‘Jewish’ Lefties: A Timeless Kirschen Cartoon
From “Torn at the Roots THE CRISIS OF JEWISH LIBERALISM IN POSTWAR AMERICA” by MICHAEL E. STAUB:
In one especially memorable 1970 cartoon entitled “On the Problems Inherent in Making a Small Donation to a Revolutionary Cause,” Kirschen imagined a dialogue between a proud and assertive black militant and a flip and unfunny Jewish New Leftist.
In many respects, it served as a parable for a new generation of young radical Jews who sought to reconcile the historic legacy of Jewish support for black civil rights activism with the assertion of a distinctively Jewish struggle for ethnic identity. With the language of serious Holocaust consciousness brilliantly here put into the mouth of the black militant, Kirschen succinctly presented once again the analysis that New Left Jews were as lame as the jokes they told—both pathetic and self-hating. In short, Kirschen believed, as did many radical Zionists, that the New Left Jew could learn a lot from the black militant (if he would only listen) about the healthful symbiotic link necessary between one’s ethnic consciousness and one’s political identity. Kirschen’s parable made clear how it was the self-aware and proud black who must finally be the one to spell out for the clueless and self-negating Jew that the urge to repress ethnic loyalties—or swap them for an emotional (or monetary) investment in blackness—constituted something shameful, even traitorous.
FOOTNOTE:
“On the Problems Inherent in Making a Small Donation to a Revolutionary Cause” (1970) appeared in Jewish Radicalism, edited by Jack Nusan Porter and Peter Dreier. Courtesy of Yaakov Kirschen. FIGURE 6.11
