your mind. You've got to center your own ethnic, religious racial identity, and you gotta go into the streets to get it done. Jews, who in the 1950s and before were bashful, that is a good for the Jews
00:08:58 - Watch the 1960s go by now. Black, you know, black nationalists weren't the only ones in the streets. You know, women in the new wave feminist movement in the early 1970s, Asian Americans, indigenous peoples took over Alcatraz Island. All these ethnic racial gender groups were out there with identity politics and, the Black Power movement. they were in the vanguard and they were the ones who originated it. So I argue in Soviet Jewry were not for black power,

Connections Between Black Power and Zionism

00:09:29 - or the understanding on on that. Another example, I have a chapter dedicated to American Zionism. So black power, black black power is connected to black nationalism. And this notion of how could you be a black person in America and ever achieve equality and sort of what are the responses gonna be? Well, that's Zionism. How can Jews living in the diaspora ever be fully secure and fully realized as Jews,
00:10:00 - So after the 19 67, 6 day war especially, there was a huge increase of enthusiasm on American shores for American Zionism college students going to do their junior year abroad. In Israel, public opinion polls showed 97% of American Jews supported Israel. You're not gonna get those kind of numbers today by any stretch of the imagination. And, and this enthusiasm for Jewish nationalism, I argue,
00:10:31 - that blacks were enthusiastic about black nationalism. I call it Rabbi Dove PERTs Elkins. And in a sermon he said, black power, and he's using the terminology of the era. I just wanna say that black power is nothing more and nothing less than Negro Zionism. Rabbi Roland Gitelson, temple Israel of Boston, this is like old white man and one of the biggest, you know, reform movement, synagogues of Boston, the black power advocate is the Negroes.
00:11:04 - If black is beautiful, Jewish is beautiful too. And blacks and Jews share a diaspora experience about living as minorities wanting to gain a sense of, if not national sovereignty, at least an idea that each of these two communities can have greater agency in their lived experiences. so I argue that American Zionism ironically would, would not have been as strong, were not
00:11:33 - movement, you know, to see that. and I also wanted to say that it's not just on the political left. the neo-conservative movement of, of Jews in the late 1960s who were rejecting liberalism were actually embracing a lot of black power tactics that probably the most famous or even infamous is Mayor Kahani, the racist, bigoted founder of the right wing, militant Jewish Defense League. And when he created armed Jewish,
00:12:09 - to be predominantly Jewish and now we're black and brown to, to protect the Jews who were there, he wrote that this was following the Black Panthers in Oakland, California, who armed themselves to protect black citizens from police violence. So when you have a right wing racist Jew arming Jews to protect Jews following the Black Panther Party in Oakland, and they famously brought their guns into city

Jewish Identity and Racial Privilege Explored

00:12:38 - because as long as your gun was not loaded, you were allowed to do that. to me was just remarkable and untold in the historiography. I I also think untold in, in the public intellectual world, it was just sort of synagogues and JCCs and the, the general Jewish reading public, a new sense of Jewish historical memory. And that is this idea that what I grew up with in the seventies and eighties and what I think is really sort of the dominant memory
00:13:11 - and, and whiteness, is, is is part of the story. You know, there is, there is a part of the historiography that of course is accurate because j white Jews were, Jews were the, the, the most liberal and progressive white group in America. And in many cases, the majority of the civil, the white civil rights activists were Jews. they also tended to be on the political left and not associated with Jewish organizations, you know, which is a little problematic. I'd love them to take away with the idea that racial difference matters,
00:13:41 - and that even middle-aged white men in Jewish leadership knew it and understood it, even though we have sort of conveniently, forgotten, forgotten it. I want them to know that even the rabbis praise black power, and especially now in a time of such great division, when everyone's sort of going to their lanes and, and, you know, trying to protect themselves, that we actually have a precedent that even in another time of anti-Zionism and even antisemitism,
00:14:13 - finding ways to make, connections, which ultimately goes, I guess to the biggest thing I like to have people take, which is a, a more layered and complicated understanding of Jews and social justice. On the one hand, Jews were in the vanguard of white America. And on the other hand, not all of us were Rabbi Hessel. And how is it that we mediate and understand the interaction between enjoying racial privilege,
00:14:44 - of racial injustice.

Faculti AI can make mistakes

Research

Policy

Analysis

Data

Originals

Explainers

Podcasts