Jackson, the Jews, and the Democrats.

IN RECENT WEEKS, accusations of anti-Semitism have been launched against the Bush campaign. Exposing and uprooting anti-Semitism should be a major concern for Jews and non-Jews alike, but where should the concern be focused? On the Republicans-considering the culpability, significance within their party, and treatment accorded Fred Malek? Hardly. Consider instead the Democrats, keeping in mind Jesse Jackson's culpability, his significance within their party, and treatment accorded him. Speaking as a Jew, I am saddened and alarmed by what Jackson shows about the Democratic Party, and by how Jews have reacted-or failed to react-to the threat he poses.

On nationwide television Jackson was asked why he would not repudiate his old comrade, the anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan. He answered, "It isn't necessary." On July 26 the New York Times published "Anti-Semitism in Chicago: A Stunning Silence," by Professor Eugene Kennedy of Loyola University. It began: "Virulent anti-Semitism has gripped Chicago's black community. Nobody morally powerful enough to try to combat it, including the Reverend Jesse Jackson, who lives here, has attempted to do so. It is so poisonous that the Reverend Andrew Greeley, a Roman Catholic priest and writer and a Chicagoan, has said, 'If I were Jewish, I'd be terrified.' . . . Why has he [Jackson) remained silent? As he campaigns for Governor Michael S. Dukakis, what conclusions can Jewish voters in Chicago-indeed, across the nation-draw from that silence?"

By coincidence or by design, alongside Professor Kennedy's piece was a report by columnist A. M. Rosenthal of a telephone call to him from Jackson. Rosenthal had written that Jackson "prides himself on reaching out to Cubans, Koreans, Mexicans, just about everybody, but has never found it in him to reach out so eagerly to Jews." Jackson told Rosenthal, "It is not true that I have not reached out to American Jews. . . . I have reached out time and again, and sometimes I reached out in pain." The reach has not extended to repudiating Farrakhan.

Three days later the Times ran a story from Chicago by one of its reporters, under a headline referring not to antiSemitism but to "Black-Jewish Hostility." It contained a statement ftom a certain Steve Cokely that said, "The AIDS epidemic is a result of doctors, especially Jewish ones, who inject AIDS into blacks." Louis Farrakhan says that Cokely is a fine fellow-it was in a series of "lectures" in Farrakhan's headquarters that Cokely delivered his observations about Jews-and that the reason why Jews do not like what he said is tha, "the truth hurts."

As for Jackson, the Times reported him as saying that he "had spoken out against anti-Semitism . . . including at a campaign appearance earlier this year in suburban Skokie, where a synagogue had been defaced with swastikas by neo-Nazis. Mr. Jackson, who said he did not know Mr. Cokely, said it was 'time to consider the source and move on. . . . I don't see anyone holding press conferences condemning Koch,' " Mr. Jackson added. (New York Mayor Ed Koch had said that a Jew would have to be crazy to vote for Jackson in the Democratic primary.)

FARRAKHAN AND COKELY draw from an immemorially murderous language: Jews kill (drink the blood of) Gentile children; Jews conspire to rule the world. A Chicago priest says that if he were a Jew he would be terrified. A Chicago rabbi is made of sterner stuff: he says it is necessary for blacks and Jews to "de-demonize" each other. "We have our fringe Jews, too, capable of making racist statements." With a rabbi like that to defend Jews, do Farrakhan and Cokely need to attack them?

Jackson is often admiringly described as a populist. (Jews might remember that another leading populist, Tom Watson of tbe early Populist Party, was responsible for the only anti-Semitic lynching-of Leo Frank-ever perpetrated on American soil.) Imagine a white populist with a record like Jackson's, mutatis mutandis, and with Jackson's power and position in the Democratic Party and in future Democratic Administrations. Imagine that the white populist was asked why he would not repudiate an old comrade who still headed, say, the Ku Klux Klan. Suppose he answered, "It isn't necessary."

Would his denouncers be denounced for divisiveness? When Mayor Koch said what he said, the sky fell on him. Would the sky fall on a black mayor for saying that blacks would have to be crazy to vote for the white populist with the KKK friend? Would liberal blacks vie with each other in favorably comparing their own sanity and black loyalty with the mayor's, insisting that to vote for the KKKer's friend is the tolerant, non-divisive thing to do? Would the black establishment be silent? Would Mario Cuomo chide the black mayor and praise the KKKer's friend? Would not a single important Democrat say a word for the black mayor? (Even Albert Gore, whom Koch supported in the primary, did not come to Koch's defense.) Would Harvard administrators blame the black mayor for tension between their black and white students?

