10/14/1997
IWDM Study Library
Jewish - African Relations 
Univ Miami, Florida

By Imam W. Deen Mohammed
With the name of G-d, the Merciful Benefactor, the Merciful Redeemer, As Salaam-Alaikum. Greetings and salutations to Dr. Pat Whitley, Dr. Rodney Rawls, our honored guests, friends, and faculties of the University of Miami. My name is Wali Salahuddin. I'm a senior industrial engineering student at the University of Miami as well as a member of Imam's W.D. Mohammed's community.
On behalf of the steering committee for this activity, I would like to thank you for joining us for this historical event. We all thank you for electing to participate, and the keyword is participate, in the panel discussion between Imam W.D. Mohammed and the Rabbi Herbert Baumgard.
As you may know, the topic of our discussion is the future of black and Jewish relations. Now let's ask ourselves. Why do we need a program like this here at the University of Miami? This is a highly respected institute of higher learning, and certainly, we all can get along. If you saw the movie, Higher Learning, then you know the answers to these questions. Or better yet, recall the events that took place on this campus in the past two years and the pain and agony that stem from those activities, and you also obtain the same results. If that's not good enough, consider this simple law of nature. A body in motion tends to stay in motion unless acted upon by equal and opposite force. If I may add, ideas of intolerance and hatred will persist unchecked unless acted upon by equal and greater force.
Ladies and gentlemen, the program that we have put together for you today is that superior counterforce to intolerance and hatred. It is our intentions, G-d willing, that everyone in this room will gain some insight about themselves as well as others and become champions of peace and justice. At that time, I'll turn the program over to our moderator, the Reverend Gabriel, who will formally introduce our speakers, as well as the format for this program. Thank you.

Reverend Gabriel: Thank you, Wali. I'm here with you today. I'm grateful to be here as the Chairperson of the University Chaplains Association here at the University of Miami. It is a privilege for me to introduce to you these two distinguished religious leaders. I'd like to begin with the gentleman seated to my far right, Imam W. Deen Mohammed. Imam Mohammed is the Muslim religious leader for the society of Muslim Americans. He is the son of Elijah Muhammad. Imam Mohammed has provided international leadership to the causes of racial and religious reconciliation.
Through his leadership in the Islamic community now for more than 20 years, Imam Mohammed is recognized as one of the prominent figures in American religious life. He was selected by President Bill Clinton as the representative for Al-Islam in the Inaugural Interfaith Prayer Service and is a current member of the President's religious advisory council. Internationally, Imam Mohammed is a member of the World Supreme Council of Mosque. A member of the board of directors of the council for a parliament of the world's religions and international president of the World Conference of Religion and Peace.
He the author of a number of publications, some of those are indicated in your program, and Imam Mohammed hosts a nationally syndicated television program WD Mohammed and Guests, and he's heard weekly on radio stations throughout North America. Would you join me please in warmly welcoming Imam W.D. Mohammed to the University of Miami?

Welcome to you, sir.
I'm also delighted to introduce our second distinguished panelist today, Rabbi Dr. Herbert Baumgard who is the Rabbi Emeritus of Temple of Beth Am in South Miami. Rabbi Baumgard's career has been extraordinary as well as a religious leader stretching across 47 years and includes service in local congregations as a professor of religion and as a leader on an international scale in interfaith and interracial causes. He is the founding rabbi of two congregations: Temple B'nai Israel in Elmont, Long Island and the Temple Beth Am here in South Miami.
Rabbi Baumgard is a life member of the NAACP and was an original organizer of the interfaith agency for social justice. He is a former chairman of the Dade County Community Relations Board and a leader along with personalities like the Reverend Theodore Gibson in the civil rights struggles of the 1960s here in Miami. He's a former president of the Clergy Dialogue Group of the National Conference and as president of the Synagogue Council of America. Rabbi Baumgard helped to organize national level meetings between black religious leaders and rabbis. I know you'll want to join me also in welcoming this old friend and member of the University of Miami teaching faculty, Rabbi Herbert Baumgard.

