Black Power, Jewish Politics
Reinventing the Alliance in the 1960s
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4155376 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Rebecca Alpert (0000-0001-7536-9695, corresponding author), Rebecca T Alpert |
| Year | 2019 |
| Volume | 106 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 260-261 |
| Publication date | 2019-06-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of American History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-8723 • E-ISSN: 1945-2314 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/jahist/jaz315 |
| OpenAlex | W2947245984 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
Marc Dollinger's well-written and provocative work provides an innovative interpretation of the mythic story of the alliance between Jews and blacks forged over the twentieth century and rent asunder in the post–civil rights era as a result of the rise of black power. Historians have long studied that alliance, and have generally agreed on its outlines. Jews, in becoming part of the white majority, imagined themselves to have a special relationship to African Americans based on their similar histories of victimization and Jewish support for civil rights causes. African Americans, meanwhile, saw Jewish support as inspiring but also patronizing. Dollinger does not challenge those ideas, but brings key insights that illuminate how Jews understood and benefited from the demise of the relationship when Jewish and black interests diverged publicly, primarily over Zionism and affirmative action in the late 1970s. He argues convincingly that the role of black power in this process has not been adequately examined by historians. Black power was a positive force, according to Dollinger, paving the way for Jews (and a wide variety of other identity groups) to assert their own values and self-determination in American society. Rather than heralding the end of the imagined black-Jewish alliance, black power created the opportunity for Jews to be part of a new pluralism that ushered in a rebirth of American Jewish life: the creation of Jewish studies in universities, havurot and new Jewish rituals, liberal day schools, social activism around Israel and Soviet Jewry, and Jewish feminism. As Dollinger persuasively argues, black power, rather than being “bad for the Jews” was “good for the Jews
Alliance · Black Power · Demise · Jewish identity · Judaism · Pluralism (philosophy · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Sociology · Zionism · Gender Studies · History · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Jewish Identity and Society · Law · Philosophy · Race, History, and American Society · Religious studies · Religious Studies
| Citations per year | 1.67 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2023 - 2024 (2) |
| Highly cited | No |