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fight should remain an urgent
priority for Jews, despite the dis-
turbing influence of hate-mon-
gers such as Mr. Farrakhan.
In Philadelphia, Mayor Ed
Rendell, who is Jewish, joined
Mr. Farrakhan at a church ral-
ly aimed at promoting racial rec-
onciliation in Mr. Rendell's city,
where ethnic tensions run high.
Mr. Rendell's appearance pro-
duced the usual indignant state-
ments from Jewish groups who
rightly consider Mr. Farrakhan
a bigot and an anti-Semite who
tries to soften his tough self-re-
liance message with doses of old-
fashioned scapegoating and
bizarre, dangerous conspiracy
theories.
Mr. Rendell, a classic urban
bridge builder, further angered
Jewish groups when he active-
ly praised some elements of the
Nation of Islam program, in-
cluding its focus on personal re-
sponsibility and family.

Mr. Farrakhan's
flagrant
hate-mongering is
a legitimate issue.

But the mayor made the point
that the city's racial divisions,
and recent violent incidents
against both whites and blacks
that set residents on edge, make
it even more critical to confront
our racial crisis head-on and to
find points of commonality be-
tween groups even when the
Farrakhans of the world are try-
ing to pull them apart.
The dimensions of the crisis
are frightening. Discrimination
and segregation are reasserting
themselves, hate-based violence
is growing and extremism is
flourishing in the face of an
uncertain economy and the
growing gap between rich and
poor. Our inner cities are
seething islands of hopelessness
and anger.
Mr. Rendell is convinced that
to be part of the solution, Jews
and others have to remain in the
civil rights and economic justice
arena, even if that means ap-
pearing in public with bigots like
Mr. Farrakhan.
Mr. Farrakhan's flagrant
hate-mongering is a legitimate
issue, and he deserves blister-
ing condemnation every time he
issues another anti-Semitic
broadside.
But for the country as a
whole, it's not the issue. To the
extent that Jewish leaders focus
on Mr. Farrakhan and not on
the forces that have made so
many people turn to him in hope
despite his theology of hate, they
keep the Jewish community
from contributing to the solution
of a crisis that threatens to tear

Governor Allen's recent dec-
laration on behalf of the Con-
federacy is a grim reminder of
the deep roots of that crisis, and
of the thundering insensitivity
and apathy that give Mr. Far-
rakhan a degree of credibility in
a despairing African-American
community.
Mr. Allen's proclamation
urged state residents to re-
member and celebrate the Con-
federacy's "four-year struggle for
independence" and the "honor-
able sacrifices of [Virginia's]
Confederate leaders, soldiers
and citizens to the cause of lib-
erty."
Despite the passage of 132
years and despite a civil rights
movement that presumably .
sensitized Americans to the ag-
onies of slavery and its legacy,
this popular governor of an im-
portant state still saw no prob-
lem standing before the cameras
and declaring that the Confed-
erate cause was really about lib-

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erty.

Millennia after the deliver-
ance from Egypt, the Jewish
community still carries the col-
lective scars of our slavery; we,
more than most, should be able
to empathize with our black
neighbors, whose scars are
much fresher, who must watch
with rage as mainstream lead-
ers depict the Southern cause —
which, after all, was at its heart
the defense of slavery — as
something noble.
Jews react with justifiable
anger to Holocaust revisionists
who deny the reality of that
symbol of collective suffering,
but at least revisionism has
been confined to the fringes of
American culture.
But what about Civil War re-
visionism, and a popular gover-
nor — a man regarded as a
newcomer on the national po-
litical scene — who can indi-
rectly turn the cause of slavery
into something worth honoring?
There's no avoiding the fact
that Louis Farrakhan is a dis-
ruptive element in black-Jew-
ish relations and a potential
threat to Jewish security; the
question of whether Jewish
leaders should meet with him is
a complex one, with no sure an-
swers.
But he is a symptom of a
much broader disease eating
at the heart of American soci-
ety. Jews can rage against the
symptom, but that will do noth-
ing to deal with the root caus-
es of a devastating, unchecked
virus.
Gov. Allen did us a back-
handed service by reminding us
how far we have to go; Mayor
Rendell did a service by re-
minding the Jewish communi-
ty that we need to be active
participants in the struggle,
no matter how offended we
are by Louis Farrakhan and his

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