NPR Commentary

by Steve North

But this one was different; it was from Martin Luther King Jr. I carefully placed it in a hardcover school notebook; it was still there two months later, when Dr. King was murdered.

Perhaps it was that tenuous connection that caused this young Jewish boy to take his death hard; and that prompted me later, as a journalist, to explore his life. I visited the Ebenezer Baptist Church; I got to know his son, Martin the Third; and I had the honor of interviewing his heroic colleague Rosa Parks.

Dr. King was a friend to our community. He decried anti-Semitism, defended Israel, and supported freedom for Soviet Jews. Conversely, Jews such as Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel and countless others were prominent in the fight for equal rights for African-Americans.

Of course, there was always racism on the part of some Jews and anti-Semitism among some blacks. But I had grown up feeling an intense bond between our two peoples, and was hurt and disappointed when the historic black-Jewish coalition began to come apart. Professor Cornel West writes, quote, "There was no golden age in which blacks and Jews were free of tension and friction. Yet there was a better age when the common histories of oppression. of both groups served as the springboard for genuine empathy and principled alliances".

So where is that empathy and those alliances today? Before this year's observance of Dr. King's birthday, an ad appeared in New York Jewish newspapers, listing two dozen interfaith commemorations being held in synagogues. The Israeli consulate hosted a discussion of Dr. King's legacy. And during Black History month, my 14-year-old niece, who attends a Jewish school , asked for help with her homework. "First of all", said Talia, I'm calling you because my mom says you remember 1965!" Thanks a lot. "My assignment", she continued, "is to write a diary of a young black woman at that time, to try to understand what she was going through; what she was feeling".

Talia already knows the difficult history of her own family. how my mother fled from Nazi Germany, how my father's aunts and uncles and nine first cousins were killed in the Holocaust. Now she was learning the effect of senseless hatred on African-Americans.

As we talked of slavery, lynchings and Birmingham bombings, I wondered whether any comparable conversations were taking place in any black family. At a time when Jews feel vulnerable and victimized from terrorism and extremism both here and in Israel, I'm not aware of many efforts among our African-American brothers and sisters to show solidarity, to have a deeper, less stereotypical understanding of Jewish history, or to share our continuing pain.

That profoundly saddens me, and I think it would have disturbed Dr. King, who once told a Jewish group "Our unity is born of our common struggle". Reverend King's comrade in arms, Rabbi Heschel, always said that Judaism does not command us to believe; it commands us to remember. So let us remember that shared struggle. Let us renew the alliance that once held so much promise. Perhaps both our communities can be more informed and respectful of each other's story, and each other's dreams. It's a hope I have every morning, as I look up at the frame on my wall containing that precious piece of paper from Martin Luther King.