We Jews and Blacks: Memoir With Poems

Cover......Page 1
TOC......Page 10
Acknowledgments......Page 14
A Chat with the Reader......Page 16
The Hell Face of Sacred Distinctions......Page 18
The Plot......Page 21
Jews and Blacks of Early Childhood......Page 22
Swans over Manhattan......Page 24
Anatole Broyard (1920–90), the Inventor......Page 27
What Was a Jew?......Page 29
Dad Grew Up in the Streets......Page 30
Languages of the Jews......Page 33
Spanish Jews......Page 36
Jews and Blacks of Early Adolescence......Page 40
“At the Red Sea,” by Yusef Komunyakaa......Page 42
Assimilation and Passing under the Shadow of War and Holocaust......Page 44
Yehuda Maccabee and Hellenization of the Jews......Page 48
Gnosticism and Other Heresies......Page 50
A Summer Camp in Maine with the Scent of Palestine......Page 51
Sammy Propp of the Black Shoes......Page 53
Black People......Page 58
Leah Scott......Page 62
My Unseen Black Grand-Stepmother......Page 66
Othello......Page 67
Reading the Bible in Hebrew......Page 74
Bar Mitzvah......Page 75
“Othello’s Rose,” by Yosef Komunyakaa......Page 78
Early Jewish Corruption and Bayard Rustin, the BlackNightingale......Page 80
Early Corruption......Page 82
Yeshua ben Yosef Passing as Jesus Christ......Page 84
So Long, Sammy......Page 89
Bayard Rustin, the Black Nightingale Singing His People into theHeart of the Makers of the Underground Railroad......Page 90
More Deadly Application Blanks......Page 98
Jews and Blacks in College, and Freedom in Europe......Page 102
Bowdoin College: The Jewish and Black Ghetto in Old LongfellowHall......Page 104
A Letter to The Nation......Page 111
Coming Out of My Own Ghetto of Silences......Page 114
Off to Europe, Where Old-Fashioned Bigotry Is Huge, yet Now WhoCares? Not Me......Page 115
Changing Money on the Rue des Rosiers and Getting Married by theGrand Rabbi of Paris......Page 124
Having Fun at Gunpoint in Crete......Page 132
Working in Greece for the King......Page 134
White Islands and Northern Monasteries on Huge Stalagmites......Page 141
Thessaloniki, a City of Peoples......Page 143
Greeks and Jews and Blacks and Russians......Page 145
Jews, Greeks, and Romans in Alexandria......Page 147
Cavafy and His Poem “Of the Jews (a.d. 50)”......Page 148
The Sephardim in Muslim Spain......Page 150
Jews and Greeks in Thessaloniki......Page 153
Facts on the Slaughter......Page 155
Thessaloniki and Absence......Page 158
Days and Nights with Odysseus on the Way to Holy Athos......Page 159
The Madness of a Jew Trying to Marry in a Greek Orthodox Churchin Crete......Page 167
A Black and White Illumination......Page 174
Friendship in Tangier with a French Baroness Who Told Me I HadKilled Her Lord......Page 176
“Sound Out Your Race Loud and Clear”......Page 180
A Jewman in the U.S. Army......Page 182
A Touch of Freedom......Page 184
Fort Dix: “I’m Black and My Balls Are Made of Brass”......Page 186
“Sound Out Your Race, Loud and Clear! Caucasian or Negra!”Yelled the White Sergeant in Segregated Georgia......Page 188
Holy Communion of Bagels and Lox for Jewish Personnel......Page 192
Black Barbers Brought on Base to Cut Black Men’s Hair......Page 194
Captain Hammond, Baritone, and the Children of the Périgord......Page 195
Mumbling about Race and Religion in China, Nigeria,Tuscaloosa, and Buenos Aires......Page 202
Ma Ke, a Chinese Jew with Whom I Shared Suppers in Beijing......Page 204
Olaudah Equiano Bouncing around the Globe as a Slave Sailor under aQuaker Captain Until He Settles Down in London as aDistinguished Writer and Abolitionist......Page 207
“Some of us grow ashamed,” by Yusef Komunyakaa......Page 215
Yusef Komunyakaa, the Black Nightingale Singing on Paper with theRichness of a Sweet Potato (YK & WB)......Page 216
A Diversion Down to Argentina......Page 221
Saying a Hebrew Prayer at My Brother’s ChristianFuneral......Page 224
Saying a Hebrew Prayer at My Brother’s Christian Funeral......Page 226
My Brother Needed to Pass Like the Spanish Saints of Jewish Origin.Here Are Ancestors Whom My Brother, Not by Inquisition butby a Deeper Knife of Fire, Emulated......Page 227
My Father, Who Never Tried to Pass, Succumbed to Denial of HisBeing and Passed from Life......Page 228
Death Has a Way......Page 238
A Little World......Page 241
Appendix......Page 242
Notes......Page 244
Index......Page 248