5754 Pivoting Toward The Future
protested that his presence signaled that
the NAACP's executive director, Ben-
jamin Chavis, was steering the organi-
zation in a radical, separatist direction.
And protests outside the summit led by
two Jews who ordinarily disagree —
Michael Lerner, editor of Tikkun maga-
zine, and Rabbi Avi Weiss, president of
the Coalition for Jewish Concerns — sig-
naled (once again) that the Jewish com-
munity suffers from a certain spiritual
bankruptcy, that external threats are
the best assurance of internal unity, not
God, not Torah, not ritual.
Surprisingly, a few weeks after the
black summit, Minister Farrakhan still
seemed convinced that dialogue with the
Jewish community was still possible. "I
don't think any breach [between blacks
and Jews] ... can be permanent," he said.
"We want something to do with one an-
other.... We have respect for Jews. We
see... [their] accomplishments... and we
respect that."
Two days before the black leadership
summit would reconvene in mid-August,
Mr. Chavis was dismissed from his post
at the NAACP for using $332,400 of
NAACP funds to settle sexual ha-
rassment charges against himself
without telling the organization's
board of directors. Although this
action was not related to black-
Jewish tensions, Mr. Chavis used
it as an opportunity to reiterate,
almost word for word, the veiled
allusions he had made to Jews at
the summit's first session: "Nev-
er again will we allow external
forces to dictate to the African
American community who we will
meet with or the conditions under
which we meet."
Perhaps the best response to
this came from Abe Foxman of the ADL
when Mr. Chavis first recited his litany
in mid-June: "They set up a strawman.
Instead of [dealing with] the real issues
facing them, they set up the Jews as the
unifying force."