The New York Times report on "Barack Obama's Rabbi", Capers Funnye Jr., suggests that Obama has been hiding this connection and neither assertion is true. Having known Rabbi Funnye for years, I thought that a few things should be clarified. For Starters, he is not Obama's Rabbi. Not that he could not be - Funnye is smart, funny, compassionate and a true community leader. In short, he has all of the personal skills and sensitivities that one looks for in a religious leader. But he has not played that role for either Senator Obama, or for Michelle to whom Rabbi Funnye is related. In fact, he is not even a member of a group calling itself Rabbis for Obama, which is sponsoring a pre-Rosh Hashanah conference call for Rabbis and the Senator later this week.
But it's the claim that Obama was hiding something that is most troubling, despite there being no evidence that he did so. It's troubling because it's plausible that Obama would need to hide his connection to Rabbi Funnye, given some of the painfully pathological relationships that exist between some segments of the Black and Jewish communities on the one hand, and the attitude of Jews to Jews who may not look like them on the other.
The rising tensions between elements of the Black and Jewish communities are no secret, and in the case of Obama, are typified by his relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright. The fact is that the relationship between these two communities was cemented for generations by a shared sense of victimhood. And as each group began to compete for the mantle of most victimized, relations were strained to the breaking point. In the worst cases, each group identifies their former allies as perpetrators of the victimization e.g. the number of blacks who believe that "Jews run this country" and the number of Jews who still think that Barack Obama is a Muslim/Muslim sympathizer who hates Israel.
And while one might think that having a rabbi would dispel some of the latter's baseless suspicion, one would be wrong. Why? Because, for many Jews, Cappers Funnye Jr. can't be a rabbi because he doesn't look like a rabbi, he's black. Guess what? We come in every color! In fact, if racial purity was an issue, then I suspect that most of those reading these words would not qualify as Jews. Since most of us are probably relatively white and European looking, and Abraham and Sarah were from the Middle East, other people must have gone swimming in our gene pool. Go figure.
I would love for Barack Obama to have a rabbi. I would like him to have a few. Just as I hope that he would have pastors, imams and spiritual teachers from many traditions. And I think it would be quite interesting for Cappers Funnye to be one of them. But even more than that, I would love to wake up and find that hiding that fact was not even imaginable given the strength of the relationships between the black and Jewish communities. And that's something that we can all work on, regardless of who becomes the next President, what faith we follow, or the color of our skin.
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Author, radio and TV talk show host, and President of CLAL-The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, Brad Hirschfield is the author of 
First, a little about myself. I am of mixed ethnicities: African, Slavic, and Latin. As I was born in the U.S., I am currently labeled African-American. My father was a non-practicing Catholic whose patrilineal line included Russian Jews who converted to Orthodox Christianity. My mother, the descendant of African slaves, was an ordained Protestant minister. Growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area, I was taught to choose friends by the content of their character, not their skin color or professed religious beliefs. However, I was also taught that my family was in the minority in this regard and that for the many skin color and religious belief trumped character every time. I attended evangelical Protestant churches until the age of 12 or 13 when I decided that I was unable to embrace the fundamental tenets of Christianity. In college and graduate school developed an interest in anthropology and took courses and, eventually taught, courses in world religions. I attended Muslim Friday prayers with my Arabic language TA, I conducted a research project on African-American female ministers. As a young adult I was moved to convert to Judaism after years of academic study and research into the world’s religions. For me, Judaism was the closet fit to the values I was raised with and the conception of G-d I had arrived at (my youngest sister converted to Islam after a similar spiritual journey). Going in I expected that my former status as a Gentile, my Conservative conversion, and my skin color would create issues of varying import and complexity within the Jewish community. I similarly expected that my embrace of Judaism would create parallel issues in both the African-American and larger American societies to which I already belonged. To my pleasant surprise, my conversion has largely been a positive experience and has afforded me the opportunity to positively serve as a conduit for increased understanding and dialogue.
