Obama's election was liberating in many ways for all of us. For
me, as an American Jew, there was a surprise. I had long held a
secret resentment of African Americans, secret even from myself.
I grew up in Georgia during the civil rights movement. My mother
was critically involved in the desegregation of the Atlanta school
system. I befriended the first black kids to enter my elementary
school - and was beat up for it, too. I've had close black friends
throughout my life. As a Jew, I felt empathy for a brutally
oppressed minority, not guilt. And yet there was something that
held me back from fully absorbing the African American narrative.
Oh, I knew my own racism, had confronted it and wrestled with it.
When Barack Obama was elected it dawned on me. There was
something else here besides racism. It was narcissism. Here, in the
new world, it wasn't all about us, the Jews.
In the old world it really was all about us--God's chosen people.
From Pharaoh's Egypt to Hitler's Germany, through the
Babylonians and the Greeks, the Roman Empire to Mohammed
and the rise of Islam and the Crusades, to 1492, when Columbus
sailed and our expulsion from Spain began, we were the little bit of
yeast that Western Civilization got a rise out of stomping on. Every
religious war, every conspiracy of Jews and Masons, communists
and bankers and elders of Zion, at every turn- there we were. Oh
sure, there was a Greek narrative, a Roman narrative, a Spanish
narrative, a French narrative, an English narrative and so on. Each,
in their brief time, absolutely convinced it was all about them- that
they were the chosen ones. It was the Jewish narrative that
connected the dots, that persisted and prevailed. Monotheism? We
invented it. Christianity? Invented it. Capitalism? Invented it.
Socialism? Invented it. Psychotherapy, relativity, the bomb?
Invented it. Gutenberg's Bible? We wrote the book! We defined
Western Civilization and ultimately, in the holocaust, demolished
its cherished premise of superiority, of even being civilized at all.
And for all the suffering we endured, for all the wisecracks asking
why couldn't God chose someone else just once, we loved it. It
validated our absurd sense of self-importance and sustained our
narcissism, indeed, our very existence.
Not so in America. Here, from Crispus Attucks to Barack Obama,
from the civil war to civil rights, from gospel to Jazz and R&B in
all it's permutations, from Birth of a Nation to the Jazz Singer and
beyond, from Jesse Owens to OJ Simpson, the critical narrative
thread is black. Yes, there's a raft of powerful immigrant narratives
that make up the gorgeous crazy quilt that is the fabric of
American life. Of course there's the Native American tragedy and
the white Anglo-Saxon Protestants and their pioneer saga; the
heroic founding fathers--with their dark and dirty secrets. But we
cannot even think of the American dream without reference to
King's speech and the parallel nightmare that has been so much of
the black experience. What drives the American narrative, what
ties it together and gives it a pulse, what defines the relationship
between our ideals and our reality in starkest terms of black and
white, what makes it compelling and as great as the greatest story
ever told is the African American narrative. American Jews have
had a wonderful supporting role. We can be proud of the fact that
at the moment of truth Jews voted for Barack Hussein Obama by a
greater percentage than any other ethnic group in America, except
black Americans. The African slaves recognized themselves in us
when they first read Exodus. Now, we recognize ourselves in
them.
And to every nice Jewish boy suffering from a messiah complex;
that secret nagging dread and masochistic desire that the
impossible burden of saving this world's sorry ass from itself will
fall on the narrow shoulders of some poor descendant of the House
of David who will most likely be crucified for his efforts, I have
just one thing to say: Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty,
we're free at last!