Taika Waititi is Hollywood’s new darling; the indie filmmaker has gone from making dark comedies in New Zealand to directing Thor: Ragnarok, the latest Marvel mega-flick. And he’s also been in the news as a minority in the film industry; a profile in the New York Times Magazine this past week, for example, talked about his Maori background, an aspect of his identity he publicly emphasizes, and often incorporates into his work.

These profiles often discuss him having a white mother, but few, The Times included, mention that she’s Jewish. Her maiden name is Cohen, and early in his career Waititi even went by Taika Cohen. But don’t expect to see him at shul anytime soon; religiously, the director doesn’t practice any faith, and culturally, he identifies more as Maori.

“I grew up in, thematically, pretty much all of my work is about outsiders and I think growing as neither full Maori nor full Pākehā or white,” he once said in an interview. “I’ve always been an outsider, felt like an outsider in both worlds, even as I identified more with my Maori side.”

And so, Waititi touches on a lot of the issues of the ever-vexing question, “Who is a Jew?” For hardliners who answer this question primarily with matrilineal descent, it’s no question: Taika is a Member of the Tribe, regardless of how he thinks of himself. But when you take into account personal identity, it becomes a bit thornier. Waititi doesn’t really identify as a Maori Jew, but a Maori person with some Jewish ancestry. So what does it mean to “claim” someone as part of your people who’s reticent to do so?

These questions can be thorny, but in the meantime, if you want to privately schep naches from Waititi’s accomplishments, go for it. Because have you seen the trailer for Thor? Jeff Goldblum for days.

Image via Wikimedia

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In that picture, you see a 16-year-old girl. She has frizzy, curly, reddish hair. Her eyebrows are thick and dark, and her nose is large. She enjoys reading and writing, and has dreams of working in publishing and live in New York City. She will get there someday; but first, she has to finish high school.

High school is rough. Whoever said that those are the best four years of one’s life was either home schooled or a compulsive liar. High school is especially hard when you don’t fit in, when you’re a minority.

My name is Deanna Schwartz. I am a proud Jew. I attend a high school in Howard County, Maryland where the vast majority of my peers are Christian. It may come as a surprise as to how few Jews there are in my city, considering areas not too far from me, like Baltimore and Potomac, have such high Jewish populations. Yet there are so few of us that I know most Jews in my county on a personal level, from one Jewish youth activity or another.

It’s 2016, so every day there’s a different trending topic celebrating diversity. This is good. Some may think that discrimination is a thing of the past. But, this is not true—especially for the Jews.

Oddly enough, my somewhat difficult experience growing up as a Jewish teen is fundamentally different from my parents’ experiences. My mom grew up in Philadelphia and South Jersey, where Ashkenazi culture is easily found. My dad, while primarily growing up in the same area as my brother and me, faced a completely different generation of tolerance and culture, since he was immersed in synagogue life and attending a heavily Jewish school.

My high school is a melting pot of socio-economic backgrounds and classes. You’ll see as many teenagers with “Bernie 2016” buttons on their backpacks as “Make America Great Again” hats. One area where we are not diverse? Religion.

It is easy to identify me as a Jew. I look like what people think of as appearing Jewish. I use Yiddish words as much as any good East Coast Jew should, and my last name is extremely, canonically Jewish. I wear sweatshirts from Jewish camps and am quick to correct someone if they wish me a “Merry Christmas.”

My parents have always made sure that my brother and I appreciate our differences for what they are. They pushed against the current of our Christian neighbors and classmates and enrolled us in Hebrew school. I had a Bat Mitzvah when I was 13, complete with a big party with all my friends and family. I participate in Jewish youth groups. My family has always attended or hosted Passover seders and lit candles for the eight nights every single year of Hanukkah.

Because of my proud Jewish identity, I have to deal with discrimination every day. It’s usually what the speakers think is subtle—people making Holocaust jokes, or saying I’m “cheap.” I once bent over to pick up a quarter that was on the floor in the cafeteria at school and heard someone mutter “filthy Jew” under their breath.

What did I do? What I often do— I pretended I didn’t hear it. Or sometimes I’ll laugh as if it’s funny. Or I correct people, but while hiding how much it actually hurts. I roll my eyes when they tell me that I’m going to Hell (both in jest, and in earnest; I once had a classmate ask me to leave the table during a meal so she could say grace. My presence as a Jew was too much for her to handle as she said her prayers to Jesus). I haven’t sought support from the school because I know nothing would change.

