Race and Religion Among the Chosen People of Crown Heights

Chapter 3: Kosher Homes, Racial Boundaries: The Politics of Culinary and Cultural Exchange

3 Kosher Homes, Racial Boundaries The Politics of Culinary and Cultural Exchange As we learned in chapter 2, Crown Heights is a remarkably well integrated neighborhood, in at least some senses of the word. Although part of south Crown Heights is widely perceived as a “Jewish neighborhood,” this area is hardly a Jewish enclave. Indeed, the densest area of Jewish settlement in Crown Heights is approximately 60 percent Black. Blacks and Jews live side by side in south Crown Heights, sharing the streets of a community that can’t be easily defined in racial or religious terms. Yet perceptions of Jewish spatial difference remain. Blacks and Jews alike tend to see the Lubavitch Hasidim as “a people that dwells apart” (Numbers 23:9) in the midst of a diverse Brooklyn neighborhood. And these perceptions endure for good reason. Despite the geographic integration of Crown Heights, Blacks and Jews in the neighborhood live largely segregated lives. They live side by side—sharing crowded streets and city services—but they spend their days in parallel social worlds, at an intimate distance, with little or no interaction bridging the divide. As we will see in this chapter, most Lubavitchers are perfectly content with this combination of geographic integration and social segregation. The Torah, as they understand it, commands them to keep their social distance from Gentiles, and most see no reason to forge closer ties—either personal or political—with their Black neighbors. Indeed, many view such relationships with Gentiles as a threat to the religious life of their community . However, many Black Crown Heights residents and local public officials see the social divide between Blacks and Jews as an ethical and political problem that must be overcome if Crown Heights is to avoid further 116 conflict in the future. Multicultural civic life, as they understand it, requires us all to break down the barriers of racial segregation, and build mutual understanding across our differences. For example, the Reverend Clarence Norman, Sr.—a prominent local pastor and social activist who has worked, intermittently, with Lubavitch community leaders since the 1960s—expressed his frustration at the segregation of Black and Jewish lives by drawing a distinction between the reality of “integration” and his goal of “intergration.” He described Crown Heights as a bellwether for the rest of Brooklyn, or perhaps for the United States as a whole: If we can’t make integration—intergration—work in Crown Heights, it can’t work anyplace. Because Crown Heights is the only truly integrated neighborhood in Brooklyn. The only one! . . . Here you have families, children, old people, young people, living side by side. But the tragedy is, we’re living side by side—two communities living side by side—with no interrelation, no relationship with each other, except when there’s an explosion. That’s the only time we talk, or dialogue, is when something happens. . . . I continue now— and always will—to try and have dialogue with the Jewish community , to urge our people to work with them, and see what we can do to bridge these gaps. But it’s difficult, and it’s frustrating. Frustrating, that is, when Blacks and Jews must balance the demands of racial integration and religious purity. Indeed, the efforts of Reverend Norman and others to “intergrate” Crown Heights in ways that go beyond physical co-presence will most likely continue to be frustrated by the rather different view of “community ” held by most Lubavitch Hasidim. One Hasidic woman—a grandmother and activist who participated, with increasing frustration, in many of the Black-Jewish dialogues organized in the early 1990s—cast doubt on the basic premises of such efforts. I asked her if Crown Heights residents would benefit from an “open and honest dialogue,” and she replied: We don’t want it. They don’t want it either. There’s no point in it. Because the issues that we have, that are problems, are not issues that are gonna be solved that way. For instance . . . I’ve heard, at KOSHER HOMES, RACIAL BOUNDARIES 117 different things that I’ve gone to, y’know: “You don’t eat in my house” or “You don’t say hello to me” or “You won’t let my kids play.” So what? So what!? So what if I don’t let my children play with your children? My children and your children don’t have anything in...