Last Tuesday I heard this fascinating episode of Code Switch, an NPR podcast “cover[ing] race, ethnicity and culture.” For this round, they looked at the place that Jews occupy in America’s odd definitions of all those things. Ultimately, it…

…wasn’t totally off base. They narrated the American Jewish experience of becoming White clearly, accurately, and charitably: as a combination of White society’s whims, and of the desire (or need) to reap the benefits of Whiteness. This meshes well with the shockingly-civil social media debates I’ve gotten into with fellow Jews about our racial identity. The one thing everyone seems to agree on is that light-skinned Jews get White privilege no matter how they personally feel about it.

But before the epic success of that discussion, the episode tries to characterize Jewish identity independently of American race politics. To explain how we define ourselves. And totally flubs it.

They try! They bring on their resident Jew, Leah Gershenfeld Donnella, to present large chunks of the program material. Both by her words and by her undeniable Blackness, she makes clear to everyone that It’s Complicated. (Code Switch host Shireen Meraji says “it should be the show’s subtitle—Code Switch: It’s Complicated.”) And yet they fail almost as soon as they start:

MERAJI: All right, so we’ve answered the question, everybody. Jews are a religious group, not their own ethnicity or race.

[Gene] DEMBY: Problem solved. Well, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. OK. OK. If you take a DNA test, though, it will tell you what percentage Jewish you are. So it sounds like there’s at least some ethnic component to being Jewish.

Blink and you might miss it—amid the charming self-deprecation there’s a conflation of “race/genetics” and “ethnicity,” and a related dichotomy between racial and religious identity. When combined with the (very true) observation that race as an identity category is new, this leaves them at a loss to understand the deep roots of non-religious Jewish identity. Even when their (Jewish) sources bring up concepts like “tradition or identification,” or mention “speaking Hebrew” as a marker of Jewish identity, the hosts never seem to notice or to fit these ideas into their narrative. They talk about the meaning of 23andme, but not of Yiddish revivalism, secular Diasporic Zionism, or hipster gastropubs’ chopped liver. (I have tasted of all these things, and the last is the most satisfying.)

It’s not all guesswork. We have the numbers (thanks, Pew), we know what we think of us. A large minority of Jews (especially young ones) say they’re “Jews of no religion.” Most Jews say being Jewish is about ancestry and culture, not religion; even most Ultra-Orthodox Jews say it’s not just religion.

So definitely not just a religious group. But not “just” anything else— the main impression is of an imagined community whose members disagree about what exactly they’re imagining. How very Jewish. And useless. There’s only one traditional solution to this conundrum—smartass Jews torturously justifying their preconceived notions. I’ll go first!

My tack is to think about that most bitterly-contested of questions: Who is a Jew? Not with the intent of answering it, but to observe the points where it’s uncomfortable. Controversial.

Someone who’s born in a practicing Jewish household and practices Judaism is clearly Jewish. And if they’re non-practicing atheists? Probably Jewish, even if some say they’re Bad Jews. And if instead of atheists they become Lutherans? Ooooh. Much less comfortable. What about Buddhists? Slightly better (judging by the way my father’s voice would communicate ridicule rather than pain).

And if someone who’s not Jewish just starts calling themselves Jewish? Probably not. But if they start studying Hebrew? Going to services? Beginning the conversion process? The line’s blurry, but every Jew has some point at which they start chanting “one of us!”

So, a group that you can be in by ancestry; with initiation rites and customs that you’re supposed to follow, but don’t lose membership by shirking; that you may be kicked out of for adopting another group’s ways, depending on how much bad blood there is; and that you’re formally adopted into by practicing said rites and customs and being recognized by the community. You know what this sounds like? Someone at Code Switch knew. They did, after all, call the episode, with head-scratching earnestness, “Members of Whose Tribe?”

Image via Pixabay.

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Finally! The Natalie Portman-led Ruth Bader Ginsburg biopic that has been stalling in development hell for years is finally going to start filming in September.

There’s just one problem— Portman’s not in it anymore.

…

Jewcy is on a summer residency! To read this piece, and our others for July and August 2017, go to our big sister site, Tablet Magazine!

