Recently, a group of authors and poets gathered at Afikomen Books in Berkeley, CA, for an event titled Jewish Women & Spirituality, to read work they had published in Bridges: A Jewish Feminist Journal. I read an excerpt from “Second Glances,” which appeared in Bridges last year. It’s a piece I wrote with my friend Nzinga Kone-Miller, about the intersections of our identities as African American Jews.

I found the reading extremely moving. My fellow writers were/ are a phenomenal group of women, with incredible stories to share. I felt very privileged to be in their presence, and to hear their words. Unfortunately, my co-writer Nzinga couldn’t make it to the event, so I read excerpts from our piece on my own.

During my time at the podium, I felt a deep sense of connection with the audience, and it was a very powerful experience for me. The excerpts I read were about the experiences I’ve had of people reading my face, or, more specifically, reading (or not reading) Jewishness in my face. It was a strange sensation, to talk to a room full of Jews about my face, and what other Jews have had to say about its Jewishness — while the audience members were looking at me, at the very face I was describing! It felt vulnerable, delicate, and odd. But wonderful, too.

Thank you to Nitza Agam for organizing the event, to Alison at Afikomen for coordinating things, to JVoices and Zeek Magazine for co-sponsoring, and to Nitza, Abby Caplin, Juliana Birnbaum Fox and Lenore Weiss for sharing their work.

I recently got a piece published in Bridges: A Jewish Feminist Journal. It’s an essay I co-authored with my friend Nzinga, about our experiences as African American Jews. She converted to Judaism, and I was born Jewish; so, in the essay, we create a compare-and-contrast dialogue, looking at race politics in the Jewish community and how we’ve navigated the different ways other Jews have responded to our claiming of Jewish identity. We titled it “Second Glances” to reference the fact that we get a lot of double-takes when we tell people we’re Jewish.

A group of contributors to Bridges, myself included, are doing a reading at Afikomen Judaica in Berkeley this Sunday, May 3rd, from 3 – 4 p.m. The event is free and open to the public. I’ll be reading excerpts from “Second Glances.” I’d love to have JVoices folks at the event.

Attached are all the details, including info on the other speakers, or read more on Facebook.

For the 14th year, the Milwaukee Area Jewish Committee’s African-American-Jewish Task Force held its annual African-American Jewish Seder. The seder has been led in synagogues, university libraries, senior centers, Jewish homes for the elderly, but never in a church. Until this year, when 130 people came together at All Saints Catholic Church this past Sunday to celebrate.

In a recent article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Harriet McKinney MAJC executive director said, “For some people, every seder is an African-American seder.” I followed up with McKinney yesterday, and she told me that her daughter, Shahanna, first made this point when she co-lead the seder in the past. McKinney remembered her daughter’s words as a critical point, one that deserved and required repeating. For people to understand that there are people of color for whom the traditions and experiences of the seder that day were, and are, the norm.

“For some people, this is the first time they’ve had a chance to celebrate this ritual with a huge number of people who look like they do,” said McKinney. “Often the experience for a lot of African heritage Jews, is that it is usually, mostly European heritage Jews at a seder. Now they are having a seder with 60 or 70 people that look like they do, want to celebrate with them, and include a mix of Jewish and non-Jewish allies.”

(The Rev. Maurice Lawrence (left) holds a plate of matzo and hot water corn bread. Photo by Jack Orton)

McKinney also told me that the seder has long been attended by local and state politicians. This year, they were joined by representatives from
the office of U.S. Senator Russell Feingold, Congresswoman Gwen Moore from Wisconsin 4th Congressional District with one of her sons, Wisconsin Supreme Court Chief Justice Shirley S. Abrahamson and Circuit Court Judge Charles Kahn.

Each year, the Haggadah is written and changed to incorporate different actions and current events. For the last number of years, the seder included a special action for Darfur, including a display photographs from Darfur and a postcard writing campaign. Last year they wrote letters to Chinese Ambassador asking him to use his good offices to help solve the crisis in Darfur.

This year included a time to pray for President Obama, and a child’s prayer that corresponded with their Tzedekah Drive for All Saints Commons, a program of the church which provides housing and support for homeless women and children.

“The goal of the Seder is to build and strengthen the bridges of understanding between our peoples,” said McKinney, who said the Haggadah is crafted with this in mind. The parts of the seder and stories told “examine the parallel’s between our people’s histories, values, experiences and relationships.”

We’ve uploaded the Haggadah so that it’s now available online. If you use any parts of the Hagaddah be sure to credit Shahanna McKinney and Peter Goldberg and the Milwaukee Area Jewish Committee-an independent affiliate of the American Jewish Committee.

