oi{"id":57485,"date":"2020-07-21T15:48:26","date_gmt":"2020-07-21T15:48:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishledger.com\/?p=57485"},"modified":"2020-07-21T15:48:28","modified_gmt":"2020-07-21T15:48:28","slug":"john-lewis-and-the-jews-6-moments-that-showcase-an-enduring-alliance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishledger.com\/2020\/07\/john-lewis-and-the-jews-6-moments-that-showcase-an-enduring-alliance\/","title":{"rendered":"John Lewis and the Jews: 6 moments that showcase an enduring alliance"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>By Ron Kampeas<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>WASHINGTON (JTA) \u2014 When John Lewis, the civil rights icon and congressman from Georgia, died at 80 over the weekend, Jews in America and abroad lost an ally of nearly six decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lewis never tired of telling folks to&nbsp;\u201cget into good trouble,\u201d to defy the authorities and the conventional wisdom. It was a creed that guided him as he helped organize the 1963 March on Washington; that led to police severely beating him in Selma, Alabama, in 1965; and that underscored his 33-year career in Congress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He also had a close relationship with the Jewish community dating to the 1960s, fortified by alliances he forged throughout his congressional career. Many Jewish leaders on both sides of the aisle\u00a0lauded Lewis when he announced his cancer diagnosis\u00a0last year and mourned him this week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Here are six Jewish moments from Lewis\u2019&nbsp;long and storied career working toward justice in America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\"><strong>Praying with his feet<\/strong><strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That Selma March?\u00a0It started with 12 men and women joining arms and leading others across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Among those 12 were Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. The rabbi was asked after the march whether he found time to pray. Heschel famously answered:\u00a0\u201cI prayed with my feet.\u201d Lewis, then 25, was right alongside them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\"><strong>Coalition-building<\/strong><strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There\u2019s a narrative that the unity that defined the Black-Jewish alliance in the 1960s dissipated by the 1980s, in part because Black leaders like Andrew Young and Jesse Jackson vocally embraced advocacy for Palestinians. If that was the narrative, Lewis did not seem to be reading the book. In 1982, he worked with the American Jewish Committee\u00a0to found the Atlanta Black-Jewish Coalition.\u00a0It was an alliance that culminated in 2019 in the\u00a0founding last year of the Congressional Black-Jewish Caucus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\"><strong>Let my people(s) go<\/strong><strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jews have been hesitant at times to link Jewish suffering with that of African Americans. Lewis was not. At a mass Washington demonstration in 1987 calling for the liberation of Soviet Jewry,\u00a0Lewis did not hesitate to make the connection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI stand here not so much as a member of Congress but I stand here as a human being,\u201d Lewis said.&nbsp;\u201cAlmost 25 years ago I participated in a march here for jobs and freedom. Hundreds and thousands of members of the Jewish community marched with us then. I think it\u2019s fitting for me to be with you today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cOur message, the message of the Black community, is one that is very simple. We are saying to President Reagan, Mr. President, tell Mr. Gorbachev to open the doors, open the gates and let the people out. I said that as long as one Jew is denied the right to emigrate, as long as one Jew is denied the right to be Jewish in the Soviet Union, we all are Jews in the Soviet Union.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\"><strong>Spurning Farrakhan<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In 1995, Nation of Islam founder Louis Farrakhan set out to convene Black men in Washington, D.C., at a rally meant to extend the symbolism of the 1963 March on Washington.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Some prominent figures from the civil rights movement attended the Million Man March on Washington, including Rosa Parks, but\u00a0Lewis said he would not\u00a0because of Farrakhan\u2019s track record, which then as now\u00a0included antisemitic comments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI cannot overlook past statements by Louis Farrakhan \u2014 and others associated with the Nation of Islam \u2014 which are divisive and bigoted,\u201d Lewis told <em>Newsweek<\/em> at the time.\u00a0\u201cAlthough its general goal of encouraging African American men to be responsible is sound, the march is fatally undermined by its chief sponsor.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\"><strong>Boycotting Bibi but supporting Israel<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2015 accepted an invitation from then-U.S. House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner, a Republican, to speak in Congress against President Barack Obama\u2019s Iran policies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Boehner, who had not consulted with Democrats in Congress or the White House about the invitation, framed Netanyahu\u2019s speech as a more serious take on Iran, and members of the Congressional Black Caucus saw it as an all-too-familiar dis: The white man was pushing the Black man out of the limelight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Pro-Israel groups and figures also had been caught by surprise by the invitation; nonetheless, the prospect of a boycott appalled them, and they set about trying to persuade Democrats to turn up.\u00a0Lewis would not have it\u00a0\u2014 but he emphasized his support for Israel in his decision not to attend the speech.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI am saddened that the speaker would threaten this historic position, bipartisan support of our Israeli brothers and sisters, by this action,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Israeli officials joined the chorus of worldwide leaders mourning Lewis this week.\u00a0\u201cThe US lost a hero. Israel lost a friend,\u201d\u00a0tweeted Dani Dayan, the outgoing consul general of Israel in New York, along with a picture of a 2015 tweet from Lewis himself saying,\u00a0\u201cI don\u2019t take a backseat to anyone in my commitment and support of Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\"><strong>Opposing BDS while backing the right to boycott<\/strong><strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lewis was opposed to the movement to boycott Israel, but \u2014 his thoughts cast back to the business boycotts that helped propel the civil rights movement \u2014 he was fiercely defensive of the right to boycott.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He\u00a0opposed state laws and proposed federal laws that would penalize boycotters\u00a0and joined two freshmen congresswomen who back the movement to boycott, divest and sanction Israel in sponsoring a resolution affirming the right of Americans to boycott, a resolution centrist pro-Israel groups lobbied against.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Co-sponsoring the resolution was&nbsp;\u201ca simple demonstration of my ongoing commitment to the ability of every American to exercise the fundamental First Amendment right to protest through nonviolent actions,\u201d he said at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI want to make it very clear that I disagree strongly with the BDS movement,\u201d Lewis said in the same statement. He put his words in action, co-sponsoring a resolution that condemned but did not penalize the BDS movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Main Photo: John Lewis, D-Ga., and Norbert Bikales, who was part of the Kindertransport from Berlin to France in July 1939 following the deportation of his parents and brother to Poland, light one of six candles representing the more than six million Jews who were killed during the Holocaust, in a ceremony in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., April 9, 2002. (Scott J. Ferrell\/Congressional Quarterly\/Getty Images)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Ron Kampeas WASHINGTON (JTA) \u2014 When John Lewis, the civil rights icon and congressman from Georgia, died at 80&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":57486,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[14,13],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v17.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>John Lewis and the Jews: 6 moments that showcase an enduring alliance - Jewish Ledger<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.jewishledger.com\/2020\/07\/john-lewis-and-the-jews-6-moments-that-showcase-an-enduring-alliance\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"John Lewis and the Jews: 6 moments that showcase an enduring alliance - 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