Black-jewish Relations Assessed

Reform Jews cannot use the specter of Black anti-Semitism as a “pretext” for writing off the Black community, Albert Vorspan, vice president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (UAHC), told the UAHC’s 55th biennial convention in Toronto last week “Anti-Semitism must be condemned, whether it issues from an army general, a cross-burner, a Klansman, a PLO genocider or a Black extremist making media hay out of the firing of Andy Young, “he declared.

“But for us Reform Jews that cannot be the end of the matter. If some Jews are prepared to write off the Black community, using the specter of Black anti-Semitism as the pretext for withdrawal, that cannot and must not be our response in the Reform Jewish community. ” Continuing, Vorspan told the 4000 delegates from the United States and Canada: “There is a commonality of interest, a shared vision of a better and more compassionate society that persists and that epitomizes the shared concerns that are still there to be nurtured.”

New York State Senator Carl McCall, the ranking Black member of the New York Legislature, who was recently nominated to the post of Deputy U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, said that cooperation between Blacks and Jews was “both a religious duty and a common expression of enlightened self-interest.” The “theological mandate” for cooperation, he said, stemmed from a “shared faith in the God of Israel.” There was also a “social and political mandate for cooperation, ” McCall added, “that derives from a shared experience with oppression, discrimination, prejudice and bigotry.”

“In an age of demands for balanced budgets, tax cuts and spending reduction, “he said, “our shared faith and our common experience require us to join in a cooperative and concerted effort in behalf of victims of unemployment and welfare dependency, the aged and infirm and the vast hordes of aimless, youth whose dreams for the future have yet to be conceived.”

UNPUBLICIZED BLACK-JEWISH DIALOGUES

Vorspan agreed that there was “a commonality of interest and a shared vision of a better and more compassionate society” that linked the two communities. He disclosed that Reform synagogues across the country were currently engaged in unpublicized dialogues with Black groups in “hundreds of communities” on such issues as public education, crime, jobs and housing.

On the national scene, he said, UAHC officials have mapped plans with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People “to promote a new and more mature, tougher, franker and more effective relationship between those Blacks and Jews who care about each other and who refuse to be driven out by the bigots, the demagogues and hard-liners in our respective communities.”