Books in Brief: Broken Alliance

Broken Alliance: The Turbulent Times between Blacks and Jews in America, by Jonathan Kaufman (Scribner’s, 311 pp., $19.95)

It is part of twentieth-century American mythology that once upon a time blacks and Jews were allies as close as the United States and England during World War II—that blacks and Jews had a natural empathic relationship and that, together, they would create a brighter tomorrow in which each day would begin with the nation singing “We Shall Overcome.” The historical reality of black-Jewish relations is far more complex. In Broken Alliance, Jonathan Kaufman attempts to describe that complexity by dividing the history of black-Jewish relations into three phases—“Cooperation,” “Confrontation,” and “Competition and Conflict”—presenting under each heading the biographical portrait of a black and a Jew who were emblematic of that phase. In his introduction, Kaufman says his intention is to create “a tapestry that evokes a coalition that came together, worked great change, and then began to fall apart. One goal of all these chapters has been to allow people to speak for themselves and describe events as they saw them.” Oddly, that is precisely what Kaufman does not allow. He summarizes what his informants told him and seldom permits them to speak directly in their own voices. Thus everyone sounds alike, because everyone speaks through Kaufman. While he seeks to place his story within a wider historical context by interspersing quotes from presidential addresses, as well as from speeches by Jesse Jackson, Louis Farrakhan, Martin Luther King Jr., and many others over the past forty years, what is missing is a broader look at the history of black-Jewish relations. This book’s very title, Broken Alliance, indicates that Kaufman is convinced that an alliance between blacks and Jews once existed. That cannot be denied, but what can be disputed is what that alliance meant to each group and whether it was the only relationship they shared. Even a cursory look at the history of the relations between them indicates that black-Jewish antagonisms have existed in black urban areas since the Depression. Kaufman seems unwilling to face the fact that Jews care about black-Jewish relations infinitely more than blacks do. When so many Jews insist on clinging to the hope for a renewed alliance, one must ask if some of them are not seeking their own identity in what they perceive as the persecution of blacks. It is a question Kaufman does not ask, and I wish he had.

JL

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Julius Lester

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Martin Luther King Jr

Broken Alliance: The Turbulent Times between Blacks and Jews in America, by Jonathan Kaufman (Scribner’s, 311 pp., $19.95)

It is part of twentieth-century American mythology that once upon a time blacks and Jews were allies as close as the United States and England during World War II—that blacks and Jews had a natural empathic relationship and that, together, they would create a brighter tomorrow in which each day would begin with the nation singing “We Shall Overcome.” The historical reality of black-Jewish relations is far more complex. In Broken Alliance, Jonathan Kaufman attempts to describe that complexity by dividing the history of black-Jewish relations into three phases—“Cooperation,” “Confrontation,” and “Competition and Conflict”—presenting under each heading the biographical portrait of a black and a Jew who were emblematic of that phase. In his introduction, Kaufman says his intention is to create “a tapestry that evokes a coalition that came together, worked great change, and then began to fall apart. One goal of all these chapters has been to allow people to speak for themselves and describe events as they saw them.” Oddly, that is precisely what Kaufman does not allow. He summarizes what his informants told him and seldom permits them to speak directly in their own voices. Thus everyone sounds alike, because everyone speaks through Kaufman. While he seeks to place his story within a wider historical context by interspersing quotes from presidential addresses, as well as from speeches by Jesse Jackson, Louis Farrakhan, Martin Luther King Jr., and many others over the past forty years, what is missing is a broader look at the history of black-Jewish relations. This book’s very title, Broken Alliance, indicates that Kaufman is convinced that an alliance between blacks and Jews once existed. That cannot be denied, but what can be disputed is what that alliance meant to each group and whether it was the only relationship they shared. Even a cursory look at the history of the relations between them indicates that black-Jewish antagonisms have existed in black urban areas since the Depression. Kaufman seems unwilling to face the fact that Jews care about black-Jewish relations infinitely more than blacks do. When so many Jews insist on clinging to the hope for a renewed alliance, one must ask if some of them are not seeking their own identity in what they perceive as the persecution of blacks. It is a question Kaufman does not ask, and I wish he had.