My beloved Rebbie Arthur Waskow, of blessed and righteous memory, once asked me to write about the ‘emergence’ of Jews of Color, as if to unconsciously insinuate that Jews of Color, outside of American Ashkenormativity or international default to Sephardic lineage, sprung out of newness and modernity. I admit, I chuckled a bit. I, being Black and Jewish all my life, mentally waived an imaginary ‘yoo-hoo’ hand to bring attention to a Jewish experience that has been here all along. We have been here all along.
But first, allow me to offer a disclaimer, a disclaimer rarely expected from white-skinned Jews, but an absolute necessity when speaking as an intersectionally marginalized person: I speak and write as a participant, and not as an authority. The experience of Jews of Color is not monolithic, as is the case for all Jews and all people, really. I am Black, I am woman, I am queer, I am from the American South, and I have had to make myself feel comfortable in Jewish spaces.
My experience with white-skinned Jews when I am alone versus when I am with a group of Jews has been what I like to describe as ‘inquisitive-questions-disguised-as-curiosity.’ It is ‘inquisitive’ in the sense of The Inquisition: the barrage of questions about my lineage and ancestry, my pedigree and under whose tutelage I could attribute my astute Jewish knowledge. It is the type of Inquisition that white-skinned Jews might not ever experience in modern America.
What I had experienced made me think long and hard about joining a synagogue. Once I did join in 2012, I ignored and smiled through gritted teeth when so many comments came my way: my profound articulation, my wealth of knowledge, my deep insights into Torah. I told myself that my membership was solely about me and my personal relationship with HaShem, the only one, in addition to my family of origin, who did not demand my genealogy. I decided that my Judaism was about me. I studied Torah for me. I davened for me. I volunteered in Tikkun Olam for me. I did this because I understood myself. And it broke my heart every time I discovered that behind those seemingly welcoming smiles was an itch of suspicion, an assumption of illegitimacy, an air of superiority from now being on the other side of the Inquisition.
I grudgingly put up with all of this, but it was not until I began having children that I solidified for myself that I did not want my children to go through the hurt that I had been through at the hands of American Judaism. I did not want them to experience having the police stand behind us during service, like I had experienced growing up. I did not want my children to be confused or discouraged because everyone around them assumed they were converts. I wanted them to be safe and comfortable as they learned what it means to be Jews and what it means to be Black Jews, in Texas and elsewhere.
I was alone in my Judaism until I met other Black Jews in the world. That was my first homecoming in my Jewish experience. It was the love and the warmth in the embrace of people, mere strangers seconds before, to whom I did not have to prove myself. To this day, I try to meet, make contact with, and befriend every Black Jew I come across. If I was ever around and could help it, no one would have to feel how I had felt. No one would be ‘othered’ in my presence. There, among other Black Jews, we covered each other. We were each other’s safe spaces in a world that couldn’t or wouldn’t understand us.
The opportunity to be in a safe environment was not a part of my upbringing. In fact, it was not until I was in college that I found myself belonging to a synagogue at all. My university was nestled in an affluent neighborhood of whiteness and access, meaning that if I wanted exposure to Jewish life and infrastructure, I need not look far. Not so the case just thirty minutes south of my alma mater, where redlining and white flight took resources, including money, healthy food, and Jewish life, from my Dallas neighborhood to north of I-30, where Dallas Jews had assimilated into whiteness.
American Jews assimilating into whiteness is the seed of what I like to refer to as internalized antisemitism, because whiteness requires a uniform, and that uniform is conformity. Being white in America means assuming the foundation of whiteness, which is the marginalization of anyone not considered white. It means individuality over collectivism, the complete opposite of Bnei Yisrael. It means homogeneity, the complete antithesis of the mixed multitude that we Jews tout in word, if not in actuality. Most importantly, it means surrendering to white supremacy, consciously and subconsciously.
Jewish arrival and refuge in America meant assimilating into whiteness for safety and security, while discarding the ancient Judaic concept of mixed multitudes and embracing ‘the stranger’. Ancient Judaism did not boast outward and physical sameness to determine peoplehood. The loyalty embedded in Judaic membership came out of an allegiance to the Divine, not skin color. But to make it in America, whiteness demanded that the persecuted become if not the persecutor then at least complicit to persecution so as not to come under American scrutiny during the Jim Crow era.