This is something that the Jewish kids in my school are used to— my closest friends are also Jewish and I have a twin brother, and I often hear other stories like mine. We grow up knowing that we are different. We are used to teachers assigning homework during Yom Kippur because it’s just a day off school to them, or seeing tweets from our classmates flippantly saying “thank you Jews for the day off!” We’re used to being assigned the role of “Jewish one” in friend groups. We’re used to holiday gift exchanges being called “Secret Santa” and feeling uncomfortable at Christmas parties.

One of the most frustrating facets of the teen Jewish experience in my area is the assumption that we are Christian. Everyone simply assumes that you are Christian. I’ll never forget when our warm-up question on a December day in fourth grade was “Are you excited to get your Christmas presents?” I was the only kid who put my magnet on the side of the board that said “No.” The teacher said to me, “Deanna, why are you so ungrateful?”

Moments like this are minimal, but they add up. Years and years of feeling that it’s wrong to be Jewish at one point made me start to resent my religion. I started to perpetuate the stereotypes and make the jokes myself. I screamed when it was time for Hebrew school. I experimented with makeup to make my nose appear smaller, and tried straighteners to get rid of that pesky curl that seemed so ugly to me. On my Bat Mitzvah, I had straightened hair.

Something every Jew can agree on is that it’s comforting to be around other Jews. A usual haven for many Jewish kids, myself included, is summer camp. For six years, I attended a Jewish sleepaway camp, Camp Louise. Being surrounded by other Jewish girls my age in a safe and fun environment was absolutely incredible, and included Saturday night Havdalah and learning Israeli folk dances. I don’t attend Jewish sleepaway camp anymore, but it had a profound impact on me and my life overall. It’s something to hold onto, to remind me that my identity is something to love. I would not be the same person without it.

I’m at the beginning of the summer before my junior year of high school. This is an important summer. I’m starting to look at colleges (a good Hillel is a must!), learning how to drive, and developing all kinds of new forms of independence. I’ve been thinking about the future since before I knew what it really meant, and Judaism has always been a part of my future. I plan to raise my children as Jewish, and I hope to be able to teach them the lessons I’ve learned and will continue to learn. I dream of a day where Jews will be more accepted. It’s the same dream my ancestors have been dreaming for centuries. But if there’s anything that the Jewish people are, it’s persistent. We’ve been the subject of hate and violence more times than any other religious group, and we’ve pushed through. Judaism is and will always be a huge part of my life. It’s shaped my ethics, morals, and personality. I love my religion with all my heart and will never stop being an advocate for acceptance.

Deanna Schwartz is a teenage writer and blogger from Ellicott City, Maryland. Books, theatre, writing, feminism, and Judaism are just a few things on the long list of things that she loves.

Images courtesy of Deanna Schwartz

The post The Struggle Continues: Being a Jewish Teen in 2016 appeared first on Jewcy.

In case you were wondering what to discuss with your family when you’re home from school for Rosh Hashanah, Barry Kosmin and Ariela Keysar at the Trinity College Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture have released the preliminary findings of a survey of Jewish students on college campuses, New Voices reports.

Not surprisingly, the results point to similar trends as the Pew Research Center’s 2013 Portrait of Jewish Americans, but there are some significant differences that show how Jewish life in America is slowly changing, particularly among Millennials.

There are two fundamental events that defined world Jewry in the 20th century: the Holocaust, and the creation of the State of Israel. The college-aged Jews surveyed by Kosmin and Keysar believe these events to be less important in their definition of “being Jewish” than the Pew survey respondents.

60 percent of college-aged students said that “remembering the Holocaust” was “very important” to being Jewish, whereas 73 percent of Pew respondents said it was “essential.” That the Holocaust is losing its prominence as an important part of American Jewish identity may be surprising to older generations, but it is not shocking. As we move further away from the events of World War II, and survivors are no longer alive to personally relate their stories, the Holocaust becomes more of a historical event than a communal or familial one.

35 percent of the students surveyed by Kosmin and Keysar felt the Jewish state was “very important” to being Jewish, while 43 percent of Pew respondents said supporting Israel was an “essential” part of being Jewish. Yet, 62 percent of the college students had visited Israel (21 percent on a Birthright trip)—significantly higher that the 43 percent of Pew respondents who had been to Israel.

Also noteworthy: the students named Israel as a “top concern” when asked to identify the “crucial issues” concerning young Jews today. Given that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a hot-button issue on campuses across America—New Voices editor Derek M. Kwait refers to its “amoeba-like takeover of all Jewish life on campus”—it’s not surprising that some Jewish college students consider their religious and cultural identity to be separate from Israel. But the high percentage of students who have visited—and their degree of concern—indicates that they are still vitally engaged with Israel, although perhaps more critically than their parents.

