Blacks and Jews: Alliances and Arguments

by Paul Berman

Essays written from the sixties to the present by such leaders of the Jewish and African-American communities as Cynthia Ozick, Shelby Steele, and Cornell West trace the complex, sometimes troubled relationship of American Jews and blacks. National ad/promo.

Genres: History, Politics, Judaism

303 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Paul Lawrence Berman is an American author and journalist who writes on politics and literature. His articles have been published in The New Republic, The New York Times Book Review and Slate, and he is the author of several books, including A Tale of Two Utopias and Terror and Liberalism.

Berman received his undergraduate education from Columbia University, from which he graduated in 1971 with a BA and MA in American history. He has reported on Nicaragua's civil wars, Mexico's elections, and the Czech Republic's Velvet Revolution. Currently he is a senior fellow at the World Policy Institute, a professor of journalism and distinguished writer in residence at New York University, and a member of the editorial board of Dissent. Berman's influence has seen him described as a 'Philosopher King' of the liberal hawks."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Berman

"Paul Berman is a writer on politics and literature whose articles and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, the New Republic (where he is a contributing editor), the New Yorker, Slate, the Village Voice, Dissent, and various other American, European and Latin American journals. He has reported at length from Europe and Latin America. He has written or edited eight books, including, most recently, Power and the Idealists: Or, the Passion of Joschka Fischer and Its Aftermath, with a new preface by Richard Holbrooke for the 2007 paperback edition; Carl Sandburg: Selected Poems, edited with an introduction, published in 2006 by the American Poets Project of the Library of America; and Terror and Liberalism, a New York Times best-seller in 2003. His writings have been translated into fifteen languages. Berman received a B.A. and M.A. in American History from Columbia University and has been awarded a MacArthur, a Guggenheim, the Bosch Berlin Prize, a fellowship at the New York Public Library’s Center for Writers & Scholars, and other honors.

Reviews

[Diane Mezzanotte · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book here and there, between reading novels. A collection of thought-provoking essays, it lends itself to reading one or two at a sitting and then reflecting on the points made.

The essays were originally written between 1963 and 1994. One thing that hit me several times was how little some things change—sadly. Reading about famous Black activists’ comments in the 1970s about Jewish people cannot help but evoke thoughts of Kanye West’s comments in the 2020s. Learning that critical race theory was being discussed in the early 1990s—but among the Black community rather than the far Right—was an interesting discovery.

I gained a lot of important perspective from this book. Being neither Black nor a Jew, but trying hard to be an ally to any underserved group, i found it educational to read essays from authors and activists belonging to one group or the other. I fear that the title of the book might turn people away—and I noticed that Goodreads members who rated the book haven’t reviewed it, perhaps afraid of saying something offensive. I’d have loved to read this as part of a class that involved discussion, to dig deeper into the subjects addressed and to talk about how things have changed or not since the essays were first written.

[Jonathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

An outstanding anthology of commentary. The material in several of the component pieces does much to illustrate how the trajectory of forces within the progressive movement as far as the early 1990s would impact the present day. Insightful, helpful, and prescient.