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You may have missed a fascinating obituary from last week: that of Sheila Michaels, the feminist and civil rights activist who is credited for propagating the use of the honorific “Ms.” Outside of this news-making accomplishment, her life was fascinating, from being expelled from college in part due to her outspoken anti-segregationist views, to working as a cabdriver, to becoming a restaurateur. The New York Times piece adds a lot of color and detail in a short amount of space to the life of an amazing woman. But there’s one glaring omission: Michaels was Jewish.

…

Jewcy is on a summer residency! To read this piece, and our others for July and August 2017, go to our big sister site, Tablet Magazine!

The post Does The New York Times Obituary Section Have a Jewish Problem? appeared first on Jewcy.

The appalling behavior of the organizers at the Chicago Dyke March, who expelled three Jewish women for bearing Jewish Pride flags, is still fresh on everyone’s minds, as is the earlier confrontation of Jewish Queer Youth by JVP (Jewish Voice for Peace) at the Israel Day Parade, but these are only part of a larger trend of ignoring the presence of Jews in queer spaces at best, and discriminating against them at worst.

Carolina Jews for Justice (CJJ), a North Carolina non-profit focusing on Jewish issues, liberal policy issues, and advocacy, released a lengthy statement on June 26, noting that the annual Pride Fest was scheduled on Yom Kippur.

Yom Kippur falls on September 30th this year, which also happens to be the last Saturday in September. Normally, many Jewish groups participate in the march, but putting it on Yom Kippur puts the kibosh on that for many, and to that end, CJJ encouraged their readership to email NC Pride Fest about the conflict this date caused.

Since then, CJJ has not released a further action plan, nor has NC Pride Fest responded either to their public appeal, or to email inquiries. However, Anna Grant of the CJJ confirmed over email that John Short, the director of NC Pride Fest, said that “it’s always been last Saturday of September,” likely to maximize potential student participation and collaboration with the nearby University. No one’s crunched the numbers, but Grant says according to Short, for the past 17 years he’s chaired the event, it hasn’t fallen on a Hebrew holiday. Grant did not respond to email inquiries to confirm.

It seems that in this case, the exclusion is a result of casual ignorance or lack of care, rather than deliberate malevolence or targeting of Jewish people. However, CJJ noted both in their Facebook post and in emails to Jewcy that NC Pride has a history of dropping the ball when it comes to intersectionality. On their Facebook post, CJJ talked about the rise of Christian chauvinism, noting how it affected their Muslim neighbors too.

“As we were running around yesterday trying to figure out what to do about this scheduling SNAFU, our Muslim friends, colleagues and neighbors were celebrating Eid — and our country’s president broke with a 20-year tradition of hosting an Eid al-Fitr feast at the White House. During end-of-year testing in our schools, some Muslim students were fasting as families were universally instructed to make sure their children came to school well-fed on testing day.”

Over email, Anna Grant directed me to a news article that reported how just two years ago, Black Lives Matter activists were physically assaulted and shut down at NC Pride. The argument is that lack of intersectionality harms the community along multiple axis — and this time, the blow fell on the Jewish community.

“The Pride march has had controversy in the past, and certainly needs to be more inclusive to other communities outside of this one-year issue that affects the Jewish community: the trans community, people of color, and other more marginalized communities than gay cisgender white men, who are also the primary ones organizing NC Pride and the queer community at large,” wrote Grant.

It’s a powerful argument, that calls for inclusion, acceptance, and actively working to broaden community accessibility, and it comes at a troubling time. The American Jewish community is seeing troubling events aimed at excluding Jews from public events, and it is usually justified using this very rhetoric, the language of intersectionality, the same rhetoric CJJ uses here to call for inclusion of many marginalized groups, Jews included. And some of these cases are very blatantly anti-Semitic, even as the language of intersectionality calls for inclusion. It seems that intersectionality means different things to different people — and so do the Jews.

CJJ’s post says it best:

“No group of people, Jewish or otherwise, should have to choose between our LGBTQ identities and the other identities that are important to us and shape our lives.”

We’ll see who makes queer Jews choose next.

Image via Wikimedia

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Editors Note: This is part 1 of our 2 essays on Jewish experience in the post-Inauguration Women’s March. Part 2 can be found here.

