THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, October 28, 1995 TAG: 9510280314
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Charlise Lyles
LENGTH: Medium: 83 lines
About 30 brown and white faces broke through the autumn morning mist outside the Jewish Community Center in Norfolk early Sunday.
Cheerfully, the group of African Americans and Jews boarded a bus bound for Washington.
Only a week before, black men by the thousands had been bound for the same city and the Million Man March for a powerful display of racial brotherhood.
But this Sunday's sojourn aimed at a different solidarity: a mutual understanding of each group's historic pain, from the auction block to Auschwitz.
After meeting monthly for nearly two years, the African-American/Jewish Coalition of Hampton Roads set out on its first cultural exchange to visit the Anacostia Museum of African-American History and Culture and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
I wish I had been a part of this unprecedented act of community. It took a lot of guts.
The timing was precarious, yet perfect. In the weeks preceding, all our difficult differences had come to the fore: the O.J. Simpson verdict. The Million Man March's Louis Farrakhan factor.
``It would not be a simple togetherness,'' said Rabbi Israel Zoberman of Beth Chaverim synagogue in Virginia Beach. ``Yet, I looked forward to it, knowing that unless we face each other, we cannot really clear up the air and allow new reason and understanding.''
Through the streets of impoverished Southeast, far from Embassy Row and official Washington, the bus lumbered toward the black museum. Dr. Barry Einhorn of Norfolk gazed out on abandoned homes.
``I consider myself a liberal person,'' he said. ``But there is so little that I understand about the African American. It is very complex.''
Dr. Russell Adams, chairman of Howard University's Afro-American studies department, guided the museum tour.
``He told a story that hit me particularly hard,'' said Einhorn. ``In Richmond in the early 1800s, slaves did all skilled labor - brick masons, carpenters, tailors.
``On Sundays, the tailors were allowed to parade downtown in the beautiful clothes they made,'' Einhorn said. ``But to make sure everyone knew that they were slaves and not free men, they had to wear the master's patch on their arm. The parallel to Nazi Germany and the Star of David was so striking.''
Onward, to the Holocaust museum.
``The dismemberment, the arms and legs for experimentation,'' said Carlos Howard, a Norfolk mortician who is black. ``There was a photograph of a child who had been experimented with to deformity.''
Another photograph showed naked Jews gasping to death in a gas chamber. Howard likened such horrors to the Middle Passage, which carried blacks as cargo from Africa to America.
The group poured out of the museum into bright afternoon sunshine. There was little conversation.
But as the day grew dark and the bus sped down I-95 bound for home, silence gave way.
Conversations sprang up all over the bus. They got loud. Some stood in the aisles. It got heated.
Why hadn't Jews stood beside blacks in recent decades as blacks faced everyday injustices?
Why had blacks gone to the march when Farrakhan had made vicious statements against Jews?
Fearlessly, they reveled in discord and listened hard for harmony. You know, like a family fight that brings everybody closer. They actually had FUN: friendship, understanding and nurturing. I WISH I had been there!
``I have no doubt that if I were black, I would've been at that march,'' said Einhorn. ``Even though they don't support Farrakhan, it was a statement black men had to make, to stand up and say, `I am somebody.' ''
``Because of skin color, I understand that blacks cannot assimilate like the Jews have,'' said Zoberman.
May the coalition encourage churches and other organizations to make such efforts for open, honest and ongoing dialogue to heal our many wounds.
As good as it is, talk is not enough. So, may action be next on the coalition's agenda.
``We have a bond now that we are committed to,'' said Lois Einhorn. ``We can argue and talk and we'll still remain friends. If we've gotten to this point, maybe the next step is we can get things done.'' by CNB