Now I would like to address some of the issues I have read in previous posts:
(1) I have known African-Americans for all of my life (just as I have known Jews, Muslims, whites, Asians, etc), most of whom are Christians. Outside of a few exceptions (so-called Black nationalists, college students developing their identity and questioning the status quo, and out-right bigots - every group has them), I have experienced the Anti-Semitism feared by some of the Jews posting on the internet. Sure I have heard sympathies expressed towards the Palestinians (to a group recalling apartheid and Jim Crow this seems reasonable); I have heard sadness and regret at some the Israeli state’s actions; and consternation at the current state of Black-Jewish relations. I have also heard the belief in Israel’s right to exist and defend itself; recognition and appreciation of the Jewish role in founding Historically Black Colleges and our winning of Civil Rights; and the contributions of the Jewish people to the world at large. To take the ideology and actions of the few as indicative of the whole reminds me so much of the “blind men and the elephant;”
(2) Regarding Cone’s book, “The Theology of Black Liberation,” I have read the book and quoted from it extensively in my graduate thesis on African-American woman ministers in the Pentecostal Church. I have also read “Is G-d a White Racist,” and several feminist critiques of the Christian church. All of these texts made salient points germane to my research, but I took none as indicative of a gospel to guide my thoughts or actions. Books are published ultimately as commodities to be purchased. As we can intelligently gather from entertainment/sensationalist/fear-mongering nature of our national media, conflict and controversy means profits. Cone’s book emerges out of the Civil Rights movement and post-Civil Rights Black power struggle in the 1970s. Not meaning to diminish at all the socio-political and economic import of the circumstances giving birth to the book, I would argue that its presence in Rev. Wright’s church is more a product of the Reverend’s formative years as a Civil Rights and Black Power activist than a measure of the congregation’s orientation vis-à-vis our current society. In my humble opinion, the book is more about freeing those African-Americans not already enlightened as to how the structures of ideological domination and subordination are maintained, in this case through the Euro-centric constructions of whiteness and “rightness” within Christianity, from self-destructive beliefs and behaviors – than about white people or relations with white people;
(3) When I attended church, I can honestly say that I listened to a theology I found to be inherently flawed. Nonetheless, there were aspects of the general Christian tenets I found to be universal truths with application to my life. That which I found to be unless, anachronistic, or mythological, I simply failed to absorb or consider further. Family and friends I speak with on these subjects demonstrate similar propensities – they take what they need from their churches and ignore the rest. I have never met a person of Christian, Muslim, Jewish, or other faiths, who uncritically believe every single tenet of their tradition. My Rabbi expresses views at odds with some or more of our congregation: he is sometimes too liberal, sometimes too conservative; he is at once too naïve about the prospects of peace in the Holy Land and again too much of a Zionist; and to others he is too Reform in his views, while others think he succumbs to the tyranny of orthodoxy. Yet we all remain his congregants for our own “selfish” reasons. It is difficult, I understand, for non African-Americans to understand the political role pastor’s play in African-American communities. Politicians understand this, as exemplified by their abjection courting of benedictions and blessings from prominent religious figures. Point to any African-American political figure and there will be some prominent pastor somewhere in their near or far past. I sincerely doubt that any politician can rise to a position representing a political entity of any significant African-American population without cozying up to the local power-Pastor. This rule extends to the Republicans and their constant massing of the Radical Christian right. Politics does indeed make for strange bedfellows and the very nature of our system breeds these unholy couplings of convenience – and destines their eventual divorces. Obama is not alone in having a pastoral albatross in his past – McCain, Hillary, and now Palin have their own; and
(4) I’m not quite sure when dialogue, diplomacy, sanctions, and coalitions came off the international political table. For the last eight years we have seen the negative effects of the current administration’s “DieHard” and “Rambo II” approach to international affairs. In a world of asymmetrical warfare, dirty nukes, and post-cold war ICBMs stewing in the cholent of economic meltdown, is direct military confrontation the first incendiary candle we want to light? Part of our entrapment in Iraq, and current economic quagmire, is the result of our leadership’s disrespect for dialog and neglect of negotiation. We have neither the economy nor the manpower, much less the mandate, to attack and invade everyone who threatens us. Its ironic that we teach our children that violence of a last resort option of self-defense and advise them to talk out their differences, yet we disparage leaders who hold that the carrot of dialogue should preface the stick of military might.
It is my opinion that Islam, Hillary Clinton, madrassas, Rev. Wright, flag pins, tangential relationships, and wanting to dialogue with enemies, are all convenient excuses. I recognize that die-hard Republicans will necessarily tow the party line (as will die-hard Democrats), but it is the Democrats who say that they will vote Republican that cause me to cry “For shame!” Rather than honestly say, “I just can’t bring myself to vote for a man of color,” they cloak their bigotry in unsubstantiated pseudo concerns. When their children ask, “what did you do in that critical moment in our nation’s history?” I hope they can honestly say, “I chose the wrong man, at the wrong time, for the wrong reasons. Can you ever forgive me?”
I sure don't understand the harshness of some of the posters here regarding the topic of this article.
Bruce Feiler recently asked the same question about the number of black Jews. No one railed at him for having posted an "irrelevant" question.
Rabbi Joshua Nelson, another black man, came and spoke to my congregation one time. It was wonderful. Why not speak to something here regarding one of our POTUS candidates? I bet you'd be interested if it were something a little more controversial.
If you want strictly financial and political articles, there are plenty of websites you can go to and find talking heads (but you won't likely find David Byrne...).