I came down to Washington DC as an individual citizen seeking to participate in a demonstration of my displeasure. Not only was I unhappy with the results of the recent election, but I was infuriated by the unprecedented assault on minority communities and protected groups by a nativist, bigoted, and misogynist demagogue. In a rare moment, I didn’t use a Jewish lens to analyze my choice to join the hundreds of thousands of people coming to Washington; I was too driven by my Democrat and liberal ideologies to consider any other angles. The fact that the rally was on Shabbos might have given me momentary pause, but any objections were dwarfed next to my desire to stand up for causes I believe in and be counted alongside my fellow citizens. So, as the possessor of a Y-chromosome, with skin color that passes for privilege, and with the spirit of feminism beating strongly in my heart, I made my way to the nation’s capital.

When I became swept up in the masses of humanity that descended upon Washington, my briefly neglected Jewish internal monologue began to reassert itself, and I wondered how many Jews might show up, and in what form they would arrive. I knew that Shabbat would present a complication for some, and that no (Conservative) Jewish organization I was associated with (Solomon Schechter, JTS, USCJ) had reached out to organize busing, shirts, or other logistics, but I was positive that the human rights devotion in contemporary liberal American Jewish identity would demand that Jews be present. After all, what Jew can go to shul on the High Holidays, and not be reminded that the Jewish tradition strongly demands action on the human rights crisis du jour? When I emerged into the Metro station at L’Enfant Plaza, about 10 blocks from the rally point for the march, I began to actively look for the Jews in the crowd and the messages they carried with them.

Six hours later, I completed the march in a state of numbed shock. After watching and marching with hundreds of thousands of people and listening to many of the speakers, I determined that the organized Jewish presence at the march was exactly nil. Obviously, there were Jews present, making themselves visible through signs in Hebrew, Stars of David, references to our time as refugees and victims, and exhortations to pursue justice, but they also seemed to march as individuals. 

Where was Hadassah? Where was the Anti-Defamation League? Where were the JCCs? Where was the USCJ, Women’s League, and JOFA? Where were the lines after lines of Jewish women and men who consistently mobilized to protest genocide in Darfur, terrorist attacks against Israel, or, in earlier times, for the Refuseniks of Russia and civil rights? While I know that a few did formally attend, such as the National Council of Jewish Women and AJWS, the myriad organizations of the Jewish community of America, the most powerful and wealthiest Jewish community of the world, seemed conspicuously absent.

Over the next few hours, I considered the reasons for this void. The most obvious answer was the fact that the march happened on Shabbos. Many synagogues and religious institutions grow skittish when faced with the violation of their official positions. Even Jewish political, cultural, and social groups recognize that Jews are both an ethnic and religious group, and aren’t quick to ask their members to violate Shabbat. But the more I considered this option, the more disappointed I became with that answer.

For years, it seems that Conservative clergy and leadership have almost exclusively preached Humanist dogma, selectively reading and cherry picking texts to give the impression that the essence of Judaism is not a belief in God or an observance of commandments and rituals, but a devotion to protecting our fellow humans. Hillel’s teaching that the Golden Rule is the epitome of Judaism, the concept of “saving a life is like saving the world,” and the reminder that saving a life is more important than Shabbat are so often repeated in a synagogue setting that even the average congregant can give those sermons from memory and then apply them to the human rights crisis of the moment. 

This moment, the first protest in defense of those whose rights and bodies are inherently threatened by the new administration, was the opportune time to follow words with actions. Why didn’t our rabbis tell us that, while coming to shul is important, it is superseded by participating in the protection of the lives and wellbeing of millions of fellow citizens? If Jared and Ivanka, now the most visible Jews in America, could get special Orthodox rabbinic dispensation to dance Inauguration Night away, why weren’t we told by our spiritual and moral leaders that our place on that historic Saturday wasn’t in the synagogue but on the streets? Heschel’s ubiquitous line about praying with his feet rings as a condemnation of every rabbi who invokes his civil rights activism but fails to appear because the trumpets sounded on Shabbat.