We know the answers to these questions. In San Diego in 1980, a KKKer named Tom Metzger won the Democratic nomination to the House of Representatives. Thereupon Democratic leaders urged the Democrats in his district to vote Republican. Democratic leaders have refused to concede the legitimacy of LaRouche victories in primaries and in elections in Illinois and Texas. They would disown any friend of Metzger's who said that "it isn't necessary" to repudiate him. But the same Democrats cannot and will not say anything against Jackson.

Editorialists who opposed Robert Bork's nomination to the Supreme Court snickered at what they called his "confirmation conversion." Now the same people assure us that today's Jackson is better and nobler than yesterday's, and that tomorrow's will be better and nobler still. If self-serving assurances fail to convince you, they claim that you are small-minded, mean-spirited, and, above all, divisive.

Opposing Jackson is equated with opposing black people; specifically, Jewish opposition to Jackson is thought to be wrong because it will lead black people to conclude that Jews are their enemies. This despite the fact that Jews vote for black candidates more than any other white group does, whether for Tom Bradley in California or for

Harold Washington in Chicago. In Chicago, Washington's first Republican opponent was a Jew. After that election, I thought, "Only in America! Only in America do Poles vote for a Jew more than Jews do." And Jackson and Farrakhan are from Chicago. Yet their propinquity to those Jewishvoters has not helped much.

The United States today is not significantly more antiSemitic than it used to be. Instead, the danger is that the United States is now less anti-anti-Semitic, more non-antiSemitic. The Jackson phenomenon both registers and encourages the change from anti-anti-Semitism to non-antiSemitism.

HISTORIANS WHO HAVE studied the Germans who voted Nazi sixty years ago tell us that while most may have not especially liked Jews, neither were they especially anti-Semitic. They voted Nazi because they thought the Nazis made sense, reasoning something like this: "Does it really matter that Hitler is anti-Semitic? We all have our eccentricities. Forget personalities and concentrate on the issues-jobs, the plight of the farmer and the small merchant, hard times for the little man. On the issues, the Nazis make sense, so let's vote for them." That is how non-antiSemites can justify voting for an anti-Semitic candidate.

A national survey conducted for the American Jewish Committee reveals that American Jews do not ignore antiSemitism. Consider their responses over time to this statement: "Anti-Semitism in America is currently not a serious problem for American Jews." In 1984, 40 per cent of American Jews agreed; in 1988, the figure dropped to 14 per cent. In 1984, 47 per cent disagreed with the statement. By 1988, the figure had increased to 75 per cent. These responses show a dramatic rise in Jews' perception of anti-Semitism as a current serious problem, to threequarters from less than half. One would think Jackson had something to do with it.

Now, consider how Jews have responded to questions about Jackson. In 1984, they were asked, "Do you think Jesse Jackson is anti-Semitic?" Seventy-five per cent responded yes; 8 per cent no; and 18 per cent said they were not sure. In 1988, they were asked, "Is Jesse Jackson anti-Semitic?" Fifty-six per cent of respondents said that he was anti-Semitic; 11 per cent said he was not; and 33 per cent said they were not sure.

The chief difference between the 1984 and 1988 responses is a shift from certainty to uncertainty-not denial -that Jackson is an anti-Semite. In some measure that may be due to the change in the wording of the question. The same person who answers yes to "Do you think Jesse Jackson is anti-Semitic" can answer "not sure" to the question "Is Jesse Jackson anti-Semitic?" But saying "not sure" could be a way of saying, "I don't want to be sure."

Even in 1988, however, five Jews still said tbat Jackson was anti-Semitic for every one who said that he was not. In another survey, Jews were asked, "If Jesse Jackson is the Democratic vice-presidential candidate, which of the major parties will you probably vote for in the 1988 presidential election?" Forty-four per cent said they would vote Republican; 25 per cent said Democratic; 30 per cent were uncertain; and 2 per cent said they would not vote at all. Only one in nine Jews would deny that Jackson is an anti-Semite, but more than half would either certainly or possibly have voted to put him that famous heartbeat away from being President. What would the nominee have to be like for Jews not to vote for him?

