Barack Obama has been the subject of some serious rumblings among Jews lately, so much so that in January a group of prominent Jewish leaders put out a letter condemning a “whispering campaign” against the Illinois Senator. But why are older Jews so anxious about him? Recently Richard Cohen and Roger Cohen each wrote a column that together usefully illustrate two main fears that Jews of their generation have about Barack Obama:

A) Blacks think it’s acceptable to hate Jews.

B) Because of their experience of racism, blacks identify with other minorities, but not Jews, whom they perceive as whites masquerading as a “false minority.”

Obviously an anti-Semite Richard Cohen struck first, back on January 15th, in a Washington Post column provocatively titled “Obama’s Farrakhan Test.” Few people symbolize black antisemitism more powerfully than Louis Farrakhan, who once lauded the achievements of Adolf Hitler. Though Cohen does not say that Obama shares Farrakhan’s views, the juxtaposition of these two African-American public figures (who share little besides skin color) inevitably invites comparisons. In reality the only link between these two men is that the magazine run by the daughter of Jeremiah Wright, the minister of Obama’s church, gave an award to Farrakhan. Cohen wonders what Obama makes of all this. (For the record, Obama has stated publicly and repeatedly, including at last night's debate, that he deplores Farrakhan’s antisemitic rhetoric and disagrees with the award.)

Is it disappointing that Obama’s minister would make such a move? Definitely. But considering that it is possible to play "Six Degrees of Louis Farrakhan" with any prominent African-American politician, such a sensationalizing column could only be justified on the assumption that any potential African-American presidential candidate personally owes Richard Cohen a denunciation of Farrakhan.

The next salvo came on February 11th, when Roger Cohen, in the New York Times, suggested that Obama might be—gasp!—“even-handed” in his attitude toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Cohen also wrote that some Jews are concerned because one of Obama’s foreign policy advisors is former Jimmy Carter aide Zbigniew Brzezinski, whom Cohen notes in a disingenuous understatement is “viewed as cool to Israel.”

Ostensibly the purpose of this column is to assuage fears that Obama is somehow anti-Israel. But surely Cohen, a seasoned editorial writer, knows that many Jews strongly resent diplomats like Brzezinski who preach “even-handed”—which they read as code for “pro-Palestinian”—approaches to Middle East politics. (One example: the heated reaction to Jimmy Carter’s paean to even-handedness in American policy toward Israel, Peace, Not Apartheid.) Match “Brzezinski” and “even-handed” to a man with dark skin, and you’ve just conjured up memories of Kofi Annan and other figures at the United Nations, a body also “viewed as cool to Israel.”

Michael Schwerner, James Cheney, Andrew Goodman: Jewish and black civil rights workers, murdered together What makes older Jews suspicious of black politicians? In the 1960’s, Jews and blacks worked together during the civil rights movement. As Cohen points out, “It was Jews who disproportionately marched for civil rights and, in Mississippi, died for that cause." Yet racial hucksters like Farrakhan have gone to enormous lengths to deny the Jewish contribution to civil rights, in effect, in Cohen's words, "despoil[ing] the graves of Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and, of course, their black colleague James Chaney.”

Farrakhan wasn’t the first to make these types of accusations. As the recent PBS documentary The Jewish Americans showed, several African-Americans in the civil rights movement rejected offers of help from Jews, whom they lumped together with Gentile whites as oppressors. Some blacks even claimed Jews used the Holocaust to market themselves falsely as victims, a claim that hurt since many Jews fought for civil rights precisely because they felt a historic responsibility to do so after the Holocaust. Add to this the well-publicized 1968 United Federation of Teachers strike in Brooklyn, which pitted Jewish teachers against black parents and administrators. By the end of the 60s, you can imagine many Jews thinking: “We were only trying to help, and this is how they reward us?” That’s why Richard Cohen is so pissed off by Farrakhan’s claim that Jews have historically victimized blacks.

Another event of the 1960’s contributing to black-Jewish friction is the “white flight” phenomenon. Many Jews who’d grown up in urban areas and then moved to the suburbs were disturbed to see the neighborhoods of their youth become ghettos, dirty, poor, and crime-ridden. Jonathan Kaufman in his book Broken Alliance notes:

In the wake of the urban shifts of the 1960's, Jewish neighborhoods in city after city in the North became black. The shift was often accompanied by a rise in crime and a decline in the neighborhood, often the result of city governments cutting back police protection and other city services. For a time in the 1960's, there seemed to be no Jew who did not have a grandmother, a cousin, an elderly aunt, a family friend living in a once Jewish, now black ghetto, hemmed by crime and fear.

The bad blood between Jews and blacks during the 60’s continued because of several incidents in the following years, for example, when Jesse Jackson (a veteran of the 60s civil rights movement) made a run for the Democratic nomination. Thinking he was speaking to a reporter off the record, Jackson called Jews “Hymies” and New York “Hymietown.” When word got out, it seemed to confirm the worst fears that Jews had about how blacks talked about them behind their backs.

"Hymietown": Off the record, so it doesn't count While older Jews may connect Barack Obama to their troubled history with blacks, younger Jews don’t have this same bitter history to overcome. (In fact, as Roger Cohen writes in his column, younger Jews are more likely to be pro-Obama than their predecessors.) Jews born in the 80s don’t remember the dust-up over Farrakhan, and react to Jackson’s “Hymietown” comments (if they’re aware of them) with laughter, not outrage. Many younger Jews are used to having black classmates and co-workers, and their image of blacks from the media is not poor inner-city rioters threatening their grandmothers, but heroes of sports, song, film, and TV. Which is not to say that all tension between Jews and African-Americans has been defused in the millennial generation, or that Jews only recently began celebrating African-American cultural tropes (see, e.g., Norman Mailer's "The White Negro"). But the extent to which African-American culture is now blended into mainstream American-Jewish culture is unprecedented.

How can Barack Obama win over older Jews who doubt his goodwill because of his race? Roger Cohen writes that Obama has been trying to talk tough in support of Israel to court Jewish voters. This is probably a waste of time. Older Jews who mistrust Obama won’t change their minds because of a speech, no matter how beautifully orated. (In fact, for these Jews, calling an African-American politician “a powerful orator” is a putdown: all talk, no substance.)

In speaking about Israel, Obama might be better off sticking to the tone that appealed to younger, more centrist voters back at the 2004 Democratic Convention, when he described people in red states with gay friends and people in blue states who worshipped an awesome God. He could argue that as a staunch Zionist he fears Israel cannot survive as a Jewish state without a separation and accommodation with the Palestinians. And how to respond to those who say Middle East peace is only a Zbignew Brzezinski-style pipe dream? In reply, Obama can simply point to his own candidacy as an example of another impossible dream that, a mere forty years after the murder of Martin Luther King, is closer than ever to becoming real.