Whiteness and the resulting white supremacy is an American phenomenon, yes, but it has become very much replicated worldwide as colonialists and dictators scarred the Earth with bloodshed and pseudoscience. The perpetrators of the Holocaust cited American chattel slavery, Reconstruction, and Jim Crow as the inspiration behind the dogma of anti-Jewishness and white racial purity. Many of the same ways that American Black people had been persecuted were later cloned in Nazi persecution of Jews, Romani, LGBTQIA+ folks, European Black people: a mixed multitude of people to erase and/or subjugate.
Of course there were exceptions, including beloved Rabbi Dr. Abraham Joshua Heshel, of blessed memory, who saw his fate entwined with the fate of American Black people fighting for their Civil Rights. Many Jews today find themselves entwined with the fates of other marginalized peoples. However, that activism does not equate to full acceptance of “marginalized people” into the whole of American Jewry.
American white supremacy makes the idea of Jews of Color exceptional, although we are not exceptional; we have always been here. We are not ‘emerging.’ We are finally being recognized as part of a community, despite being othered and subject to an internalized antisemitism that our white-skinned kin have often perpetuated in America.
That internalized antisemitism is the reason why white evangelicals pretending to be Jewish slip through the cracks while Jews of Color can be put through hoops just to attend Jewish events.
American white supremacy has blinded the eye of American Jews, who were covenanted to be kind to the stranger, to accept Jews whether converts or not, and to not question their origins and racial background.
While skin-color based racism remains one of America’s biggest exports carried out against people of color, it does not have to be that way for the American Jewish community. This point was made clear to me when I made my first trip to Israel-Palestine in 2016 and not in the way one would typically think. For the very first time, I was welcomed home. Tomer, an Arab Israeli, welcomed me home as we kayaked on the Jordan River. Tomer, with a darker complexion than mine, saw me and welcomed me home. That was a feeling that I will never forget. That was a feeling that I have only ever felt around Jews of Color.
What is to be learned in a New Torah that seeks to de-center the white-perceived Jewish experience as the quintessential in order to enhance, honor, and celebrate the experiences and values of all Jews? Perhaps Jews of Color could amplify the declaration that we treat those who are ‘strange to us’ with kindness, because we know what it means to be treated as a stranger. Maybe Jews of Color are the unique bridge that connects all peoples, the puzzle piece that brings the beauty of all cultures together under the Unity and Oneness of HaShem. Because in truth, the false equivalency of eastern European descent being the global standard for Jewishness underserves Am Yisrael.
Therefore, the question is: Will white-skinned American Jews continue to find comfort in assumed whiteness, or will we all finally embrace the unique heritage we all have as Jews - not as a race nor ethnicity; not as a shared regional experience in the Diaspora, but as a mixed multitude of peoples who choose justice as the spiritual covenant and shared civilization? That was the way it was intended when Torah first came down from Sinai.
In Deuteronomy, Moshe transmits teachings to a people who mostly did not experience Sinai and the intimate relationship Moshe had with the Divine. Parashat Nitzavim begins the conclusion of that conversation:
I make this covenant, with its sanctions, not with you alone, but both with those who are standing here with us this day before Adonai our God, and with those who are not with us here this day (Deut 29:13-14).
From these words, Midrash concludes that we were all at Sinai - the newly freed, past and future generations - to hear the words the Eternal spoke.
Now we need to live by those words, including the many ways that acceptance and celebration of our differences and similarities connects us to each other and to the Divine One. Now, more than ever, we as Jews must cling to one another and embrace the prophetic vision of our becoming a light unto the nations. We do this by first subverting the societal pressures of leaning into whiteness for comfort and protection, and then by the pursuit of holiness, unity and empathy, remembering how we were treated as strangers in our shared historical narrative. It is upon us - aleinu - to be the change we wish to see. That change starts with validating all the different ways to be Jewish: marginalized, accepted as white, and otherwise.