Radical Jew

"Intolerance will never suffer from cardiac arrest because it has no pulse."

 

I had a conversation with one of my students, and I told him that sometimes I sit at my computer, thinking about what to write, which has been on my mind. He looked at me as if I were just an old, bored man, and maybe there’s some truth to that, but I still do it. 

Since the October 7, 2023, retaliatory killing of some Jewish people by Hamas, an alleged terrorist group fighting for Palestinian freedom against the apartheid system the Israeli government has imposed on them for many years, everything in the news has focused on Jewish sympathy. Growing up in the historic Weequahic section of Newark, N.J., which was predominantly Jewish before the 1970s, I was somewhat familiar with this religious group, though only in a limited way. 

There seemed to be a fascination with their history, which has always escaped me. Not to be insensitive, but I had my own problems to handle. I have taken several school trips with students to various European countries to visit police academies, courts, and other sites related to the criminal justice field. For some reason, the travel agent always scheduled a visit to either a Holocaust museum or a Jewish concentration camp. At first, I was interested because I had never been taught about their history in high school, maybe because it wasn’t part of American history? Who knows? However, after the third and fourth visits, hearing the same story, I lost interest. I suppose I can compare it to other groups being tired of hearing about Black people’s history of slavery in America, but we don’t have a museum in several states. Hmm. 

Still, I remember a Jewish attorney named William Kunstler, whom I heard about on the news. He sacrificed his family and his life to defend people who had little luck getting legal help for their alleged crimes. I found a video about him called “William Kunstler, Disturbing the Universe,” made by his daughters, and I’ve seen it many times. In the video, he repeated the phrase “All power to the people,” which resonated with me. He also told his daughters, “All white people are racist, and the courts are racist as well.” His story is worth telling because when wrongdoers needed him, he answered the call.

Kunstler was born in 1919 in New York City to Jewish parents. I pause here to explain why I didn’t dismiss him because of his Jewish background and what that background meant to my city, Newark. Kunstler, I believe, was a different kind of Jew. He was known for defending several controversial individuals and groups. Still, Jews were often accused of exploiting poor people in inner cities through high rents and inadequate services, especially when a tenant complained. For the record, my neighbors have told me that this stereotype still exists on our block. Yet Kunstler seemed entirely different. 

He became a notable attorney after losing a case defending a Black journalist accused of violating the State Department’s travel ban on Communist China. As a self-described armchair liberal, he worked for the ACLU and, in 1961, defended the Freedom Riders in Mississippi, the state where my father was born. Kunstler was surveilled by the FBI during COINTELPRO because of his political views, which made him more interesting. The video I watched showed his representation of many notable Black clients, including Angela Davis, Stokely Carmichael, Martin Luther King Jr., and Assata Shakur, who in 1973 was accused of murdering a New Jersey State Trooper. As a retired state trooper, I would be questioned by many of my former colleagues about my curiosity about him, but their opinions don’t matter to me. He also helped defend the Central Park Five, a group of young Black and Brown teenagers accused of raping and beating a white female investment banker at the Wall Street firm Salomon Brothers in 1989. Coincidentally, my then-girlfriend worked at the same firm. This case was controversial because of the illegal tactics used by NYPD detectives and the actions of (then) Donald Trump, who took out a full-page ad in the city’s major newspapers calling for the death penalty for those responsible. Those individuals were later exonerated and settled a $40 million lawsuit against the City of New York. 

Kunstler served in the U.S. Army during World War II, as did my father and my maternal grandfather. After his discharge, he attended Yale University, where he graduated, and then earned his law degree from Columbia University. Kunstler became a notable civil rights attorney who challenged mainstream society, and I support that. While I am not a bleeding-heart liberal, I genuinely believe, as the U.S. Constitution states, that everyone should have access to legal counsel. 

My fascination with this man, during a time when the Jewish community is being ostracized because of the current situation in Palestine, is even stranger to me, but it was just on my mind. I don’t have much more to say about him. Still, his story made me reconsider my prejudices about Jewish people and the idea that everyone’s opinions can change.