On the other hand, for general interest articles with a religious connection, tune it here, same bat time, same bat channel...
B"H
Natan: THank you for your honest and deep insights into some of the issues as they stand.
However, I cannot even begin to imagine a two-state solution that will satisfy the Palestinians, and allow Jews to retain access to our Holy Sites.
Arafat and Abbas, not to mention Hamas, have a "100% or nothing" approach to the issues of Jerusalem and "occupied territory" in Israel.
If the Arabs get what they demand, the 1967 borders will be re-established. NO JEW WILL BE PERMITTED TO PRAY AT ANY HOLY SITES, including the Kotel, the Western Wall of the Holy Temple. In addition, based on history, it is Arab policy to destroy any remnant of Jewish historical presence in the Middle East, as was done by Jordianians between 1948 and 1967, where Jewish holy sites were turned into toilets and destroyed. Jews could NOT even approach the holy areas under threat of getting shot.
Mr. Obama believes, perhaps in innocence, that this (a "divided Jerusalem") is an acceptable solution. He will, of course, be permitted to enter Arab-controlled East Jerusalem, as long as no one in his traveling party is Jewish.
Anyone who in true decency believes that ALL faiths should be permitted to visit their respective holy sites and pray there, will NOT support a solution where the Jewish people will once again be denied access to our Holy Sites (as we are today, from Joseph's Tomb, which was destroyed by Palestinians after Israel gave up the site, and Rachel's Tomb, which must be approached by Jews in armored buses with armed guards, and prayer there requires one take his/her life in their hands).
As far as Jersualem being an international city, controlled by a neutral force permitting all faiths to pray there, this was categorically REJECTED by the Arabs when proposed in 1947, and they will NOT tolerate such a solution today either.
The current, continued destruction of the Temple Mount, where Jewish artifacts are being unearthed by the Waqf of the Mount and put into garbage dumps, reflects the Palestinian's believe that
JUDIASM IS A DISGUSTING PLAGUE THAT MUST BE ELIMINATED
JEWS MUST BE REMOVED FROM THE PLANET
A JEWISH COUNTRY IN THE HOLY MIDDLE EAST IS A DISEASE ON THE AREA
Keep in mind that during WWII, the Palestinian leader, the Mufti of Jerusalem, Al-Husseini, spent at least part of the war in Berlin, planning with the German high command, the deportation of Jews from the Middle East, to death camps in Eastern Europe. There was no State of Israel, nor was there "occupied territory" back then.
I have NOT seen anything in the media the reflects the Palestinians' desire to live in peace with Jews in the ara. Let them come forth and offer a solution that allows everyone to worship at their holy sites and peace, and let them rebuild Joseph's Tomb, and not attack Jews who wish to visit those places under Palestinian control, and then we'll have something to talk about.
Let the Palestinians' fellow Arab bretheren, the Saudi oil ministers, who spend their money on gold-plated cars and gold-plated castles, who can't spend all their billions even if they wanted to, on improving the welfare of their Palestinian bretheren. Let them take the money they give to each homicide bomber "martyr" in Israel, and give it instead to hungry families. Let them convert the refugee camps into attractive villages for their Muslim bretheren to live in.
Then we could have mutual cooperation and peace in the Middle East.
Jews have as much right to exist on the Earth as any other nation.
Joe.
Natan Or - your post is too long - next time shorten it - you are smart enough to be brief and still state your points, never the less I enjoyed reading it . You have come home, I am glad you did. (
Joe, American Presidents who are not Jewish will not understand what a true Jewish state is so the best we can hope for from our Political leaders here in the U.S. is to continue to support Israel's right to exist how ever imperfect that existence is. President Bush'es Road Map for peace was terrible and not nearly as pro-Israel as it should have been. I take comfort in knowing the Master of the Universe is on our side. Why do I believe that? - Because I believe the Torah is an inspired document about our relationship with Hashem, and many of the problems we have with our Middle East neighbors began eons ago.
Muslims do not acknowledge the Torah or any of the Hebrew Scriptures as valid, truthful documents so any thing we say or do will not change there attitude towards us. It is their loss in so many ways and may result in their demise. I continue to pray for peace and hope the Muslim community will evolve into truly spiritual people who love and accept others. If you ever read the poems of Rumi the Sufi Muslim there is hope.
I do not think the current Palestinian Muslims are truly religious people, but a people locked into a past way of being that has nothing to do with intelligent religious reasoning and are locked into a culture that has rendered them quite nuts. I think their plight is very sad and I wish them no ill and if there is any thing I could do to help them I would do it.(Except give then Israel, of course.) I lament their Arab brothers just use them to torment us; However, I know that they cannot and must not ever be trusted. Shalom
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