Single Jewish Male Seeking Soul Mate

by Letty Cottin Pogrebin

  Something else fascinated him even more—the fact that nearly everyone who came into the hall hesitated before taking a seat. VIPs Zach would have expected to be decisive and sure-footed, eyed the room warily and ventured down the aisle with a tentative gait, suggesting that they were struggling with the same worry that had bedeviled him when he first arrived—the possibility that his choice of seat might betray a bias he didn’t feel. Worrying about “how things look” being a habit Zach had learned at his mother’s knee, he sympathized with the white man who was seemingly weighing whether to sit beside a black, a Jew, or neither. Zach smiled when the man chose a seat in an empty row, effectively shifting to the next person the decision of whether or not to sit near him.

  Watching a stylish white woman—Chanel suit, silk blouse, pearls—come down the aisle, Zach couldn’t help labeling her a JAP then immediately berated himself for even thinking the slur when the poor woman was simply well dressed and well coifed. Funny, how we internalize our own caricatures, he mused as the white woman effusively greeted a black woman in an orange tracksuit, smothering her with hugs and laughter. And how wrong we can be.

  Soon afterward, a bearded Jew crossed the color line and sat beside a black man in horn-rimmed glasses. Then again, Zach realized, the black man could be an Ethiopian Jew and the bearded man could be a light-skinned African American. The permutations of race, religion, ethnicity, and peoplehood were complex and the intersection of competing interests and priorities was potentially as gnarled and fraught as the crossroads of four major thoroughfares on a day when its traffic light was broken. Zach wondered how a black Jew would self-identify at today’s meeting. If intense conflicts arise, which side would she or he be on? Would such a person feel schizophrenic, change sides depending on the issue, struggle with split loyalties? Like most Caucasians, Zach took his race for granted, as if whiteness were normative, and thus enjoyed the daily luxury of not having to think about being white—which gave him more time to think about being Jewish.

  Even the political luminaries stopped jabbering when the real star power showed up—Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Harry Belafonte, Lauren Bacall, Tony Randall, and Mandy Patinkin—followed closely by the two who had called the meeting: a tall, rangy black man in a clerical collar and a diminutive white man crowned by a royal blue yarmulke.

  Zach turned to the back of the room to check the wall clock against his watch and saw the latecomer float in, a slender black woman wearing tan leather pants and a moss-green sweater set who wafted down the aisle like a sprig of spring. She sat two rows down and three seats over from Zach’s, providing him with an unobstructed view of her arresting profile, her long, graceful neck, the hollow beneath her cheekbone, her dark, close-cropped hair. She rooted around in her brocade satchel and pulled out a pair of glasses with tortoise shell frames that had been wrapped in a pink square of fabric. Unfolding the temple pieces, she exhaled on the lenses and polished them with the microfiber cloth. Her movements were efficient, yet languorous, the actions of someone who, even in her most quotidian behaviors, feels at one with her body and at ease in the world.

  Jeremiah Birmingham, senior pastor at the Good Shepherd Baptist Church towered over his coconvener, Sheldon Kahn, rabbi of the Manhattan Jewish Temple, who stood even with the minister’s Adam’s apple. Their stark physical contrast almost seemed calculated to symbolize their message: if we can get along, so can you.

  “Welcome Sisters and Brothers!” Birmingham called out in a rich alto. “As we wrote in our letter of invitation, Shelly and I are deeply concerned about the growing rift between Jews and African Americans, but we’re confident it can be bridged if community leaders such as yourselves lead the way. Each of you has been handpicked because of your prominence and because you command many troops. By the end of today’s session, we hope you’ll agree to be foot soldiers in an army of reconciliation.”

  The minister stepped back, the rabbi forward, as though they’d rehearsed the choreography. “Jerry and I have declared war on every racial and ethnic stereotype—including the idea that Jews suck at basketball,” Sheldon Kahn joked, in a voice that seemed far too big for his frame. “I may be vertically challenged, but I’m here to tell you this Jew can shoot a three-pointer. Right, Jerry?”

  “Gospel truth!” Birmingham bellowed, squatting slightly to hip bump the little rabbi. “As God is my witness, Shelly went ten for ten in my church schoolyard.”

