“For everything there is a season,” says the biblical book of Ecclesiastes (3:1); and one could add to its list “a time for public protest and a time for quiet discussion.”
It was the latter that local Jewish community officials decided was the best response when Milwaukee Art Museum officials unwittingly invited a nationally famous anti-Semite to speak in Milwaukee this week.
The speaker is Amiri Baraka (born Leroi Jones), African-American poet, playwright, essayist — and a man who has made ferocious anti-Jewish, anti-Israel and anti-Zionist statements in poetry, prose and speeches, among other messages of violence and hate directed at other groups for over 40 years.
He most recently generated controversy with a poem about the Sept. 11 terror attacks that in one part claims that 4,000 Israeli workers in the World Trade Center knew to stay away from it that day. (In fact, this is an Arab propaganda lie widely circulated on the Internet that the Slate Web site [slate.m sn.com] traced back to Al-Manar Television in Lebanon.) This poem led to the eventual abolition of the position of poet laureate of New Jersey, which Baraka held at the time and refused to resign.
But Baraka is also “known for … working with African-American artists,” said MAM director and CEO David Gordon. Baraka, Gordon said, had visited the women of Gee’s Bend, Ala., who made the widely praised and nationally exhibited quilts that are on display at the MAM through Jan. 4.
Gordon said that when MAM staff members earlier this year were scheduling the exhibit and wanted someone to speak about it, they sought the advice of William Arnett, scholar and a founder of The Tinwood Alliance, a non-profit foundation that promotes African-American vernacular art and that collects the quilts. Arnett suggested Baraka; and the museum invited him to come to MAM on Oct. 23 and speak.
Not until late this past summer did some members of the Jewish community — including a museum trustee, a museum docent and local Jewish activist Dr. Herzl Spiro — hear about the invitation to Baraka. Spiro spoke to Gordon and informed Paula Simon, executive director of the Milwaukee Jewish Council for Community Relations, a constituent agency of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation.
Didn’t rescind
Gordon responded by contacting David Lubar, president-elect of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation and someone active in MAM, and asking him to help arrange a meeting with Jewish community leaders. That meeting was held Sept. 8.
Participants included, in addition to Simon, Gordon and Lubar, MJF executive vice president Richard H. Meyer; Spiro and his wife, artist Barbara Kohl-Spiro; Sandra Robinson, MAM trustee and chair of the African American Art Alliance; plus museum staff members from the marketing, education and adult programming departments.
Simon said she explained to the MAM representatives that the Jewish community believes it was “horribly inappropriate” for them to have invited Baraka to speak. Nevertheless, all the participants agreed that to rescind the invitation is “not in the best interests of the museum, the Jewish community or the African-American community,” said Gordon.
Baraka “is a man who thrives on controversy, who loves the public spotlight,” said Simon. To cancel the invitation would “feed his conspiracy theory” and give him “a platform,” she said.
Besides, “The museum had the right to invite him and he has a right to speak,” added Simon. “First Amendment rights mean a lot to us.”
So the participants agreed to make this a fairly quiet event. The museum would do no further publicity about Baraka’s appearance. Simon said Gordon assured her that he would serve as moderator for any discussion or questions after Baraka’s speech to keep the event focused on the quilts and African-American culture.
Simon said the MJCCR “agreed we would not do anything to publicize the controversy internally” in the Jewish community. “We want [Baraka] to come and go with no notoriety.” Only if Baraka himself chooses to digress into anti-Israel and anti-Semitic statements at the event, which Simon said she would attend, will the MJCCR respond, she said.
Other participants in the meeting and Jewish community figures who had heard about it agreed with this approach.
“I thought it was a very positive step for the museum to understand the concerns of the Jewish community,” said Meyer. He praised the museum staff’s “willingness to open themselves up to dialogue and everything associated with that.”
“The way I look at it,” said Lubar, “is that the MJCCR was able to present why Baraka has such a poor relationship with the Jewish community throughout the country, yet still work in conjunction with the art museum to develop a strategy to maintain the invitation. It’s really easy for some to demand retraction of the invitation, more difficult to work together to enable the event to go forward.”
Rabbi David Cohen, president of the Wisconsin Council of Rabbis, said council officers had discussed writing a letter to the general news media, but “the consensus was to act in concert” with the MJCCR.
“Baraka has some history of engaging Jewish organizations in public mud-slinging,” said Cohen. “It wouldn’t seem to be in anyone’s interest to open that kind of dialogue.”
Simon said she did “a lot of consulting” with colleagues elsewhere about how to handle this matter. One of those colleagues was Ethan Felson, assistant executive director and director of domestic concerns of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the umbrella organization for local community relations councils like the MJCCR.
Public protest “is one of those tools” for dealing with someone like Baraka, but “it is more of a tool of last resort,” particularly since it “hardens the situation,” Felson said.
“There is a time to talk and a time to shout,” Felson added. “Viewed in the totality of the circumstances, this wasn’t a time to shout.”
In fact, said Simon, “this is the essence of Jewish community relations” — working and “developing relationships behind the scenes,” consensus-building, “getting two groups to agree, getting the Jewish community to come to a consensus, this marks the best of what we can do.”
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