Eli Faber. Jews, Slaves, and the Slave Trade: Setting the Record Straight. Reappraisals in Jewish Social and Intellectual History. New York: New York University Press, 1998. xvii, 366.

Abstract

First published in October, 1991, the Nation of Islam's anonymously authored The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews has spawned a veritable cottage industry of scholarship addressing its central claim that Jewish merchants “dominated” the Atlantic slave trade.1. See, for example, David Brion Davis, “Jews in the Slave Trade,” Culturefront, 1 (Fall, 1992): 42–45; Davis, “The Slave Trade and the Jews,” New York Review, 41 (December 22, 1994): 14–16; Seymour Drescher, “The Role of Jews in the Transatlantic Slave Trade,” Immigrants and Minorities, 12 (1993): 113–125; Harold Brackman, Ministry of Lies: The Truth Behind The Nation of Islam's “The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews” (New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 1994); Saul S. Friedman, Jews and the American Slave Trade (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1998). One can only wonder whether, someday soon, there may be an essay or book refuting the Farrakhanites' tract for every Jew who ever traded a slave.