Blinded By Idealism
- Oct 9, 1988
- 1 min read
From The New York Times
BROKEN ALLIANCE The Turbulent Times Between Blacks and Jews in America. By Jonathan Kaufman. 311 pp. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. $19.95.
That blacks and Jews in America differ on many issues does not, in itself, seem very remarkable; what is remarkable is the importance that these differences are given and the way they are used by each group to goad the other. In Mayor Koch's attacks on Jesse Jackson in this year's New York Presidential primary, political difference seemed to many blacks to be no more than a vehicle through which deeper antagonisms could be vented. And clearly the recent rise in black anti-Semitism points to a new bitterness that goes well beyond mere disagreement. In counterpoint to this acrimony stands the memory of the black-Jewish alliance of the early 1960's that achieved enduring civil rights reform and epitomized the dream of interracial cooperation. In this day of racial tension, the descent from cooperation to hostility between blacks and Jews is an enigma in need of explanation.