After calming my outrage (a cocktail helped), I considered a different possibility for the absence of the large Jewish organizations, and concluded that the current mentality of the mainstream Jewish communal organizations is not remotely prepared for the new landscape of liberal causes. After being overwhelmingly present during the Civil Rights movement, and claiming that moment as the emblem of our devotion to liberal justice, Jews largely moved away from protesting on behalf of our fellow Americans. The ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s were decades marked with increasing tension, rather than cooperation, between the Jewish and African-American communities, while Jews unified around their own issues, such as the Refuseniks and Israel.

At the same time, Palestinian activists have joined with many liberal causes, and used the power of intersectionality to infuse their own beliefs into the positions of indirectly related movements, like Black Lives Matter. Linda Sarsour’s position as one of the co-chairs for the March was no coincidence, but a clear indication that Palestinian rights are now inextricably linked with the causes of liberal activists. In contrast, Jewish organizations have been very late to the practice of intersectionality, and the position of many mainstream Jewish organizations on Israel creates a certain level of incompatibility and complications when it comes to joining forces with other liberal groups. The lack of a significant, vocal, and visible Jewish presence at the march was definitely a result of these trends.

As the new administration continues to roll out an already horrifying agenda, the Jewish community will have some tough questions to face. After years of hibernation, we are no longer the organizers or the platform-writers. We’ve spent too long with our backs turned away, and other voices, occasionally ones that are hostile to our interests, have filled the void we left. The Women’s March presented us with the golden opportunity to awaken the long-dormant spirit of Jewish protest and join forces around an issue that is, for most Jews, uncontroversial. It offered us the chance to embrace intersectionality and prove that, while we might be disparaged as privileged, we are nonetheless prepared to stand with those who need our support. The Women’s March was the first test of liberals in the Age of Trump, and we failed.

Reuben Berman is a graduate of Columbia University and the Jewish Theological Seminary and a New York native. He has worked as a Fellow and Research Associate at the Reut Institute, a think-and-do tank in Tel Aviv, Israel.

Photo credit Dan Rosen.

The post Disappointment at the Protest appeared first on Jewcy.

It’s 2015 and I’m lighting my 12-year-old handmade chanukiah at the small window of my dorm room. The candles flicker out the 2nd-floor window and I wish for latkes, not only for the taste of home, but for their incredible power to fill the room with an odor that would be capable of masking the stench of weed that wiggles in every time I try to open the window. It’s 2015, and I’m reading prayers off my phone that after 18 years I wish I knew by heart.

“Baruch Atah Adonai Elohenu Melech ha-olam asher kid-shanu b’mitzvotav v’tzivanu l’hadlik ner shel Chanukah.”

“Blessed are You, Lord, our God, King of The Universe who has sanctified us with His commandments, and commanded us to light the Chanukah light.”

But alas, here I am googling which blessings I’m to say when, and in what order. There are only three. I really should know this. It’s 2015 and I’m thinking of something my mother once taught me about why it was we must light the candles frighteningly close to the curtains.

Chanukah is a minor Jewish holiday, and to Jews in the diaspora a primarily cultural celebration of events that postdate the Torah. It’s an event whose significance is often misinterpreted due to its occasional proximity to Christmas, but like all Jewish holidays, Chanukah tells a story rich in symbolism.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one: The Chanukah story begins with the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem. Judaism is outlawed, and thus forced underground. Two years later, after some fighting and some dying, the Jews were able to rebuild the temple and light its menorah, the seven branched eternal flame. They could only find enough oil to last one night, but miraculously, the oil burned for eight days, enough time to make more.

In celebration of the miracle, Jews light a nine-armed menorah, or chanukiah, for eight nights—representing the eight days that the oil burned—eat foods that have been fried in oil, and place their burning chanukiahs in doorframes and windows, where the light can be seen from the street. Unless, of course, it is not safe to do so (don’t actually risk lighting your curtains on fire). And like a Jewish Scrooge, this year I’m visited by Chanukah past.

I think back to 2011. It’s a cold Saturday in January, I am five months free of Shabbat School, having become a B’nai Mitzvah in Mid-August. I’m still adjusting to a normal schedule after two weeks of winter break. It is 2011 and there are police surveying the scene at our school, five blocks from home.

