Out and About

A newspaper office is, in some ways, a hot-house world. There are those insistent deadlines every week; copy to edit; layouts to peruse; the telephone and e-mail increasingly the link to a world that’s outside.

But then — thank goodness — there are those forays out of the office. They turn out nearly always to be a surprise; nearly always a learning experience.

I had three such experiences this past week.

The first, appropriately enough, was at the University of Southern California, where I appeared on a panel with other journalists from print and television. The topic? Hate crimes in America.

The surprise for me was that relatively few were concerned with anti-Semitism. It is not as though Jews and anti-Semitism have been hidden from view these last several months. There have been the August shooting and wounding of Jewish children at the North Valley Jewish Community Center; and earlier the fire bombing of three Sacramento synagogues, as well as the attack on a group of Orthodox rabbis in Illinois. I could keep listing.

But the panelists and the audience were primarily concerned with hate crimes directed against gays and Blacks. It was not that they were indifferent to the plight of Jews; or thought that anti-Semitism did not qualify as a hate crime. I concluded that rather they felt there was a difference : Blacks and gays were still, as a group(though not as individuals), outsiders. And we were not. We were part of the white establishment.

It did not make anti-Semitism any less pernicious; any less of a hate crime; any less dangerous. But the struggle seemed not the same. I suggested we were all “linked” by the Internet, where anonymity and instant access to a world mailing list gave voice and accessibility to all those who wanted to demonize any and all of us. We were now joined as subjects for those who wished to vent against Blacks or Jews or gays or anyone else in the new populist media. An attack against one was a wound against all.

My next outing a few days later was a luncheon at the Broadway Deli in Santa Monica with Rabbi Marc Schneier. It was what I would call a “Blacks and Jews” meeting, maybe 10 present, consisting naturally enough of Black and Jewish community representatives. Among Jewish leaders present were Jonah Goldrich and Rabbi Steve Jacobs.

Rabbi Schneier is a dynamic, articulate Modern Orthodox rabbi whose congregation is in the Hamptons, about three hours outside of New York City on Long Island. Yes, it’s those Hamptons; the place where wealthy artists and writers and Hollywood stars own extravagant — or maybe just expensive — homes, and appear always to be partying, or stuck in traffic during the summer months. Our own Steven Spielberg has been one of the rabbi’s benefactors.

The occasion for the meeting? “Shared Dreams,” a new book written by Marc Schneier to be published officially in January. It was three years in the making and it documents, in considerable detail, the efforts of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to make the cause of the Jews his own. There were his speeches and exhortations in support of freeing Soviet Jews; his resounding defenses of Israel; and his bitter and immediate denunciations of anti-Semitic acts and statements in the United States, particularly when they emanated from voices in the Black community.

The point of the book, the author emphasized, was to demonstrate that the relationhip between Blacks and Jews in the ’60s was a two-way street. It was not just Jews helping Blacks to gain social justice and the right to vote; it was Jews and Blacks supporting one another. That message, he explained, was largely unknown. It needed to be heard if we were to repair some of the friction that has come to define some of the feelings among people in both communities.

Finally, a visit to the Workmen’s Circle on South Robertson Boulevard. The occasion? Another panel, this time consisting of members of the Jewish press, come together to discuss the role and the functioning of Jewish media within Los Angeles.

You would think by this time I would have the answers down pat. It would just be a matter of rote description. Wrong. To my surprise — and perhaps for the audience as well — I found myself learning once again what we were all about.

We try to be fair and accurate, and to speak to the broad range of Jewish readers (and interests), I said. That certainly was familiar. And we try to be authoritative; perhaps respected and read because we were authoritative, I added. Nothing new there.

And because I care deeply about writing — and believe as well that our readers respond on a conscious or unconscious level to language and felicitous writing — we try to include columnists who have something to say, and who say it at times with elegance and grace and style. That was a bit extra, but not actually a new recognition for me.

But then I found myself continuing in uncharted territory: What we strive for is to develop loyalty among our readers. I like to think that we are the home team newspaper; not unlike the Lakers or the Dodgers. We count on our readers for support; for their loyalty. And on our part, we try to hear, recognize and respond to them. Ultimately we try not to betray their trust. Ruefully, I must admit, we don’t always succeed. –Gene Lichtenstein