Panel Analyzes Black and Jewish Relations

by Paige Rentz

Tuesday February 7, 2006

At last Monday’s panel discussion on Black and Jewish relations in the United States panelists Rachel Buff, Komozi Woodard, Jonathan Karp and Rev. Herbert Daughtry presented a timeline of cooperation and conflict to students, faculty and community members in Reisinger.

Sponsored by the SLC Religion Department, the panel was moderated by SLC religion professor Glenn Dynner, who spoke briefly about the recent history of Judaism in the United States.
Dynner began the panel by displaying a photograph on the wall depicting Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel walking together in the famous 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery. He pointed out the history of Jewish social awareness in the U.S., especially in the Civil Rights movement.

Dynner quoted Heschel as saying upon his return from the march, "I felt my legs were praying," a statement that he explains as an indication of the close relationship between God and working for the social good.

Panelists also emphasized involvement in the arts. Woodard, an SLC history professor, spoke about relationships in literature. He called attention to narrative form, explaining how Jews and African-Americans are portrayed in epic narration. He also noted the relationship between Amiri Baraka and Allen Ginsberg as an example of literary interplay between the two groups.

Karp, an assistant professor of Judaic Studies at SUNY-Binghamton, discussed cultural exchange through music. Karp claimed that both groups had strong ties to the Bible in some form, and tended to view each other through Biblical lenses. Religious folk songs of both groups were significant, and offered much to the other. His main example was Paul Robeson, a renowned actor, political activist and folk singer, who sang Jewish folk songs in Yiddish in addition to hymns like "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot." What Karp suggests is that songs from both of these folk traditions are based on preaching and contain a similar rhetorical quality and often similar messages. According to Karp, he hoped he had suggested "that the complicated relationship between blacks and Jews, though hardly an equal one, was nevertheless a complementary one. There is a profound compatibility of deep yet fascinating cultural and religious differences."

Buff, an associate professor of American Studies at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, laid out a timeline for the dual community of Crown Heights and reasons for eventual conflict. She explained that two acts of legislation in 1965 changed the population of Crown Heights drastically. The Civil Rights Act made segregation illegal, and areas like Crown Heights in Brooklyn opened as neighborhoods where black people could now live and attracted many people from Harlem and East Brooklyn. The Immigration and Naturalization Act resulted in increased immigration from the Caribbean, and Crown Heights became a place to settle. What Buff called "white flight" resulted in Crown Heights’ population becoming majority non-white for the first time in 1970.

Since the 1940s, Crown Heights had been home to Hasidic Jews, who stayed there during the period of white flight because they felt it was their obligation to stay and strengthen their community. Buff explained that the Hassids "were there and were organized," meaning that they had developed political influence and continued to wield it long after they were the minority. Because of this, conflict arose between the black population, who were seeking community control in areas like education, and the Hassidic population, who were trying to maintain their community in "the urban shtetl."

Daughtry, a local leader in Crown Heights during times of conflict, described his experiences. Explaining that it was hard to approach the subject without emotion, he claimed that "the New York power centers sought to destroy me." He continued by explaining that he was victimized by the press and actually won a defamation of character lawsuit against a major New York news source, who he said inflamed the conflict. Daughtry emphasized that the problems in Crown Heights were the result of "a confrontation between some blacks in Crown Heights and a segment of the Jewish people," but the media turned it into "an anti-Semitic question. Thus we have blacks and Jews against each other." Unfortunately, the media distortion inflamed the problem and caused great problems for Daughtry.

But Daughtry is not negative about the future. Panelists expressed confidence and hope in the younger generation. Buff even cited popular Hassidic reggae singer Matisyahu as a key example of continued cross-cultural exchange. Daughtry established an encouraging tone when he referenced Bishop Tutu in his sentiment that "I am addicted to hope."