Jackson Urges Blacks and Jews to ‘turn Pain into Partnership’

Addressing a Jewish audience here, the Rev. Jesse Jackson congratulated blacks and Jews this week for “sending (President) Bush back to private life.”

And while acknowledging differences between blacks and Jews, he urged a sympathetic crowd on Wednesday to “turn pain into partnership, not polarization.”

Obviously eager to heal past rifts, which have been exacerbated by bloody confrontations between blacks and Hasidim in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights section, Jackson cited both the joint battles of the civil rights movement and the need for future projects to alleviate poverty in America’s explosive inner cities.

Jackson’s appearance was sponsored by the Jewish Urban Affairs Center of the American Jewish Congress. It followed a conference two weeks ago in which 18 Jewish organizations explored ways of getting their members involved in the needs of the inner city, in light of the Los Angeles riots last April.

The African American leader and past presidential candidate gave a spirited defense of his pro-Jewish stands in response to a questioner’s comment that while many Jews liked his message, they mistrusted the messenger.

Likening black-Jewish relations to a baseball game, in which errors were committed by both teams during earlier innings, Jackson emphasized some of his solid “hits.”

These included marching with Jews against neo-Nazis in Skokie, Ill., confronting former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev on emigration of Jews, protesting President Reagan’s visit to the Bitburg military cemetery in Germany, his praise for Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin at the Democratic National Convention and his endorsement of Zionism as a national liberation movement.

“If you look at the final boxscore,” he concluded, “I am your friend.”

Earlier this week, Jackson appeared at a black-Jewish rally in Louisville, Ky., to protest anti-Semitic and racist remarks allegedly made by Marge Schott, owner of the Cincinnati Reds baseball team. He was scheduled to appear Saturday at a board meeting of the Reform movement’s Union of American Hebrew Congregations in Palm Beach, Fla.

In the speech here, he linked his protestations of friendship with a subtle warning on the cost of rejection.

“When you go to Watts to help rebuild urban Los Angeles, if you’re met with a series of charges as opposed to open arms, you’re going to go home,” Jackson said. “We want to build bridges, not bomb bridges.”

Jackson urged a renewed black-Jewish alliance in home construction, health care and legal services in urban ghettos and in combatting racist attacks.

“We must never underestimate our (common) power to make change,” he said, “and we must never underestimate our vulnerability.”

Jackson repeatedly cited the documentary “Liberators: Fighting on Two Fronts during World War II,” which stresses the role of African American soldiers in the liberation of the Buchenwald and Dachau concentration camps. On Dec. 17, leaders of the black and Jewish communities in New York will sponsor a screening of the film, Jackson said, and he urged that similar events be held in other cities.