Chapter 1: Shared Oppression, Shared Cultures,
Shared Resistance
Shared History Of Oppression:
“You accepted 400 years of oppression, I have just accepted three thousand years of oppression!”
-African-American Dr. Jean Cahn, upon converting to Judaism, by permission, E. Cahn
The rabbis say that it took one man plunging into the Sea and wading in up to his neck before the waters parted and the Children of Israel were finally able to be free. As Moses led the Hebrew slaves out of the land of Egypt, up and out of bondage, so the Negro slaves looked to their faith, even as the spiritual waters of oppression seemed to rise up to the necks of people of color, both free and enslaved. People of color formed communities in spite of the oppressive atmosphere, overcoming great prejudice to do so, as mistrusted and often denigrated Jewish citizens also had to do. From Benjamin Banneker in 1791, to Isaac Polock in 1795, the first non-White residents of the city faced unique challenges, having to prove themselves to their White contemporaries. In 1850, abolitionists and free people of color advocated for the rights of slaves, while Captain Jonas P. Levy and the Sons of Israel fraternal members had to advocate for the rights of Jews, overlooked in our very own treaties. Just as free individuals and families of color formed connections in the Capital, as with Georgetown businessman Moses Zachariah Booth in 1865, and the Nash and Mayo families from Virginia at the turn of the 20th century, so Jewish businessmen and families trickled into the city before and, poured in during the Civil War, as with Cantor Lansburgh from Baltimore in 1860, and the Small family at the turn of the 20th century. Thus there are multiple parallels in the ways that the Jewish and Black communities, both enslaved as well as free people of color, had to cope with life in a country where neither was recognized as fully equal by the White majority.
By the time the first Hebrew Congregation in Washington City is organizing in 1852, thus present at least as early as 1850, slave coffles are still passing at night down 7th Street. The groans of slaves from the nearby DC City Jail, long used as a federally subsidized slave pen, still echo from the corner of 4th and G, St., NW, where the first Jewish residents might have passed going about their day. Those sounds may have been particularly poignant in 1851, as the Fugitive Slave Act came in to effect. The Act stopped the slave coffles, but in exchange, required the active participation of all free citizens in the apprehension and return of runaway slaves. As they listened to the Torah being read in private homes, in store fronts along 7th street, or even in SouthWest, near the Wharf, the destination of those enchained human beings, did they recall those sounds of suffering? What conflicts might this have raised in the minds of observant Jews? They were barely accepted themselves in this Southern city, where the community felt obliged to petition for permission to purchase a house of worship, despite the existence of St. Johnś and other prominent Christian houses of worship. What fear and guilt may have gone through the minds of those hearing the words of Parashat Ki Tetzei, Deuteronomy 23:16, commanding that a slave running away from a harsh master must be allowed to live wherever he wished, and not oppressed? Here in Washington, DC, the compensated emancipation, which conditionally freed slaves nine months before the Emancipation Proclamation, left many slaves waiting for freedom, continuing to hope for a Moses of their own, as Harriet Tubman was sometimes called. The well known comparison actually went both ways, as Negro slaves identified with the plight of the Hebrews enslaved in Egypt, and many Jewish families in Mississippi and other areas of the South controlled by General Grantś troops experienced a homelessness similar to their recently enslaved contemporaries. Runaway slaves crossing Union lines were known as contrabands, considered to be confiscated contraband property of war. While Jews were being expelled from their homes in areas occupied by General Grantś troops, people of color like Harriet and Louisa Jacobs in the Federal City and surrounding areas, worked to inspire hope and provide housing for the many contrabands pouring in to the Capital from the South, an ironic twist of fate in the history of these two oppressed peoples. History was not all they shared.
Shared Musical Styles: Call And Response
“I will sing to the Lord, for He has triumphed gloriously;
Horse and driver He has hurled into the sea.
2 The Lord is my strength and might;
He is become my deliverance.
This is my God and I will enshrine Him;
The God of my father, and I will exalt Him.
3 The Lord, the Warrior —
Lord is His name!”
- from the JPS Tanakh Exodus 15:1-3
From the celebratory “Song of the Sea” quoted above, sung each morning at daily prayers to this day in the Orthodox and Conservative Jewish movements, to the hauntingly beautiful strains of Drok Yikra, Freedom will be Proclaimed, (Inside Cover) sung most famously on the Sabbath day by the Jews of Yemen, Jewish liturgical song has long expressed the human yearning for freedom. This yearning is shared in the well-known music of traditional Negro Spirituals, often adapted by the Civil Rights movement as Freedom Songs, replacing words to fit the situation. Both Jewish and African-American music show this need to free, and share other similarities.
Much Jewish liturgical music takes the form of Call and Response, both in and outside of the sanctuary. From the Barchu, to Ldor va Dor, the Call to Prayer and a traditional call and response section of prayer, all the way to the frolicking “Cherie Bim Baum Bim Baum Bim Baum”, Jewish music adapts this mode of song. Likewise, the familiar spiritual turned freedom song “Woke up this Morning” springs instantly to mind as a key example of Call and Response in African-American spiritual music, sung in a variety of settings. That same back and forth structure can also be felt in the slowly building tension of a Klezmer tune, often sharing the same beat pattern as much of the music of the traditional Negro Spiritual. Rag-time, Jazz, Blues, R & B, and even rock and roll arguably come out of these shared musical structures, interwoven into the fabric of our culture. These shared cultural structures, the challenge of a call used to inspire the ringing response, function both to keep communities together, and to bind them mutually, one to another, in hope and in marching forward.
Shared Strategies: Cooperating To Resist Oppression
“Said Property shall not be sold, conveyed, granted or leased, in whole or in part, to any Hebrew … or any person or family not of the white race. ”
- http://depts.washington.edu/civilr/covenants.htm...
In many ways, shared oppression can be seen as a shared mandate. Imagine listening, in the summer of the year 1860, to Parashat Reéh being read to the congregation. You shall not oppress the runaway slave, let alone return him to his cruel master. So what, then, could you make of the growing tensions over the Fugitive Slave Act, now nearly ten years in effect across the country, including in slave-holding Washington City and County? The slave trade had been banished in the Capital, but replaced with something perhaps worse. That Biblical mandate for freedom must have led many in the Jewish community to wonder what they could do, particularly given the history of persecution of Jews even in the United States moving forward as late as 1884 with the lynching of Leo Max Frank. Thus, shared histories led to cooperation between the two communities in a variety of ways, at first private, and later more public. The Jewish community grew in Washington, DC, opening shops and businesses, mingling with working class families, colored and white, of pre-Urban Renewal SW. With the Navy Yard as one of the very few employers in the city willing to hire based on ability alone, both communities faced difficulty in finding jobs and housing. The new railroad and streetcar suburbs of the 1880s and turn of the 20th century, advertising to “the better classes,” frequently employed racially restrictive housing covenants barring both Jews and Negroes. These shared burdens, combined with the complementing religious and labor roles of the two communities, threw their lots together while preventing the rivalries seen between colored and Irish workers, whose competition for jobs certainly contributed to the Snow Riots of 1835, the city's first race riot. Having similar burdens while being subject to rather different cultural and ethnic constraints, it seems only natural that alliances would form between the two communities to facilitate resistance to their mutual oppression. Such alliances would inspire communities to cooperate to make positive changes for the benefit of all citizens. And cooperate they did, both in private and in public.