Part of the role that I have been asked to take as moderator today is to help all of us understand something about how this program will flow. So, give me just a moment, if you will, to lay out some simple rules that we'll follow. In a moment we're going to ask each panelist beginning with Imam Mohammed to take 10 minutes to make introductory remarks and to introduce the topic of the future of black and the Jewish relations. I'll serve as timekeeper throughout this program so when each of the panelist has about two minutes remaining on their time, I'll gently and courteously give them a signal that about two minutes are remaining.
Also, today, you will have the chance to raise questions to the panelists but in written form only. I hope that each of you has received a three by five card as you come in. If you haven't please let an usher know and they'll be glad to furnish one to you. What we're asking you to do is to write your questions on these cards, include if you will please, the panelist to whom the question is addressed if it's addressed to either Imam Mohammed or Rabbi Baumgard or to both so we might know how to direct the question and then pass them to the center aisle.
Once we begin the questions we'll ask each panelist to take them about a minute responding to each question so that we might answer as many of them as possible. We'll need to end the question and answer session promptly at 1:35 today. Then we'll give each panelist an opportunity for two minutes of closing remarks beginning with Rabbi Baumgard. With that bit of introduction, Imam Mohammed, again we welcome you and the floor is yours, sir.
Imam Mohammed: Thank you. It's very difficult to really explain how Jewish and African Americans or black relations went bad. I believe that as a child, I always thought of the Jews as separate from the enemy. I came up an organization and white supremacy was the enemy, and I separated the Jew from the enemy and that was automatic for me. My parents never said anything or influenced me in any way to think the Jew was the enemy. Although, some of the complaints that I hear from some African-Americans I was aware of those things happening in our life.
Once a non-Muslim and a non-black was trying to help me deal with some personal problems I had. He became a friend of mine. He said, "Warith, you know what I do when I have to make a hard decision, so what I do I put all the negatives on one side of the page and all the positives on the other side of the page." I said, "Then I study what's on the page." I think that's what our African-American leaders are not doing. They're not putting the positive on one side of the page and the negative on the other side of the page, and study what's there. What I'm saying is that we are really gotten out of touch with the truth of what is our relations with the Jewish people. We've lost a lot of the very important information. I think that is a part of the problem. Another part of the problem is that African-Americans tend to follow their leaders, their spokesmen, especially in their emotional delivery. We tend to grab the emotional delivery and becomes part of it and we identify with it. Yes, that's what I want to say, that's what I want to express. He's speaking for me. But few of our leaders are speaking for our rational mind. They're speaking for our emotions, for our hurt or whatever, but they're not speaking so much for what's happening to our rational minds. That's the bigger part of the problem.
When I was coming up as a youngster, we were told to study circumstances, but we also told that we had some value as a person, we had value as a people, and those values was understood beginning with faith. Our strength was faith; faith in G-d, and we believe in a G-d of justice. So, we were not so desperate as the average African-Americans; even a professional African-American seems to be much more desperate now, than we were. We were more peaceful in spite of the bad conditions and bad circumstances for us. We were more peaceful in our souls, so we could think most soberly I believe.
That's much of the problem. In our Scripture, G-d says, seek the hereafter that G-d promised you with all that He has availed you, but don't forget that you have a share in this material world. Now if G-d has to remind us that we have a share in this material world, I think we can get so involved in concerns that of trying nature that tests us and try us and burden our hearts and burden our souls. We can get so burdened by all that and so involved in all that, that we forget number one things, first things. We forget first things.
A lot of the problems that we have is with our relationship not just to Jewish people, but a healthy relationship with this land, a relationship with the government of the United States. Many of us don't have it, and I believe it's for the same reason. Many of us don't have a healthy relationship with our neighborhoods and I believe it's for the same reason. So, this problem that we have in our relations with the Jews is not so much of a problem with the Jewish people. It's that we lost, and we don't see right; we can't see directly because information is not put in our hands anymore. Our leaders used to be feel responsible to tell us about America, to tell us about the Jewish people, and they tell us the good that Jews have done for the world and for us. I don't think they're doing that anymore.
This is much of the problem. There are some individuals on the campuses, especially in California, and they have been trying to wake us up and say "Well, maybe we've gone too far with this lamentation, maybe we are crying too much, maybe we are seeing ourselves as pitiful people, and we should stop that and it's time to check that. Maybe we have made ourselves a bigger victim than we really are."
