When American Jews cite their struggles against poverty and discrimination and ask. “Why can’t the blacks be like us?”, they are asking a “pseudo-question,” says William Kahn, executive director of the St. Louis Jewish Community Centers Association. Writing in the spring issue of the “Journal of Jewish Communal Service,” Mr. Kahn says the answer to this query is: racism, de-culturization through enslavement by white men for 200 years and oppression for another 100, and the late arrival of Negroes on the industrial scene.
“Even though the American frontier days were over by the time Jews began streaming to this country in large numbers in the 1890s and 1900s, economic frontiers were first beginning to expand, and Jews, blessed with a culture that was not ruthlessly expunged, were able to take full advantage of this expansion,” Mr. Kahn writes. Noting that “we are the fortunate children and grandchildren of those who have toiled in sweatshops,” he says that for blacks “economic opportunity did not really begin until World War II and has not yet been fully realized.” The Journal is published by the National Conference of Jewish Communal Service, a professional organization for the exchange of experiences in all fields of Jewish communal work.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