The survey also shows an interesting balance between religious identity and the level of participation at religious services. 39 percent of Jews on campus considered themselves “secular” and just 23 percent identified as “religious” (quite different from the American college student population as a whole, where 32 percent identify as “religious” and 28 percent as “secular”). Yet, the survey also highlights that young Jews participate in religious services in higher numbers on a weekly and monthly basis than the American Jewish population as a whole. Fewer identify as “High Holiday Jews” than in the general Jewish population, but—puzzlingly—a greater number never attend services at all. “This seems to speak to the larger trend of our generation’s loathing of lip-service,” writes Kwait. “If we believe, we take it seriously (even if we take it seriously in a non-traditional way) and if we don’t believe, why bother with it at all.”

Some other fun facts to take away (approximate numbers):

1. 20% see “having a good sense of humor” as necessary to the Jewish identity.

2. 80% had a bar/bat mitzvah.

3. 40% say having Jewish children is a very important part of being Jewish.

4. 13% exclusively date Jews on campus.

5. 80% identify Judaism as a culture; 60% as a religious group; 40% as an ethnic group.

6. 64% were descendants of four Jewish grandparents.

As with any preliminary survey results, the findings are not 100% conclusive, but it’s still fascinating to look at the statistics and see what they point to. We’ll keep you posted on the final survey results, which will no doubt provide more clarity and provoke more questions.

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My parents struggled to choose a name after my birth in a shabby Moscow hospital. Nothing felt exactly right. After a month they settled on Yulia, a traditional Russian name that, they decided, was just unique enough. My mother loved the lyrical way it rolled off the tongue, Yoo-Lee-Yah. Most often, though, I was Yulya or Yulinka or Yulyasha.

When I was five-and-a-half, my family left Russia. I was still Yulinka in Vienna and Santa Marinella, Italy, where my family lived stateless for nearly nine months while I pleaded for chocolate ice cream and swam in the frigid Mediterranean Sea near our monastery-owned apartment.

A few months after our arrival in New York City, I became Sara.

My parents enrolled me in a Hasidic yeshiva for Russian-Jewish immigrants. We shed our secular names, and aspired to commit to memory everything our parents and grandparents never knew. Sara had been my grandmother’s birth name, before she felt compelled to change it to the more palatable and less Jewish “Alexandra,” or Sasha for short.

As Sara, I was the girl who learned to read both Hebrew and English at a sprinter’s pace, discarding all traces of an accent within months. Sara was bright, popular, and fiercely determined to rack up accolades. She moved from first grade to third grade the same school year, although at this particular townhouse yeshiva, that only meant a move to the adjoining room. All my new friends knew me as Sara. The name felt like my own. And Judaism was now at the forefront of my identity. At the yeshiva we devoted an entire period to reciting passages from the Chumash (a printed version of the Torah), starting with Bereshit. We’d sing the Hebrew verses followed by the English translation, over and over, until we knew them by heart. I learned the intricacies of nearly every biblical tale. The stories, the rituals, the history—all of it was mine.

After three years came unexpected news: we were moving to Virginia, where I’d be enrolling in a public school. Though I had once admonished my parents for not teaching my brother and me any Jewish rituals, I found it surprisingly easy to let go of the name Sara and the Orthodoxy it represented.

At the elementary school where I started fifth grade, they asked what I preferred to be called. “Julie,” I answered. I’m not sure where I first heard it, but I remember feeling it was an appropriately “cool” name, and at nine, being thought of as cool was paramount. It felt more me than “Julia,” the transliteration of my given name. I embraced this new identity. I was ready to be wholly American.

Julie was shyer than Sara, less adept at making new friends, but she was also more curious and more adaptable. As Julie, I discovered American pop music, like Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men, and the comforting malaise of a suburban life filled with birthday parties at the arcade and trips to the local shopping mall.

Sara hadn’t disappeared entirely, however. On my first day of Hebrew school at the local conservative synagogue, the teacher asked my name. “This is Hebrew school,” I thought. “In Hebrew school, you go by your Hebrew name.” So I answered, “Sara.” The teacher proceeded to introduce the rest of the class. “Kevin, Ashleigh, Lauren, Beth…” I immediately realized my mistake, but in my anxious nine-year-old mind, it was too late to correct it. My two identities were kept separate until a year later, when I moved to the better public school district attended by most of my Hebrew school classmates. There was a lot of confusion and embarrassment and awkward explaining. The comic ridiculousness of having three names wasn’t lost on me either, and I quickly learned to be self-deprecating. More than twenty years later, some members of the congregation still refer to me as “Julie-Sara.”