I tend to appreciate those professors on the campuses in California because I sense that that's a real problem. That not to say we don't have problems, we have plenty of problems. I was sharing with Rabbi Herbert Baumgard about my experience as a child, the neighborhood I grew up in. The average African-American child was pitiful. I was one of them, but I could live with my poverty better than most of them could. So, I don't see myself as pitiful back then, but many of them are very pitiful. Their parents-- Many parents were seen drunk in the streets practically all day long. They were not there, they were not around. Plenty of taverns, maybe eight to 10 taverns could be in one block. We lived on Wabash, State Street, you could find eight or 10 taverns in one block. The conditions were very bad when I was boy.
Occasionally, I go back to my neighborhood, that neighborhood to see what is the state, how are they changing, things getting better for that, and I find that for the most part they are still in the same condition. That neighborhood still there. What we do we move from trouble, we move from bad conditions, those who can get out of it, those who can make some progress, we move from it and we tend to forget about it.
My parents moved to Woodlawn area where the University of Chicago is. So, in that neighborhood, we don't see that. We can easily forget that picture. That was the picture for us, our circumstances when we were young, we forget that. I find it a need for my own mind and spirit to occasionally go back to those areas to see if anything is done. That's a driving force in my life to keep working, to try to help somebody. I believe that’s another need in our spokespersons who will speak for African-American people, they need to stay in touch with the reality, and they have become-- Like I am, I can pay my rent, I can eat, I can go and shop, and I don't have to worry and say, "Well, I can't buy that. I don't have enough money to buy that. I'll eat chicken legs or chicken wings." I'm better off now, but many of us we don't go back to those neighborhoods. We simply bring that picture with us and pretend that that's the picture for all of us right now. All of us are victims. All of us are denied and that's not reality. Thank you very much.
Reverend Gabriel: Thank you so much Imam. Now an opportunity for Rabbi Herbert Baumgard to offer some opening comments.
Rabbi Baumgard: 
Can you hear me all right? Good. First of all, I want to tell you that it's great privilege for me to be on the same platform with the imam whose reputation has preceded him. I believe that he is engaged in a great work and I wish him all success.
Our Hebrew tradition says that in spite of the fact that Moses was probably the greatest man in Jewish history. He was humble. In the Bible, it says, "Mosheh ish anav." He was a humble man, and I found that the Imam is such a humble man and therefore I can understand that he is such a wonderful leader. I'd like to tell you a little about my own background and how I came to be interested in black-Jewish relations, and that goes back to my very young age.
I was taught in my Sunday school that man and woman, the scripture says and woman, were made in the image of G-d, which to me means that every human being has essential worth and value in the eyes of G-d. The second thing I plucked out of my scripture as I grew older was that teaching of the prophet Amos, "Are you not as the Ethiopians unto me, O children of Israel?"
Now when you tell people that they are chosen, they are the best, they get to believe it, become arrogant sometimes, and so this was not G-d's understanding of chosen as He meant responsibility. So, He has his prophet say to the people, "Are you not as the Ethiopians unto me, O children of Israel?" Now the Ethiopians you know are black. So, to me that was a very meaningful teaching in my Scripture and I believed all of that completely. One of the reasons I believe it because you know the lessons you learned, the best of those you learned from life, was that when I was about eight years old, some big old white boy came
up to me and sank his arm in my belly up to his elbow and said, "Damn Jew." Of course, I went home crying and asked my mother, "What was going on here?" She had no satisfactory answer for me. I want to tell you I gave that boy a wide berth whenever I saw him again. He and his friends would continue to mock me and other Jews who lived in the neighborhood.
I was telling the Imam this story that once there was a big fight in our neighborhood. The whites lived on the left of my street and the blacks on the right and the Jewish street was the street down the middle. This fight was a brick and bottle fight. I don't know whether you've ever seen such a thing. I couldn't help it but observe, and I was an observer, was that the boys who were hateful to me were the ones who were throwing the rocks and the bottles with the greatest glee in the direction of the blacks. I began to identify with the blacks as fellow victims. That was a lesson deeply learned.
I've also learned that the essence of understanding is to try to know what hurts your fellow human beings, what hurts them. In that connection, I recall a story from our tradition that two men are sitting at a bar. They're both in their cups. One says to the other, "Are you my friend?" The other one says, "Of course, I'm your friend. I meet with you-

