Remembering Rev. Jesse Jackson

The Leonard I. Beerman Foundation mourns the passing of the Rev. Jesse Jackson, one of the country’s great activists for equality and justice. Rabbi Leonard Beerman was well acquainted with Rev. Jackson, having traveled with him in the 1980s to meet Yasir Arafat—before the Oslo Accords when such encounters between Jews and Palestinians were extremely rare. Rabbi Beerman and Rev. Jackson shared a passionate commitment to Palestinian freedom, each drawing from the depths of his own faith tradition.

Leonard Beerman recognized the fallibility of human beings. After Jesse Jackson made offensive reference to New York City as “Hymietown” in his 1984 presidential campaign, he came under fierce criticism from Jewish leaders. Rev. Jackson admitted that this phrase was “insensitive and wrong,” and vigorously denied that he was “anti-Semitic or anti-Israel.” Many Jews remained suspicious of Jackson, refusing to believe the sincerity of his apology. But Leonard accepted Rev. Jackson at his word. When Rev. Jackson ran for president again in 1988, Leonard was among a group of thirty Los Angeles area rabbis who met with him that year. He recognized that Jackson’s candidacy, which he went on to endorse, had deep historical and ethical resonances. After the meeting with Jackson in LA in May 1988, he said: “We are as Jews and blacks united in one respect: We have a common commitment to justice.”

That commitment, which Leonard shared for decades with his dear friend and Beerman Foundation board member, the late Rev. James Lawson, was a cornerstone of his prophetic teaching. As the new PBS series “Black and Jewish America: An Interwoven History” demonstrates, the Black-Jewish partnership has had ebbs and flows over the course of decades. But Rabbi Beerman and Reverend Jackson exemplified a deep and abiding bond that was able to acknowledge and overcome difference.