I felt that duality when I offered to do more for my Bat Mitzvah than was expected by leading certain prayers usually reserved for the rabbi—to the bewilderment of my classmates—because I genuinely loved them and was moved by the melodies. I’m still moved by prayer, by the crescendo of an entire congregation singing Avinu Malkeinu during high holiday services. There’s a purity to it, a lifeline to the past that feels indestructible.

I remained Julie all through middle school, high school, and college. Richmond, Virginia, my new hometown, was a cultural lifetime removed from the Russian-speaking neighborhoods of Brooklyn where we’d lived for three years. In Richmond, I had one Russian friend, who, like me, barely registered as Russian. We spoke about Russian food or cartoons every once in a while, but mostly we bonded over Tori Amos and musical theater. I was Julie, the girl who played soccer (less than decently), obsessed over Beat poetry, and hung out with friends over plates of French fries at a smoke-filled cafe downtown.

Most new friends were surprised to learn I was an immigrant. The more I told the story, though, the more I felt it burrow into me and become an ingrained part of who I was. My immigration made me something other than an average suburban teenager. The cloud hanging over my family and every other family who’d gone through a similar experience was always there versus here. Stagnation versus opportunity. Ignorance versus truth.

And though my family assimilated quickly and willfully (no Russian television, few Russian friends), intrinsic differences remained. My parents are warm and loving, but they’re also unexpectedly direct, which has caught many Americans off-guard. They’re patriotic in a way U.S.-born citizens can never truly understand. And yet, there’s still a lingering cynicism that no amount of American positivity can scrub clean.

There are also the cultural mainstays of Soviet life my parents can never entirely forget—nor do they want to. Vladimir Vysotsky is the music of their youth, and I’ve never seen them feel music so intensely as when they’re listening to one of his songs. I can’t help but love him, too. My mother and I sing patriotic Communist anthems on long car trips. We register the dangerous naiveté of the lyrics, but the act of singing the songs—my mother and I, together—transforms them into something comforting.

My parents never took to processed American food, and our table, even at Thanksgiving, is laden with celebratory Russian dishes like caviar, smoked meats, eggplant dips and beet salads. Russian culture, at least in major cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg, was remarkably homogeneous under Communist rule. The food, the music, and the movies were all scarce, and so cultural “favorites” were everyone’s favorites, which is why, perhaps, it is so easy to bond with fellow Russian immigrants. True counterculture was reserved for the truly subversive.

During an internship interview my senior year of college, the coordinator uttered the name atop my resume.

“Thanks, Yulia,” she said. “We’ll get back to you.”

“Actually,” I responded, as I had many times before, “You can call me Julie.”

“But Yulia’s so much prettier.”

“Okay,” I said, unsure how to interpret the backhanded-compliment. “Yulia’s fine, too.”

For the past 10 years I’ve gone by Yulia in the workplace, though I continue to introduce myself as “Julie” to new friends. At first, I felt a bit like an impostor. It was strange to hear colleagues say my name. I barely felt Russian, way less Russian than many writers and authors whose Russianness was a central tenant of their writing, but whose bylines were Americanized names like Gary and Ellen and Julia.

Plus, “Yulia” is a formal name. It contains one more syllable than the casual Yulya. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard a Russian person call me aloud by my name, despite my mother’s fondness for it.

Was I fooling my colleagues into thinking I was something other than who I was? Slowly though, I grew into it. As I started getting published, seeing “Yulia” as a byline below a story I’d written felt right. It is my birth name, after all. It represents a unique life, a journey that’s taken me from a Communist childhood, to statelessness in Italy, to an Orthodox schooling, and finally, to American adolescence and adulthood.

I’ve decided I like the internship coordinator’s comment, about my name being pretty. It reminds me of my mother’s comments about why she chose it in the first place—her fond gushing over how beautiful she thought it sounded.

To minimize confusion when first introducing myself, I sometimes follow “Yulia” with the refrain “like Julia, but with a ‘Y.'” In a way, though, the name feels not at all odd or out of place for the city to which I’ve returned: New York City—the city of immigrants. It has a home here, a point of reference.

