NOTEBOOK

Heeding Hillel's
Communal Advice

GARY ROSENBLATT

When You
Clean and Store
Your Fur at
Ceresnie & Offen!

Editor

We are pleased to

announce our
association with
Martin Malter,
formerly of
Malter Furs in
West Bloomfield.
Mr. Malter is
looking forward
to seeing his
friends and
customers
at Ceresnie &
Offen Furs.

Cleaning and
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certified Cold Fur
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access. Spring
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appraisal!

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FRIDAY, MAY 15, 1992

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Hillel Levine,
a professor of
sociology and re-
ligion at Boston
University, told
a largely black
audience in Rox-
bury last week
that racism was not the only
factor in the Rodney King
verdict that led to the recent
riots in Los Angeles. It was
not what they wanted to hear.

"We felt ourselves at the
edge of civility," he says of
the tension in the air as he
and a colleague spoke in
church. "They saw every-
thing in terms of racism, but
I tried to point out that the
verdict showed the weakness
of our judicial system, where
defense attorneys make 10
times the salary of pros-
ecutors.
"I tried to explain why af-
firmative action upsets
Jews, and how Jewish suspi-
cions have been confirmed"
in paying the price for past
injustices to blacks. "It's
difficult to say these things
to blacks. I feel their pain.
But we must talk to them
with honesty and not be
patronizing. And we need to
talk to them about black
violence."
For blacks to simply talk
about racism, or for Jews to
simply talk about anti-
Semitism, "says everything
— and nothing," Mr. Levine
suggests. "It leaves no room
for analysis or dialogue."
Hillel Levine has always
spoken his mind. Often what
he has to say is controversial
and unpopular. But his track
record suggests that he is
usually ahead of his time.
In 1969, when Jewish
students staged a successful
protest at the General
Assembly of the Council of
Jewish Federations in
Boston, it was Mr. Levine,
then a young rabbinical stu-
dent, who was their spokes-
man, urging that far more
than 15 percent of federation
money be spent on Jewish
education.
In the early 1960s, Mr.
Levine visited the Soviet
Union and came back an ac-
tivist for Soviet Jewry, long
before there was such a
movement. He spoke out for
Ethiopian Jews a full decade
before their plight was wide-
ly known and criticized the
structure of the Jewish

Agency years before its prob-
lems were addressed.
And now he is urging the
Jewish community to open a
serious dialogue with
Chinese and Korean Ameri-
cans — "we're on a collision
course" — while strength-
ening ties with the black
community. "What's at
stake here is American
pluralism," he says, "and if
we fail, we'll go the way of
Yugoslavia," now torn by
civil war.
What gives Mr. Levine the
authority to address racial
issues is his book, The Death
of an American Jewish
Community, published
earlier this year, which has
been widely praised for its
study of how efforts to in-
tegrate the Jewish neigh-
borhoods of Boston failed in
the late 1960s.
The book, co-authored with
journalist Lawrence Har-
mon, has an apt subtitle: "A

Hillel Levine is as
outspoken as ever
on a wide range of
Jewish issues.

Tragedy of Good Inten-
tions." It provides a hard
look at how prominent poli-
ticians, bankers, philan-
thropists and religious
leaders sought racial in-
tegration in Boston by mak-
ing mortgage loans
available to blacks — but
only in Dorchester, the city's
well-established Jewish
neighborhood.
The assumption was that
Jews would be the most
tolerant and least resistant
whites to a black influx, es-
pecially compared to
Boston's Irish and Italian
neighborhoods. But the plan
failed. Racial tension in-
creased, as did crime in the
area, and Jews fled to other
areas.
In their book, Mr. Levine
and Mr. Harmon focused less
on the psychological and so-
cial dimensions of black-
Jewish tension than on the
structural dimensions — the
economic and political forces
that led to unscrupulous real
estate brokers fueling white
flight by scaring Jews into
selling their homes at below-
market prices.
Addressing the audience
in Roxbury last week, Mr.
Levine says he and Mr.
Harmon attempted to relate

Continued on Page 22

