" i· .. 'Commentary t , ~~ The Bl~fk "Revolution & the Jewish Question I Earl Raab BOUT A HALF-CENTURY AGO, Louis same distinction has been made between "objec­ A Marshall" the eminent constitution­ tive" and "subjective" anti-Semitism, "concrete" al lawyer who was' also president of the American and "abstract" anti-Semitism, and the real Jew Jewish Committee, said fIrmly: "We do not recog­ and the mythical Jew as target. But by whatever nize the existence of a Jewish Question in the names, and whatever the relationship between the United States." That distasteful phrase, "The two kinds of anti.5emitism, Jews know the differ­ Jewish Question," evoked the European model: ence. Not getting a particular job is one thing. A !S pogrom is another. )­ the political uses of anti-Semitism. Marshall made ,n the statement precisely because he saw that the Political anti-Semitism did not become serious Jewish Question in the political sense was coming in America until about 1920. In that year the 'alive in the United States. It did, and preoccupied staid Christian Science MonitO)· carried a lead ed­ the domestic Jewish consciousness for the next itorial entitled "The' Jewish Peril." A few years , quarter of a century. later, a book called The International Jew: The For the past quarter of a century, there has' World's Foremost Problem had a run of half a been no serious trace of political anti-Semitism in million copies. The articles in that book-"The America. Any suggestion today that "it could hap­ Scope of Jewish Dictatorship in America," "Rule pen here," has had an antique flavor and would of Jewish Kehilla Grips New York," and "How be widely branded as phobic, paranoid, and even the Jewish Song Trust Makes You Sing"-and amusing. There is the old joke about three men many others of a similar bent had already re­ who were asked to write an essay about the ele-, ceived wide distribution in Henry Ford's national phant. The Englishman wrote on "The Elephant newspaper. And Henry Ford, it must be recalled, and the British Empire," the Frenchman on "The was not a Los Angeles mail-order crackpot. In :,1\' " Elephant 'and Love-Making," the Jew on "The 1923, at the height of his anti-Semitic fulmina­ ;,1 Elephantand the Jewish Question." But we have tions, Collier's reported that he led all other pos­ ,j learned a great deal about the Jewish Question, sible candidates, including the incumbent Presi­ :;l and if the subject of the essay were ''''estern de­ dent, in its national Presidential preference poll. ~ mocracy instead of el~phants, the joke would no Other straw polls' agreed. William Randolph longer be a joke. The potential for political anti­ Hearst annQunced that he was prepared to back Semitism, aside from its special interest to Jews, Ford for that office. The KKK during the same turns out to be a particularly useful vantage point period had a membership which blanketed at It­ least a quarter of all white Protestant families in es from which to. examine the state of the general cy society. And responsible people are again having America. And at one point in the 1930's, someone In to deny nervously that there 'is a Jewish Question identifIed about 150 organizations whose primary ns in America. The American Jewish community's business was the promotion of political anti-Sem­ 'st concern with its own security may be coming full itism. Father Coughlin, who reprinted the Pro­ circle. tocols of the Elders of Zion in his national news­ From the end of ''''orld War I to the beginning paper, had a regular radio audience of millions. of World War II, the American jew's defense To these seemingly mass assignations with anti­ efforts were increasingly keyed to political anti­ Semitism, the organized Jewish community re­ Semitism, as distinct from garden-variety discrim­ sponded with a program based on the image-of­ ination. Political anti-Semitism may be defIned as the-Jew theory of anti-Semitism. At the national the attemptl~o establish the corporate Jew as a B'nai B'rith convention in 1930, Sigmund Living­ generalized public menace, the implicat,ion being ston said that the necessity was "to educate the that some official public remedy is called for. The great mass in the truth concerning the Jew and to demolish the foibles and fIctions that now are y EARL RAAB is executive director of the Jewish Community part of the mental picture of the Jew in the pub­ ReI.alions Council of San Francisco. He has taught at the UnIversity of California and San Francisco State College, lic mind." The Jewish community mounted what and has written widely on issues of intergroup relations. must certainly have been one of the most prolific J "., ,,' -'-----.... ......... 