Gershom, a Multicultural Intergenerational Jewish Journal

The lawgiver’s first child: A stranger there.

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We Jews of Color often occupy an ambivalent place in North American Jewish communities. On the one hand, we are sometimes treated as an invited guest or beloved visitors in Jewish spaces. On the other hand, that same warm welcome is easily revoked or challenged during political and social crises. The litmus test appears. Are you really one of us, or are you a stranger here? Prove your loyalty: your ethnicity or your religion. All of this is rather odd, because we are neither guests nor interlopers. We are family.

We are Jewish in all our ethnicities, politics, genders, cultures, eccentricities, and excellence.

Our cultures know how to hold complexity. We know how to truly listen, agreeing or vehemently disagreeing while still revering the deep humanity in each and every one of us. Here, we look each other in the eye, share what's on our hearts and minds, revel in our ethnicities, creativity and myriad of perspectives, and celebrate how much we are created in the image of the Divine.

We are not strangers here. We are here. We are home. So simple, and yet seemingly so hard for some to grasp. Tragic, actually. So, fellow Jews of Color including Indigenous, Sephardic and Mizrachi who identify as such and fellow Serious Allies who 'get it', GERSHOM is for us: a place for us to be 100% ourselves without questioning our belonging.

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