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July 07, 2007
Forward's New Book: Digital Hitler, Yes; Crown Heights Riots, Shhhhhh
The Forward's new book, "A Living Lens: Photographs of Jewish Life from the Pages of the Forward," is a visual treat. Five chapters cover the paper's history and times from the founding in 1897 through the era of Madonna's kabbalah fixation.
For a news organization, however, the Forward's judgment either falters or shows willful blindness about one major Jewish affair. The book has room for pictures of Bill Clinton in a tuxedo (nothing about Monica Lewinsky), Mario Cuomo jawing with some constituents, Al Sharpton and Russell Simmons talking to Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, three photos of Ed Koch, "bark mitzvah" with a dog in a kippah before a challah and kiddish cup, and even a photo of a digital Hitler from a neo-Nazi video game from the 1980s. But the Forward just couldn't find the space for a photo or even a text reference to something that happened in the editors' own back yard:
The 1991 Crown Heights black pogrom. The traumatic event of blacks rioting against Jews after the Rebbe's entourage killed a boy in a traffic mishap slipped right down the memory hole. Why?
The book shows Hassidic Jews in many other contexts and the Rebbe is mentioned. Photos taken in Brooklyn indicate that the editors know, at least in a general sense, that an area called "Brooklyn" exists with some type of Jewish population. The Crown Heights oversight is baffling, leaving readers with a skewed vision of black-Jewish relations. We see photos of blacks and Jews together on civil rights matters and New York mayor David Dinkins doing something with Jewish board games, but no inkling of conflict. The book also omits an earlier black-Jewish conflict, The Ocean Hill-Brownsville school crisis in Brooklyn in the late 1960s. The book whitewashes, so to speak, the challenges of black-Jewish relations in New York history. Silence does not mean it didn't happen.
On the other hand, the photo of Sheindele the Chazente made a very positive impression, so all is forgiven.
Van | 07/07/07 at 07:07 AM | Categories: Doing Jewish
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