  “One stereotype down, hundreds to go!” rumbled the rabbi from a tunnel deep in his chest. “Working together, we can vanquish them all. In our many years of interfaith work, Jerry and I have seen Christians, Jews, and Muslims change from other to brother in just a few dialogue sessions.”

  “Which doesn’t mean we’ve converted each other,” Birmingham cut in, with a grin. “I already know my blessed savior. Shelly’s still waiting for his. But that’s okay because, like our Father in heaven, we celebrate difference. If God didn’t love and respect difference, why would He have created man in his infinite variety?”

  “Excuse me.” The latecomer with the long neck and green sweater set was on her feet. “Sorry to interrupt, Reverend, but I feel like I’m drowning in Y chromosomes here. Are we women part of this effort? So far, we’ve heard brother, father, man, war, foot soldiers. Where are the sisters in this battle for hearts and minds?”

  A few women called out, “You go, girl!” Others applauded.

  “With all due respect, you guys have been on some kind of testosterone trip,” continued the speaker, the mellifluousness of her voice at odds with its brusque claims. Zach recognized the voice, couldn’t place it, but noticed that it had aroused in him a vague disquiet. After decades of representing women plaintiffs in sex discrimination cases, he could understand why the clergymen’s boyish banter might raise a feminist’s hackles. Still, this wasn’t the time or place for Helen Reddy. The clergymen had convened this group to discuss black-Jewish relations—not sexism. Zach waited for Birmingham to cut the speaker off. Instead, the pastor tipped his brow and sent her a small salute.

  “Point well taken, Sister, thank you. As it says in Proverbs, chastisements purify the sins of man—uh, woman, too—for whom the eternal loves, He chastens.”

  “He, him, his,” the woman answered back, with a half smile. “You can’t help yourself, can you?”

  Zach had expected tensions between blacks and Jews but not between two blacks.

  The Reverend defended himself. “You know full well that I don’t think God is a ‘he’ any more than I think He’s—” Birmingham caught himself, “than I think God is white, black, or green. Divinity transcends gender and color. Forgive me if I seem to be suggesting otherwise.”

  “Old language habits die hard, my dear,” interjected Sheldon Kahn.

  The black woman swirled slightly toward the rabbi. “If you don’t mind, sir, I’d prefer not to be called dear. I’m not a little girl.”

  Kahn’s cheeks flushed bright red around the borders of his snow-white beard. “Forgive me. I meant it as a term of affection.”

  “Even so. This is supposed to be a serious meeting about serious matters. Calling me dear is belittling. It’s inappropriate. Dear is to woman as boy is to black man. Dear is what a man calls a wife who bores him. Allow me to introduce myself, Rabbi Kahn. I’m Cleo Scott.”

  Zach sat upright in his seat. That’s why her voice had been unsettling. He’d been listening to her every Sunday night for the past few months, at first with dismay, more recently, with growing admiration.

  “Sister Scott hosts a talk show on WEBD,” Birmingham said, eliciting an audible hubbub. Though WEBD was a relatively small radio station whose programming was primarily targeted to a black audience, and though her face was not always recognized, in some circles, for instance among many in this lecture hall, Cleo Scott was a star.

  Zach’s initial dismay had been aroused when he happened on her program for the first time on the night it was deluged by a flood of anti-Semitic callers. But his negative feelin
gs had been displaced by admiration after the following week’s show in which she had presented a dramatic rebuttal to the extremists and since then, he had become a fan, increasingly impressed by her ability to straddle the line between passionate advocacy and fair-minded journalism. Without fear or favor, she marshaled a broad spectrum of opinion on the most controversial issues of the day, challenging the bloviators to back up their pronouncements with facts, changing her own views when faced with compelling opposing arguments, and confessing her disappointments and vulnerabilities without trading on pathos. Merely from listening to her on the radio over the past six or seven weeks, Zach had come to recognize in Cleo Scott a kindred spirit, someone who, like him, was trying to actualize a rich but complicated legacy by being a spokeswoman for her people while also serving as a principled interpreter of events in the wider community. And she knew her history.

