Prose
The editors reached out to me to see if I would like to contribute to GERSHOM, a publication by Jews of Color and Serious Allies. This was the first time in my entire existence I was actually identified as a ‘Brown Jew.’ Oh yes, Sephardic are considered brown! Well, mais bien sûr! Because, of course, in the United States, everything must be meticulously labeled, categorized, and placed in a perfectly defined box.
Since we are defining things, allow me to introduce myself. I was born in Paris, mid-1960s. A time, I might add, when Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews were absolutely not supposed to be marrying each other. My father? Born in Constantine, French Algeria. My mother? Parisian-born with Polish Jewish ancestry. They met, as all good Parisian Jews apparently did in the late 1950s, at Place de la République. They hung out. They dated. They danced. (I am fairly certain they later won a trip to Israel at a dance competition. My parents became the Fred-and-Ginger of the Jewish community.)
My father, to my mother's family, was ‘the Arab.’ You can practically hear the collective sigh of indignation from his family who were so fiercely proud of being French Jews. My mother, to my father’s family, was affectionately referred to as ‘La Polack.’ Just so that we are totally clear, ‘La Polack’ is a truly demeaning term. Imagine my Ashkenazi family, most of whom had most of their family murdered by the Polish regime during World War II, being called that. So, yes, the families did not get off to the best start.
But my father fell utterly in love with my mother and vice-versa. More surprisingly, my Ashkenazi grandmother, the one whose family had suffered so much, also fell in love with my father. She treated him like her own son, especially as he was quite alone in Paris. His family still lived in Algeria. He used to call her ‘Maman.’ Love, it appears, sometimes just happens, defying all logic and familial expectations.
I was raised as a gloriously mixed Jew, a walking, talking Ashkenazi/Sephardic experiment. I had the dark skin, the undeniable warmth, and the very physical resemblance to my Sephardic father. But I was also brought up with the very typical and rather strict mannerisms of the Ashkenazi side. We were not what you would call ‘religious,’ but we did observe the most important Jewish holidays: Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Pesach. Mostly, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur meant gathering for a massive dinner with my Ashkenazi family. No prayers, nothing like that. It was straight to the food. But the Seder for Pesach? That was reserved for the Sephardic family.
Ah, the Seder in my Sephardic family! That was a real event. Each year, another story. This part of the family was considered religious. They ate kosher at home (and I specify ‘at home’ because I am not entirely convinced they kept kosher outside). They observed Shabbat, or more specifically, at least Shabbat dinner, but keeping a halakhic Shabbat remained a bit of a mystery.
Back to the Seder. We always went to my aunt and uncle's place in Le Blanc-Mesnil, a Parisian suburb. My cousins were there, and my other uncle, the youngest, was the family joker. There were always some friends, too. We would gather around a huge table with the men on one side, the women in the middle, and us kids on the opposite side. My cousin, already bar mitzvah'd, was the exception. He had been promoted to the men's side. My sisters and I used to absolutely crack up watching my father ‘read’ in Hebrew. It sounded, to our ears, rather Arabic. We knew he wasn't exactly a Hebrew scholar and was mostly just moving his lips, trying to keep up with the others. And of course, every single time, the youngest uncle, the joker, would hide an olive pit in the charoset, tucked into a lettuce leaf. We would patiently wait, every year, to see who would get the pit, and then laugh out loud.
One year, there was a very important European soccer game. France was in the final, and it was during the first night of Passover. So, as an exception, the TV was left on. No sound, of course, so the men could do the prayers while watching the game. They seemed totally engrossed in the prayers, singing out loud in their Hebrew/Arabic medley, when they suddenly started to yell, "BUUUUT!…. BUT, BUT, BUT!! (GOOOOAL!...GOAL, GOAL, GOAL!!)" France had scored, and the room was absolutely euphoric!
Another year, Passover happened at the same time as Eurovision, the annual international song competition. Israel had a good chance of winning in 1978. So again, the TV was on. Yes, "A-Ba-Ni-Bi" by Izhar Cohen and the Alphabeta won the contest, and yes, we were all cheering and dancing during the Seder.
So why am I regaling you with my family's rather complicated love story? Here is my attempt to give myself ‘space’ by sharing a little slice of my rather uniquely blended, often boisterous, and always loving Jewish upbringing. Because, I truly believe, despite the radically different ways of thinking, the varied celebrations of Jewishness, the wildly diverse recipes, liturgies, and histories, my family was, fundamentally, all about love. Hopefully, it resonates with the ‘Brown Jew’ vibe.