Mere blocks from our proudly hung mezuzah, scrawled across one of the towering stacks of commemorative bricks that surround the playground’s stage structure, in bright blue spray paint, is a symbol of our unwelcome. A massive swastika watches over the playground as the sun rises, its twin, a black swastika on a young girl’s bike that is locked to the bike rack just feet away. Between the two, a series of racial slurs and a phrase I’ve been taught to shiver at the sight of, “white power.”

Just a year prior, we were gathered in the gym to listen to the story of a Holocaust survivor after some rebellious middle-schooler wrote “hail Hitler” on their desk in the classroom of a Jewish teacher. I then got my first glance into how little non-Romani gentiles know of the Shoah.

It is 2004 and I am in the second grade. I am learning how to breathe through my newly-deviated septum, and how to count to ten in Spanish. It is 2004 and I am just beginning to question the legitimacy of the tooth fairy, but I have chosen not to reveal my uncertainty, for fear of losing my only source of income. It is 2004 and one of my friends, confused and concerned, is asking my mother why it is I don’t know who Jesus is. My identity is forcibly rearranged as I learn how many of my peers go to Sundays School instead of Shabbat School.

It is 2015 and I am lighting my 12-year-old handmade chanukiah at the small window in my dorm room. I am blissfully unaware of the string of unpublished anti-Semitic incidents that would occur in the following month, just outside my door. The two reports of swastikas on student’s doors, as well as a headless babydoll with the message “death to all Jews” would not be revealed to media outlets until early June, which was nearly two quarters after the incidents occurred.

It is 2015 and when I tell my friends that I have to stay in this weekend because I can not leave the candles in my chanukiah to burn without someone watching I am met with “Wow, really? You don’t look Jewish.” The phrase that has followed me for most of my life: “You don’t look Jewish.” It’s often said in a tone that attempts to be recognized as both a compliment and a misgiving, as if not “looking Jewish” is both incredible and impossible. Through every holiday. Every Passover lunch box. Every “I can’t, I have Hebrew lessons that day.” “You don’t look Jewish.”

It is 2015 and I’m calling my mother to tell her that I couldn’t light the candles at sunset because I was still in class, but that I am doing my best. She is shocked that I am lighting the candles at all.

She is shocked I am lighting the candles at all.

She is shocked because I was always the wicked child of the family (Passover is my favorite holiday, but I will always despise the moral intended by the four children allegory). The day after I became a B’nai Mitzvah I dyed my hair red. I’ve spent the years since casually  combing my Jewishness behind bleached bangs and layers of sunscreen. It was easier that way.

I’m white by U.S. racial standards. Unlike my friends who can’t remove their ethnicities—nor run from the prejudices that followed them—I could skip Hebrew lessons and go to school on Yom Kippur. I didn’t have to think, speak, or look Jewish. If I didn’t think, speak, or look Jewish, I didn’t have to worry about my Jewishness. And if I didn’t have to worry about my Jewishness I could focus on worrying about my much more obvious queer identity—which, unlike my Jewishness, I radiated. I carried my queerness with immense pride, showed it off at every opportunity. It influenced every choice I made, from the clothing I wore to the people I surrounded myself with. My whiteness afforded me the opportunity to denounce my Jewishness (and choose to exclusively perform my queer identity). But choice individual assimilation only goes so far.

It’s 2016 and I am laying in my bed in the middle of the night, scrolling through every Jewish-related tumblr tag and twitter hashtag I can find. I am giggling as I browse posts tagged “goyim gonna goy” and tweets followed by “#GrowingUpJewish”.

It is 2016 and I am rediscovering the culture I pushed away as soon as I was given the choice. The world I kept in my closet with embarrassing baby photos. The identity I avoided revealing because if I didn’t “look Jewish” then I didn’t have to.

It is 2016 and I am done.

I am done acting like I’ll burn in the sun. I am done tilting my head strangely in attempts to hide the hook in my nose. I am done hiding my “Jewish” features behind my WASP-y ones, and I am done being told that I don’t “look Jewish”. I am done carefully framing who I am in attempts to distance myself from my ethnicity.

I am done hiding my Jewishness, but I am not going to change who I am to fit the gentile mold of “looking Jewish.” I am not going to let my pastel hair grow out until it’s a thick, brown mane, I am not going to wear a massive magen david around my neck everyday, and I am not going to start attending Minyan every week just to prove that I am indeed a Jew.