  “You and Jerry aren’t the first black-Jewish pair to initiate a common enterprise,” Cleo was saying to Rabbi Kahn. “W. E. B. Du Bois, whose initials happen to be the call letters of my radio station, cofounded the NAACP with the great muckraking black journalist, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, and the activist rabbi, Stephen Wise. I doubt that Rabbi Wise called Ida Wells-Barnett dear.”

  Sheldon Kahn bowed slightly at the waist. “I’m truly sorry. I beg your pardon.”

  Cleo raised her arms in the universal gesture of surrender. “My parents taught me to accept an apology with good grace so I’m going to sit down now. But I’m going to get up again if you and Jerry don’t show the same respect toward the women in this room as you’re asking blacks and Jews to show toward one another.”

  Zach was glad he came.

  Cleo sat down and stayed down while the clergymen attempted to advance the day’s agenda. “We’re here to build on the alliances of times past—the struggle for voting rights, civil rights, economic justice,” Birmingham said. “We need each and every one of you to commit to become founding members of the Black-Jewish Coalition and to join together in solidarity and strength.”

  Kahn jumped in. “With commitment, comes healing. We’re stronger acting together than apart. We have the same pressing needs . . .”

  “One question,” interrupted Cleo Scott, on her feet again. Enough already, Zach thought, steeling himself for another digression. He was surprised when she hiked up the sleeves of her moss-green cardigan that the gesture struck him not as pugnacious but erotic. Getting turned on by naked arms was a first for him. “Please don’t be offended, Rabbi, I’m not picking on you, I’m just trying to understand how what blacks do can benefit the pressing needs of Jews. From everything I read, the main threats to your community are assimilation and intermarriage. If that’s true, I can’t for the life of me figure out how twenty-five black folks can stop your kids from quitting Hebrew school after their bat or bar mitzvahs, or stop them from marrying goyim.”

  She must have known that line would bring down the house yet she didn’t crack a smile, just stood there with her bare arms crossed, waiting for the ruckus to calm down. “I appreciate how much work has gone into organizing this meeting and I support the idea of collaboration in theory. But let’s not kid ourselves. Our horses aren’t starting from the same gate. Your forebears and mine have a radically different relationship to the American Dream. You came here to escape oppression; we came shackled. When blacks were a few centuries off of the slave ships and Jews first arrived in steerage, maybe our situations were more comparable. But we’re not in the same boat now. These days, most of your relatives are lounging in deck chairs. Mine are still pulling oars and bailing water.”

  She looked around the room, left to right, and back. It was the unhurried pause of a speaker accustomed to being both listened to and heard. Her self-assurance was impressive. Not an um or a fidget. Shoulders relaxed. “I hope this doesn’t sound hostile, Rabbi, but I think it’s important to be honest with one another from the outset. Our two groups have vastly disparate needs and resources. Blacks need more of everything material and Jews, materially, have more to give. Obviously, then, the payoff for each side won’t be equal. Before we can create a meaningful coalition, I think we blacks need to know if the Jews in this room are okay with that imbalance?”

  A man with an argyle vest and Brillo-pad hair called out, “I’m okay with that imbalance. What I don’t want to hear is that our suffering was equal.”

  “Your name, sir?” asked Rabbi Kahn.

  “Jack Fingerhut, Professor of Jewish Studies. I’ve been in many so-called dialogues over the years, so I think I know what’s coming next. Ms. Scott is going to equate American slavery with the Nazi genocide. She’s going to say the Middle Passage was also a form of extermination. She’s going to bring up white Europeans’ exploitation, enslavement, and killing of Africans in Africa. I’m going to insist they’re not the same, that the Holocaust was both quantitatively and qualitatively worse than any other crime against humanity. The Holocaust was about the total annihilation of a people. Ms. Scott is going to call me a racist. I’m not; I’m a historian. Slavery lasted for more than two centuries and the Holocaust for only a few years, but bondage is not the same as systematic, industrialized slaughter for the sole purpose of obliteration. Your people suffered unspeakable misery and dehumanization. But there was no grand design to wipe blacks off the face of the earth.” He shot a cold look at Cleo. “Are you okay with that?”