One night last summer I met friends in Coney Island for a Brooklyn Cyclones minor league baseball game. There was beer and popcorn and fireworks—a collection of all-American trappings. After the game we walked to a Russian restaurant, where we drank vodka and feasted on blintzes and borscht. On the boardwalk, within yards of each other, couples writhed to reggaeton and Russian grandmothers sashayed to old Russian ditties. Yulia feels like the name best suited to this mishmash of a city, itself a fitting metaphor for my own patchwork of an identity. Feel free to call me Julie, though, if you’d like.

Yulia Khabinsky is a research editor and writer living in Brooklyn, NY. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Jewish Daily Forward, Narrative.ly and other publications. She blogs about New York at Notes From the Wonder City. Follow her on Twitter at @ykhabinsky.

Image: Shutterstock

Related: The Refusenik That Wasn’t
Gary Shteyngart On Surviving Solomon Schechter, Soviet Pain, And Botched Circumcisions

The post Julie and Yulia: One Immigrant’s Name is as Complicated—and Enriching—as Her Identity appeared first on Jewcy.

I used to love Purim when I was growing up. Mom always came up with the cutest Mishloach Manot for my friends, from candy-filled plastic hearts to sweet little ceramic Claire’s boxes. When the holiday fell on a Sunday, my parents would both be home and the table would look like a garden of cellophane-wrapped baskets. We’d stay up late the night before packing in an assembly line, and the next day I’d drive with Dad around the neighborhood to deliver the gifts. He’d lift up his windshield wipers and cover the tops of them with gloves. Then he’d turn the switch and the makeshift hands would wave. Instead of Jewish music, he’d play Led Zeppelin and drive up and down the neighborhood streets. The tunes shouted from the windows, becoming the soundtrack for the costumed families frolicking up and down the streets. I’d watch them through the window. They’d wave and smile as our blue sedan drove by.

The last Purim I celebrated was my freshman year of college. Interestingly enough, it was the furthest I had ever been from home during a holiday. My friends and I—Jewish and non-Jewish—dressed up and went to a huge carnival that Chabad was throwing. We were in the middle of Nowheresville but there was music, games, and all the food you could ever want.

It’s been a while since anything resembling that has happened on Purim. This year I stayed in and watched Mad Men reruns in my pajamas. Instagram fed me a slew of pictures of family and friends dressed up. In between Don Draper’s affairs, I double-tapped each one. Like.

Growing up in an observant home, I learned that being Jewish meant you just did certain things. I never questioned it. Shabbat happened every week and it was normal not to watch television or drive the car. Holidays were filled with beautiful traditions and family. But now that I live away from home, and am not sure I believe in religion at all, being Jewish doesn’t mean being religious the way it used to.

Without consciously deciding to, I drifted away from community and observance. Part of me is happy about that—even before I left, I knew I didn’t quite fit in. There was no one for me to discuss literature with or argue over the arts. I’d sit on the floor of used bookshops by myself while my friends hung out at the mall. As soon as school—our common denominator—vanished, so did our bond. And yet, another part of me feels bad that Purim came and went without a single sparkle of the delight and fun it once held for me. I’ve been on a religious roller-coaster for most of my life, and in my twenties—on the cusp of adulthood—it has become even more difficult.

So now I am faced with the task of redefining observance.

The meat of observance, for me, lies in two things: culture and community. What I believe, or don’t believe, about where the bible came from doesn’t have to disrupt my connection to Judaism. Realizing that I don’t have to practice religion the way my family does has helped me to reconcile my nostalgia for my childhood with my discomfort with traditional observance. If I want to, I can still spend Purim with my family, or call up an old friend and ask if I can latch onto her plans. Culture is about tradition and the group of people you belong to, and that has little to do with theology and faith.

In terms of seeking out a new community: I haven’t found one that’s quite right for me, yet. Many of the people I grew up with, if they left home at all, left for the Upper West Side or Washington heights. I chose the East Village. I don’t know where my generation of culturally-identified, secular Jews is going. But for now, I am coming to realize that despite the choices I have made, I can hold onto the parts I want and still call myself observant, without feeling like I am lying or cheating. I can create new traditions, keep old ones, and find new communities and friends. I can have my own garden of cellophane-wrapped baskets.

Daniella Bondar is a MFA Creative Writing Nonfiction student at The New School. Wandering New Yorker. Insomniac. She’s working on a memoir about her gold dress phobia. Follow her on twitter and find her writing at DaniellaRobin.com.

(Image: Shutterstock)

Related: I Hid My Non-Jewish Boyfriend From My Family For Over a Year

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