Still, the figures on voting in the Democratic primaries show some evidence of Jewish opposition to anti-Semitism. Nationally, 8 per cent of Jewish voters in the Democratic primaries voted for Jackson, or one in 12: from 4 per cent in New Jersey to 14 per cent in California. Jews were less likely to vote for Jackson than other whites, less likely than white Protestants, less likely than Catholics, and less likely than liberals-though Jews tend more than others to describe themselves as liberal.

Now, this shows only that while Jews are in practice less anti-anti-Semitic than they should be, gentiles are even less anti-anti-Semitic. Jews and gentiles alike must realize that anti-anti-Semitism is more than a special interest of the Jews. Hitler was a calamity for Jews first and foremost, but in the end for gentiles too. If more Germans had been anti-anti-Semitic rather than non-anti-Semitic, the calamity might have been averted. But when Jews are less than completely anti-anti-Semitic, what can we expect of gentiles?

"The moral obligation to be intelligent" means that imprudence can be downright immoral. It is imprudent to leave your car door unlocked and your key in the ignition. Your insurance company will not like it, and it may be illegal. At the very least, imprudence is an error. Some years ago a Barnard student was raped in New York's Morningside Park. Afterward she said, "It's my fault. I was stupid. I should never have gone into the park. Everyone knows it's a dangerous place." It was as if she thought of the rapist as a wild beast-certain to pounce on anyone imprudent (stupid) enough to venture close-rather than as a man with free will. We are not supposed to blame the victim, but this victim blamed herself.

IN POLITICAL MATTERS, too, the imprudent victim can come to be blamed. An American Jewish Committee survey on the 1978 NBC-TV drama Holocaust concluded that the program "stressed the failure of some German Jews . . . to act in the face of the ominous German reality. The survey asked: 'Do you think the persecution of the Jews was . . . their own fault?' Some respondents took 'fault' to mean failure of perception. In the words of one respondent: 'At first [Jews] didn't understand what was going on.' Contrary to what might have been expected, viewers were somewhat more inclined than non-viewers (25 per cent as against 17 per cent) to put the blame for what happened primarily on the Jews." (There were more Jews among the viewers than among the non-viewers.)

If American Jews were prudent, they would swing massively from Democratic to Republican voting, at least this time. Let the Democrats learn that there is a cost to bending the knee before a politician who cannot bring himself to repudiate a Farrakhan. Let them see that a party cannot with impunity stop being anti-anti-Semitic.

But will Jews be prudent? Of course not. When Dukakis picked Senator Bentsen as his vice-presidential candidate, Mayor Koch pleaded to be allowed to campaign for them. Other Jews, too, will do anything to avoid subjecting themselves to the discomfort of reconsidering their attachment to Jackson's party-Jackson's in the sense that now he belongs to it, and soon it will belong to him.

When my grandmother heard about good advice that one person was giving to another, she would often pronounce a Yiddish formula: "Needless or useless"-meaning that the advice was so obvious that nobody should have needed it in the first place; and that if it had to be given at all, it would probably not be heeded. I will not try to persuade m self that her formula does not apply here. Intelligent people should not need to be advised to honor their moral obligation to act intelligently.

It is important to emphasize both the stakes in this election and the role that Jewish voters may play in deciding it. In 1976 the Jewish vote in New York state gave the White House to Carter. In 1988, will the Jewish vote, in whatever state, give Jesse Jackson unquestioned entree to the White House? Jackson is the friend of Israel's most implacable enemies. Will the Jewish vote give him a chance to approve State Department personnel and policy?

It consoles me hardly at all to think that sooner or later American Jews' attachment to the Democratic Party is bound to go the way of British Jews' attachment to the Labour Party. Between 1963 and 1988 the Labour percentage of Jewish members of Parliament fell from 95-95!-to 30, while the Conservative percentage rose ftom 5 to 70. British Jews have been abandoning Labour because Labour has been abandoning the Jews.

In the United States, unfortunately, "sooner or later" may be too late. I think of the remark of the great Jewish scholar Solomon Schechter: "Don't talk to me about Jews. You'll spoil my Sabbath." As it happens, Schechter was the founder of the Conservative movement within American Judaism. It is the obstinate, verging on suicidal, unwillingness of American Jews today to consider a strategic alliance with American political conservatism that is spoiling my Sabbaths, and my weekdays too.