24/COMMENTARY JANUARY 1969· mass educational programs of all time. Yet anti­ from the Civil Rights Revolution to the Negro Semitic activity and popular support of avowed Revolution. The shift should have been quite pre­ anti·Semites were at their height when summarily dictable. Equal opportunity is not equal achieve­ cut off by America's bitter embroilment with the ment, except for those who are equally equipped world's arch anti-Semite. to compete. An' enclave population now existed A few short years later, America seemed to whose cultural and educational "equipment" had emerge from the war as a nation in which the been comprehensively' stunted for generations. Jewish Question was miraculously dead. Ameri­ The American society, moreover, had deliberately can Jews, of course, felt that the war had been created this enclave population_ For the impov­ fought-and won-around the Jewish Question. erished and uneducated immigrants to America Maybe they believed thatlother Americans felt the equal opportunity had been enough, because same way. Maybe they believed that other Ameri­ other societies had depressed them. In their cans were responding en masse to the revelations minds, America owed them no more than an op­ of the Holocaust. In any case, political anti-Sem­ portunity, and the gradualist road to parity itism seemed stripped of any respectability; in­ which all emerging groups have traveled. But deed, anti-Semitism became one of the cardinal America owed the Negroes more than opportu­ political sins. The nation was even able to sustain nity. The battle-cry of the Negro Revolution was a major red-baiting demagogue who carried Cohn not opportunity, but parity in the economy as and Schine on his hip and flirted with anti-Sem­ well as in the society, starting with an instant end itism not at all. Israel was established. Stalin died. to poverty. Toward that goal, the demands were American Jews settled down to a new security. not just for equal treatment, but for compensa­ tory treatment on a kind of reparations basis. T THE SAME TIME something else was For the Negro community, this stage was a log­ A happening in the country. The Jew­ ical extension of the Civil Rights Revolution. ish Question was apparently being supplanted by But for the organized Jewish community some the Negro Question. And the defensive energies adjustment was required. The apparatus <;>f the and apparatus of the Jewish community moved Jewish community committed itself to the cam­ from one to the other. At least, that is the way it paign against poverty, and throwing the slogans turned out. A surface theory relating to Jewish se­ about equal-opportunity-under-the-Iaw into the attic, began to look for a role in that campaign. 1 curity ratiomilized the move: Equal opportunity for one means equal opportunity for all. But no one ex­ Consideration of Je~vish security became even '1 amined this dubious axiom very closely. America . more remote_ I seemed to be approaching a state of perfectibility: There were only a few years of war-against-pov­ The nation's great flaw, slavery, was being brought erty .innocence before the third stage set in. It to account; democracy was marching to fulfillment, quickly became apparent that the billion·dollar and the Jewish community obviously belonged anti-poverty programs were not suddenly going on such a march, whatever the reasons. Several to turn history on its head; and with that realiza­ motivational streams in Jewish life merged at this tion, the Negro Revolution began to be overlaid point, as they never had before: the instinct for by the Black Revolution. Since New Deal days, at self· preservation; the religious ethic, invoking the least, Americans have subscribed to the social en­ prophetic tradition; and the political program­ gineering fallacy: Any problem can be solved if liberalism-for which so many Jews had devel­ only we devise enough programs and spend oped a special secular affinity. On this level, the enough money_ The fallout of the massive anti­ Jewish community found itself with a coherent poverty programs of the early 1960's created a and organic position. salaried black bureaucracy in the ghettos and un­ Of course, this preeminent concern with civil doubtedly helped a number of individuals up the rights swiftly and inevitably became a predom­ ladder-but finally these programs were more ef­ inant concern with the needs and aspirations of fective in raising expectations than mass stand­ the Negro community. After the FEPC principle ards of living_ The goal of instant parity seemed had been established in the North, the laws that more desirable and further away than ever. were passed and the court cases that were pressed Against the background of such frustrations, and had less and less direct application to the security other frustrations provided by society, there has of the Jews.