4r4, 1

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understanding. He is one of the chairs
of the Multi-Racial Unity Project,
which sponsors a series of interracial
dialogues and activities on campus.
"You can't talk about multi-racial
unity in America without tapping into
black-Jewish relations," he said. "The
history of blacks and Jews represents
the most consistent form of inter-
, racial cooperation."
/--
Cohen has been involved in inter-
racial issues since arriving at MSU in
1995, when he was invited to recruit
three blacks and three Jews to a
Washington, D.C., conference on
black-Jewish relations. Since then, he's
been involved in a regular black-
Jewish faculty discussion group.
"As a rabbi, my professional life can
easily have nothing to do with anyone
but Jews," he said. "But I'm concerned

"We don't have any of the real hard
cases: racist Jews or anti-Semitic
blacks," said Cohen. "We have people
who are interested and are looking for
ways in which they can grasp the posi-
tive aspects. What I hope we can do is
give them an honest look at the histo-
ry and give them tools that they can
use for the rest of their lives." One of
the black students, Tiffany Gridiron,
says she learned about the class
through her involvement with the
Multi-Racial Unity Project.
"I was raised Christian, but my
mother always stressed to me that the
foundation of the Christian faith was
Judaism," she said. "So I was always
interested about — as my grandmoth-
er puts it — Jesus' cousins."
Gridiron describes campus race
relations as "a lot of polite etiquette,

1 1 M1

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about race issues in America and
\_ about the way the Jewish community
/-. appears to be moving in its regard to
race issues. Not overt racism, but
there's less and less feeling that this is
an important issue. But race continues
to be one of the critical issues in
American society."
Thomas and Cohen hope the class
becomes a regular addition to the
MSU course catalog, and would like
to expand it to a 3-credit course so
that material can be covered in greater
depth.
This semester's enrollment reflects a
relatively even mix of black and Jewish
students, along with a handful of stu-
dents who are multi-racial, of mixed
faith or neither black nor Jewish.

but I don't think there's a lot of
trust."
Her classmate, Julie Lubner, who is
Jewish, agrees, saying, "I think the
blacks separate themselves from the
whites. Living in the dorms, you can
really see that: Black students eat with
black students and white students
with white students. There's not a lot
of mixing."
Another Jewish student, Bradley
Finegood, said he has always been
interested in black culture.
"I'm graduating this year and
going out in the real world, so I
want to know some of the things
facing my group and other minori-
ties," he said. ❑

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2/6
1998

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