Jews ruin their slavery thunder.
So many of their most moving signal songs and spirituals are inspired by the Children of Israel in Egypt. I have always felt proud of that fact. But living face to face and across the street from blacks in the Chassidic community of Crown Heights, you see things that don’t happen on TV. I’d say many blacks have great affection for Jews, but at the same time many more resent their Jewish landlord, the Jewish grocer, the people they bump into on the sidewalk. Jews, for that matter, constantly apprehend trouble from every black person who gets on the subway, sometimes with good reason. In NYC, Jews and blacks are frequently neighbors, and relationships get complicated. We see too much of each other. Know each other too well and not well enough.