A reader left a comment that a Rabbi Bertram Korn has written otherwise.
I am waiting for information on Korn's expertise and reliability on the issue. A historian I corresponded with wrote me that new material has come out since Korn.
Update: I contacted The Wiesenthal Center and they informed me about a book by Harold Brackman, Ministry of Lies: The Truth Behind "The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews"
.According to the reviews of the book that appear on the Amazon.com page:
From Publishers WeeklyI emailed Charles Jacobs of The American Anti-Slavery Group, who wrote me that there is a long debate about Jewish involvement with the slave trade and the ownership of Blacks. It undeniably existed. Farrahkan and those who point a finger at Jews have "looked at the beach of black slavery, picked up the piece of sand that represented the miniscule Jewish part, and magnified it."
In October 1991, the Nation of Islam's Historical Research Department anonymously published The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews, a book claiming to use "the most respected Jewish authorities" to charge Jews with "monumental culpability" in the slave trade. At the behest of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Brackman, a professor of African American history at UCLA-Riverside, analyzed the book that Louis Farrakhan touted in lectures, on radio and on TV. Brackman effectively refutes The Secret Relationship's central charges that Jews dominated not only the Atlantic slave trade but also medieval European slavery. In the process, he makes no claims of Jewish moral superiority (although he mentions rabbinic prohibitions against sex with slave girls and Maimonides's quote, "He who increases the number of his slaves increases sin and iniquity in the world") but rather emphasizes the fact that Jews were frequently barred from participation. He then goes to The Secret Relationship's real purpose: a clearly political rewriting of history aimed at reflecting blame away from Muslim nations. (As Brackman points out, Saudi Arabia did not outlaw slavery until 1962, Oman until 1970.) Throughout, Brackman considers the toll that anti-Semitism takes not only on Jews but also on African Americans. For them, he says, the American dream of equality and achievement "remains a dream significantly denied or at least deferred.... Their grievances are real and their frustrations deserving of understanding. What they need, however, is not scapegoating but solutions."
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Brackman, a Simon Wiesenthal Center consultant and an authority on black-Jewish relations, offers a refutation and indictment of the by-now notorious anti-Semitic tract "anonymously" written and published by Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam (NOI) sect. It claims that Jews were the chief culprits in the enslavement of Africans, the key operatives in the Atlantic slave trade, and mainly responsible for the attempted genocide of the black race. "The secret relationship" condemns Jews for polluting Europe's lungs with tobacco and decimating Native American tribes. By systematically examining the NOI's "sources," Brackman exposes "the secret relationship" for what it is: a deliberate falsification of history aimed at scapegoating the Jews to appease the frustrations of many African Americans. An important book that belongs in all public and academic libraries.
Robert A. Silver, Shaker Heights P.L., Ohio
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
I also checked with a historian friend of mine who recommended some resources on the question--2 of which have relevant sections appearing on Google Books.
- Eli Faber, Jews, Slaves, and the Slave Trade: Setting the Record Straight
(New York: New York University Press, 1998) 1-10, 143-146;
- Saul S. Friedman, Jews, and the American Slave Trade
(New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1998);
- Jonathan Schorsch, Jews Blacks in the Early World
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
This is an issue that apparently is near and dear to Farrakhan's heart, so I expect that we will hear about it periodically.
Jonathan Schorsch, Jews Blacks in the Early World
Technorati Tag: Israel and Gaza and Hamas and Operation Cast Lead.
Someone calling himself "lhl" used to invade soc.culture.jewish to promote the NOI "Secret Relationship" book that tries to blame slavery on the Jews. He might have been the author. Slavery was a significant part of the economy of the major European powers for centuries, so there is a ton of historical information on the subject--so much so that there is a fair amount of information on just the Jews and the slave trade. It isn't hard to mislead an ignorant reader into thinking the Jews loomed a lot larger than they actually did in the overall history of slavery. A great many NOI dupes have been mislead in this way, and it still continues.
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