Here’s just a taste of what you’ll find between the covers of this fabulous Haggadah.

On Mitzrayim:

For it is said that every person, in every generation, must regard his-or-herself as having been personally freed from bondage in Mitzrayim.

And where is Mitzrayim? In the Torah (Hebrew Bible), it is the land of Egypt. But the name, Mitzrayim, has in it the Hebrew word for narrow, constrained, or inhibited. It is thus the narrow place that squeezes the life out of the human soul and body. For some of us, it was Pharaoh’s Egypt. For some of us, it was the Middle Passage. For some of us, it was the Spanish Inquisition or Nazi Germany. For some of us, it was the Jim Crow South or segregated Northern ghettos. For some of us, it is over-crowded housing and classrooms. For some of us, it is off-limits clubs and boardrooms. No one place is always Mitzrayim, but any place — even our own — can be turned into one. So tonight let us dedicate ourselves to break out of our own narrow straits. And tonight let us honor all people who have struggled and are struggling for their freedom.

On Karpas:

KARPAS: Rebirth and Renewal

[Co-Leader]
Because Passover is the great spring festival of the Jewish calendar, the first symbol of Passover is a green vegetable, karpas, traditionally parsley, onion, or potato, and our first ritual is a reflection of spring.

Greens–turnip, mustard, and collard, are an important part of many southern meals. Greens are most often associated with the traditional African-American cuisine. The liquid that is left over from cooking greens is called pot liquor.

[Co-Leader]
Pot liquor became an important ingredient in the captive Africans’ diet. It is said to have been given as a healing potion, used to cure chicken pox, measles, and mumps; and so these greens also symbolize vitality and rebirth.

[Reader 8]
“My grandmother was a firm believer in the power of pot liquor, and so am I. It’s like the Jewish mother’s faith in chicken soup. And what is chicken soup other than plain old chicken pot liquor?” (Jackie Torrence, The Importance of Pot Liquor)

[Co-Leader]
We dip the karpas twice: the parsley in salt water, and the greens in pot liquor. This is our hors d’oeuvre, the beginning of our festive meal, which we enjoy as free men and women. Festive meals are almost unknown to those in captivity. Let us dip the parsley in salt water (traditionally, a symbol of the tears of bondage), and the greens in pot liquor (a symbol of resistance to oppression), and say the blessing:

[Reader 9]

Baruch Atah Adonai Eloheinu melech ha’olam borei p’ri ha adamah

[Together]
Blessed are You Lord our G-d, Sovereign of the Universe, who creates the fruit of the earth.

Dr. King fought against race prejudice and Jim Crow segregation, right?

So why do so many of us American Jews pretend as though we’re really committed to his work? Isn’t racial segregation still the ‘in-house’ policy of American Judaism?

Black Jewish congregations have existed in the New World for no less than two hundred and fifty years. Now let that sink in for a moment. Over two hundred years. Yet any fair and honest observer will admit that even American Protestants have made more progress in intra-religious race relations than American Jews. (And that’s no small claim, given that the KKK embraces a Protestant Christian orientation!) At least American Protestants admit that black churches and white churches are indeed “Christian” churches. White Jewish organizations, however, often have difficulties admitting or acknowledging the mere existence of black Jewish organizations as “Jewish” in the first place. Many white Jewish rabbis, educators and community leaders have never set one foot into a black synagogue or learned about black jewish organizations, and many of our community’s predominantly white institutions function to the complete exclusion of their black counterparts.

American Judaism’s racial segregation, a segregation in such full force and willful perpetuation that I must occasionally argue that its black underside even exists, stands as a continual reminder of American Judaism’s inability to live out the meaning of Dr. King’s dream of human equality and interracial harmony.

FACT: American Judaism is more racially segregated today, in the 21st century, in the year 2009, than it was during all the antebellum centuries of New World slavery.

Today… in the 21st century… in year 2009…

Demographic research on American Jewry still systematically excludes the vast majority of Jews of African descent.

Today… in the 21st century… in year 2009…

Historical scholarship on Judaism still systematically neglects and almost completely ignores the cultural and religious contributions of African-American Jews to American Judaism.

Today… in the 21st century… in year 2009…

Rabbinical councils and other Jewish leadership organizations remain racially segregated, and many Jewish professional organizations still cater only to Jews of European descent.