It is 2016 and I am wrapping myself in a tallit and touching the corner to the torah cover at my cousin’s bar-mitzvah service. I am mumbling shehecheyanu under my breath in the corner of my favorite tea shop. I am mounting a mezuzah to the doorway of my first apartment. I am lighting my favorite chanukiah in the window of my family home. Five blocks from my second grade classroom. Five blocks from my grade-school playground. Five blocks from the place that my Jewishness was first dictated to me.

I am singing The Shehecheyanu.

“Baruch Atah Adonai Elohenu Melech ha-olam shehecheyanu vekiymanu vehigi’anu lazman hazeh.”

“Blessed are You, Lord, our God, King of The Universe who has granted us life, sustained us, and enabled us to reach this moment.”

Here I am. I am Jewish and I am done, but I have reached this moment. For that, and that alone, I am grateful.

Finn Piper is a graphic designer and compulsive note-taker from Portland, OR.

Image courtesy Finn Piper

The post “You Don’t Look Jewish”: A Chanukah Tale appeared first on Jewcy.

Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Memorial Day, is today, though it’s actually not the only one each year. January 27th is for all the victims of the War, including the Rroma, the disabled, and other victims of Nazi atrocities. The one we observe this month is an internal affair, Jews mourning our own dead.

And every single year, on all of these dates, I hear people scoffing at these days, calling the Holocaust a “genocide of white people.” They mean that with racially-motivated atrocities occurring in the world today, why pay attention to one that occurred against a group they think of as white? They see it as a zero-sum game: Commemorate the Shoah, bury the Rwandan genocide.

Fake progressives use days like Yom HaShoah as proof that if you want attention for your group’s tragedy, it sure helps to be white. Seeing Jews as white in America today gives them ammunition to minimize the Holocaust.

Even if the Holocaust were a genocide against “white people,” they’re making it sound like that makes the deliberate eradication of an entire group of people less heinous. If I had to hazard a guess, they probably think this is a clever thing to say due to their inaccurate and myopic view of race relations more than half a century and an entire ocean removed from the event in question.

The people saying this invariably tend to see themselves as leftist, activist, justice-oriented, and more than willing to challenge established norms. They see themselves as righting historical and current injustices, and challenging institutions and narratives that unfairly privilege some groups over others. They are, in short, the Good Guys.

Except, of course, they aren’t. Not that being leftist, activist, or challenging norms is a bad thing; I consider it a very good thing. But as Jews are all too aware, the Left and the Right meet at Jew-Hate Junction, and anti-Semitism as the socialism of fools is all too prevalent. Understanding that white people are not subject to any sort of institutionalized discrimination because of their whiteness is an important thing to remember and to challenge— that also goes for us Jews who are white or white-passing in varying degrees. However, that doesn’t somehow mean that it’s a privilege to have experienced a genocide.

The notion that the Holocaust and its memory should intentionally be diminished because “Jews are white now” is not just insulting, it’s downright dangerous. The notion that other genocides don’t get attention because “we only pay attention to the Holocaust because they’re Jews” is a notion that ties directly back to noxious libels about insidious Jewish strangleholds on the media and society.

The notion that this was a “white genocide” deliberately ignores how the Holocaust was entirely predicated on white supremacism — no Jew, no matter how pale, had any sort of white privilege at the time, and millions of us died for it. That some Jews (not all!) have some access to the benefits of whiteness in some parts of the world today (the USA is not the entire world!) doesn’t make all Jews of all colours retroactively privileged, much less during a genocide.

Ultimately, this type of narrative serves to not only blame Jews for being subject to one of the worst of all crimes, it also serves to label us privileged for it.

Make no mistake: this is anti-Semitism. And anyone who utters such a thing, who types it out and writes a screed defending it online, is a bigot who is all too happy to harness fancy sociology terms in order to justify the same impulses that ultimately led to the deaths of over a third of our entire global population.

B. Lana Guggenheim is a writer on politics, anti-Semitism, and the utter misery of living a late capitalist existence.

Image credit: A Nazi chart explaining racial policy, via Wikimedia

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