Blacks and Jews in Literary Conversation, by Emily Miller Budick

I have no disagreements with Budick's readings. It seems curious, however, that she fails to give careful attention to one of the more important Black writers engaged in conversation with and about Jews, LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka. The obvious corollary is a studious neglect of people who are both Black and Jewish, acutely evidenced in her inability to give the topic attention even in a discussion of Grace Paley's "Zagrowsky Tells" in which the theme is central. The coupling of Black and Jewish identities seems to confound most commentators. Budick comes very close to disturbing the tidy notion of Jews as just another white ethnic group but not close enough -- in part, because she never explicitly interrogates the misnomer "Judeo-Christian" which obfuscates completely that Jews and Judaism are a product not of the West but of the East. This is surprising given the fact that she writes from Israel where the Jewish population reflects the diasporic legacy of diversity.