  Cleo bristled, “I hate when these discussions devolve into a competition of tears. First of all, Professor, you have no idea of what I’m going to say. Second, the salient point is not moral equivalency; the salient point is this: The Holocaust didn’t happen here. Slavery happened here. Therefore, slavery is every American’s responsibility.”

  Fingerhut demurred, “The Holocaust is every human being’s responsibility, Ms. Scott . . .”

  Birmingham slapped the podium. “Cleo! Jack! We have a lot of ground to cover this afternoon. Let’s move the agenda and save the colloquy for later.”

  Zach had not intended to speak but because he sensed the vulnerability beneath Cleo’s unflinching bluster, words came out of his mouth. “If we don’t address Ms. Scott’s question first, there may not be an agenda.”

  The little rabbi raised an eyebrow. “Name please?”

  “Zach Levy. I’m a lawyer for the ACLU. Also the board chair of FHS, an organization that represents families of Holocaust survivors. I think this coalition has great potential but the lady over there—”

  “Cleo,” she interjected.

  “—Cleo,” Zach continued, “has asked us to confront something real: the fact is, our two groups don’t have equal needs or resources. She’s asking if we Jews are willing to accept that the rewards of whatever we do here may also be unequal.”

  “I don’t need a translator, Counselor,” Cleo snipped at him scornfully.

  “I wasn’t translating, I was affirming,” Zach replied, torn between respect for her assertive panache and annoyance at her belligerence. He decided to engage. “Instead of upbraiding us, you might want to answer your own question. What’s in this for you? If you stay in the group, what do you expect to get out of it?”

  “Me? I’m just trawling for guests,” she said. “I’ve got a show to do tonight.”

  “Please!” Again, Reverend Birmingham smacked the podium. “Sit down, both of you.” As if shoved, Zach and Cleo obeyed in tandem. “Thank you. Now we’re going to go around the room and introduce ourselves. Name, affiliation, and one sentence about your hopes or goals for this new coalition. Everyone gets a minute and I’ve got a stopwatch.”

  Fifty participants at one minute each, plus assorted reactions, counterreactions, and detours, took up an hour and a half. After listening to everyone’s hopes and goals, Zach allowed himself to believe the enterprise might actually accomplish something. Harry Belafonte was the last to speak. The singer, who had once delivered the keynote speech at an ACLU benefit, classed up a room merely by being in it. Flashing his radiant smile, he introduced himself as
“an activist, entertainer, actor, and idealist,” and articulated his hopes and goals for the group as “mutual respect, collective action, and fomenting revolution.”

  Zach Levy raised his hand. “Will the chair entertain a motion?”

  “I suppose so,” said the rabbi.

  “I move that we skip the rest of the preliminaries and just let people say what’s on their minds.”

  Zach’s motion passed and, despite its incendiary potential, yielded a polite, yet sinus-clearing, candor.

  The director of the Synagogue Council of America wanted to know why black leaders didn’t repudiate Minister Farrakhan when he called Judaism “a dirty religion.”

  The head of the Urban League countered, “How come Jews only care about what we say when they want us to condemn one of our own? I don’t ask you to repudiate Meir Kahane. Why should I have to repudiate Louis Farrakhan?”

  “Not comparable,” said the woman in the Chanel suit and pearls. “Most of us treated Kahane like a lunatic. Most of you treat Farrakhan like a redeemer.”

  “He wears a clean shirt and bow tie,” said the African American man in the horn-rimmed glasses. “My generation’s heroes were Dr. King and Malcolm X; today’s black kids worship millionaire athletes and foul-mouthed rappers. When my sons use proper English, their friends accuse them of acting white. They have few positive role models. Farrakhan, at least, tells black youth to stay in school. So what if he makes a few unfortunate comments about Jews; nobody pays attention to that.”

  “Jews pay attention,” Zach protested. “We’ve seen where ‘a few unfortunate comments’ can lead.” He saw Cleo Scott take off her green cardigan and fold it in her lap, before she turned to face him.

  “Correct me if I’m wrong, Mr. Levy, but didn’t the ACLU defend the neo-Nazis’ unfortunate comments in Skokie? If you were able to tolerate their hate speech, why can’t you tolerate Farrakhan’s? Or does the First Amendment only apply to white people?”