IS THERE A CUR.E FOR ANTI-SEMITISM?
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people who went South were Jewish, and a lot of people who gave
money were also Jewish. I suppose some of them thought of themselves
as active Jews, not believing Jews but active Jews who psychologically
thought of themselves as Jews. Most of them, at least the young people
who went South, however, thought of themselves as radicals and not as
Jews. Their Jewish identity was a very problematic matter for them, be–
cause Jewishness was identified with tradition, and they thought of
themselves as being on the cutting edge of progress and outside tradition.
Even before Stokely Carmichael attacked Israel, Jewish nationalism
embarrassed and sometimes even mortified these people. So [ think it's a
very complicated issue. I would say that very few Jews who joined the
civil rights movements thought of that as joining a cosmic mitzvah.
Edith Kurzweil: Thank you. I just want to make one point here.
Historians like Gene Genovese and Robert Wistrich, when they teach,
will in fact touch on all of this history. But it's in the specific studies,
where you have what Robert Wistrich referred to as victimology and
martyrology, that these things are not being mentioned at all. There,
you find a kind of ideologizing and politicizing of student groups. It
started out in black studies; it went on to women's studies,
to
Holocaust
studies, and then
to
a few others. From what I have observed, as
someone within the university, this is where we will have to start
working. Or maybe, as some argue, we ought to abolish these kinds of
studies which create academic ghettos, and go back to what used to be
called general studies.
Qllestion:
I'd like to comment on the susceptibility of Jews as targets of
black racism, and on our inability to respond effectively. I'd like
to
sug–
gest that there is a connection to the ineffectual American Jewish re–
sponse over many years to Arab racism against Israel, and the subtle de–
monization of Israel in the American media which continues to this very
day. I think it has affected our Jewish pride and our ability to respond.
We haven't responded to Arab racism against Israel effectively in the
media, and we haven't figured out how to respond to black racism. I
think there's a lack of Jewish pride, which is apparent in some of the
things that are going on in Israel today,
~earing
the society apart. In our
own communities, in organizing, we can't find this Jewish pride. Some
of it has to do with not being able to make the case for Israel, so when
it's attacked, we just let it go by. So we're perceived as a soft touch by
black racists, and we don't know how to respond to them either.
James Sleeper: As much as we've been talking about how to respond
