The Los Angeles Times published recently:
For black parents in Pasadena, shootings give fresh relevance to ‘The Talk’
The fatal shootings of Kendrec McDade in Pasadena and a black teen in Florida renew the painful generations-old discussion about the need to swallow one’s anger and pride when dealing with the police.
John Derbyshire wrote a column giving a version of “The Talk” for white parents talking to their kids about blacks.
Traditional Orthodox Jews are the most likely group of Jews to actually live among blacks. In general, Jews have liberal views on matters of civil rights. Jewish money and legal help got the NAACP off the ground. During the 1960s, Jews were the most likely group of non-blacks to support civil rights for blacks. Jews voted for Obama at a higher rate than other non-blacks.
Over the past 50 years, Reform Jewish clergy have preached repeatedly that Jews will never be free in America as long as blacks are denied civil rights. For many liberal Jews, equal rights for all minorities are a staple of what they believe Judaism stands for. By contrast, those Jews who most practice Judaism and most devote themselves to studying its sacred texts, have the least desire to associate with blacks (who aren’t Jewish, Jews with black skin color are usually treated by Jews like any other Jew).
Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn, for instance, demonstrate zero desire to pray with black Christians or to even hang out with black Christians.
Traditional Orthodox Jews in America feel little kinship with non-Jewish black Americans.
Orthodox Jews in general don’t socialize with those outside of Orthodoxy.
In my life, I have never mistreated anyone on the basis of race nor have I ever seen this done, except in one direction — I’ve frequently seen blacks threaten whites simply because they’re white. I’ve had black people yell at me, curse me, and threaten me simply because I am white. My high school, Placer, was primarily white. We sometimes played a school (Grant) that was dominantly black. When we went to play on their turf, some of their black students would come over to the visitor’s side of the bleachers and try to start fights with us simply because we were white. When Grant would come to play on our turf, I never saw any of our white kids go to the visitor’s bleachers and pick on any of the Grant black kids and try to start fights on the basis of race.
Here’s an important essay by conservative historian and Orthodox Jew Dr. Edward Shapiro (father of historian and rabbi Marc B. Shapiro):
…If support for blacks is an ineluctable result of Jewish values, then one would expect that the most Jewish of American Jews — the Orthodox of Brooklyn — would be the most sympathetic towards blacks. The exact opposite, however, is true. Secure in their Jewish identity, they do not require close relations with blacks to define it. Their Jewishness rests on more substantial grounds.
…If the most Jewish of Jews are the least receptive to blacks, the Jews most supportive of blacks have often been alienated from Jewish culture and religion. (pg. 240)
…One can imagine the psychological impact on blacks of Eric Hoffer’s comparison of blacks and Jews. The example of Jews, Hoffer wrote, “shows what persistent striving and a passion for education can do…even in the teeth of discrimination. This is a fact which the Negro vehemently rejects. It sticks in his gullet… The Jew impairs the authenticity of the Negro’s grievances and alibis. He threatens the Negro’s most precious possession: the freedom to fail.”
…Jews needed blacks to authenticate their image of themselves as liberals, but blacks did not need Jews to authenticate their image of themselves as blacks. (pg. 243)
Blacks have resented Jews not because they did not do enough for them but because they did too much. (pg. 244)
In academia there is not one black scholar, apart from Julius Lester, a convert to Judaism, whose major field of interest is Jewish studies.