Today… in the 21st century… in year 2009…

American Jewish day schools and Hebrew schools still overwhelmingly teach Ashkenazi-centered and European-centered versions of Jewish history and culture, sometimes even to the complete exclusion of Afro-Asian Jews from students and faculty personnel.

Today… in the 21st century… in year 2009…

There still exists vast, visible and complex socioeconomic disparities between white and non-white American Jews.

And as a result, today…

An ecumenical, religiously inclusive and vibrantly multiracial American Judaism still stands as only a distant possibility.

By simply mentioning these few issues, we have only begun to scratch the surface of talking about American Jewish race relations.

But Dr. King understood that mere talk about racism has never amounted to a fight against racism.

What would Dr. King make of this situation, were he here to witness how his dream has unfolded in Jewish America?

What do you think he would say?

“Yes, my Jewish brother! Yes, my Jewish sister! It’s easy to talk about Ethiopian Jews’ struggles against racism in Israel, but how often do you talk about Black American Jews’ or Asian American Jews’ struggles against racism at your local JCC, or the local synagogue, or the local Jewish day school?

Yes, it’s convenient to talk about how Rabbi Heschel marched hand-in-hand with me during the Freedom Movement.

But how often do Ashkenazi rabbis march hand-in-hand with African-American rabbis on your own local rabbinical councils… or how often do Euro-American synagogues worship hand-in-hand or side-by-side with African-American synagogues? How can it be that hundreds of Black Jewish congregations (including the ones in your own home town) go unnoticed, unsupported and virtually neglected by your white Jewish organizations year after year after year? How is this anything but religiously sanctioned, Jewish Jim Crowism?”

If Dr. King uttered these questions, how would we respond?

Look, during this time of reflection, let us not as American Jews deceive ourselves. Let us no be quick to dismiss racism’s influence because we ourselves are too afraid to admit its role in our own lives.

Instead, we need to be honest about the racial apartheid practiced right here in American Jewish society.

Challenging the injustice of racial segregation in our own community is what provides us with the moral courage to challenge injustices in other communities– not the other way around.

And so this year, as we once again mark the importance of Dr. King’s legacy, the challenge for us to return to our own Jewish spheres of influence, with our own struggles with race prejudice, presses itself upon us. This time in a renewed commitment to the struggle for racial equality right here in our communities of American Judaism.

This is not a task from which we can always run. History will ultimately bring us our day of racial reckoning. And in the meantime, when we think about the precious memory of the Civil Rights Struggle, though a part of us may still not want to believe it, let’s at least have enough moral courage to admit the obvious: American Judaism–much like many other American religious traditions–is deeply, deeply racist.

And in all probability, it will be so for a long, long time.

If you want to honor the memory of Dr. King, and like me, you’re proud of your American Jewish roots, let’s start realizing his dream by being honest about how far we’ve fallen short in achieving it.

Jonsson writes of a “black conversion movement,” portrayed as a recent trend of African-Americans becoming Jews by choice that reflects a particular moment in Black-Jewish relations. Of course, the author refers to his subjects as “converts,” but we’ll leave that aside for now.

Way to go, buddy: Jonsson figured out that not all Jews are white. The only thing is, I’m not sure he did, actually, figure that out.

When interviewee Elisheva Chaim reports strange looks about being Jewish, Jonsson naturalizes those reactions. Of course it’s weird that a black person would be Jewish! Everybody knows Jews are white. And, as a corollary, an African-American walking into a synagogue is an anomaly, a convert, and probably the only person of color there.

Well, that’s the thing – everybody may know Jews are white, but many Jews aren’t white. I don’t have to tell the JVoices readership that – this blog has covered the particular issues faced by Jews of color more than most of the Jewish press and blogosphere.

First off, and this has been well documented in print and online, even those American Jews who live with white privilege on a regular basis and don’t feel like they are passing for white are only able to do so as a function of the time (and often class) in which they (ok, honestly, we) live. These days, light-skinned, accent-free, usually-Ashkenazi Jews are grouped in with “white” on a regular basis, but that’s more a function of the changing boundaries of whiteness in the United States, which in the 21st century seems to have room for a number of groups previously excluded – Irish folks, Eastern Europeans, Southern European – if they are sufficiently assimilated linguistically and culturally.

Secondly, the CSM article makes it sound like African-American Jews have joined a community where they are the only brown faces. In doing so, it perpetuates a widely-held, but incorrect assumption, that the American Jewish Community, if there is such a thing, is white.

In doing so, they erase the histories and present-day lives of Jews who don’t identify as white and, probably more importantly, of Jews who others don’t identify as white. These include Jews from long-standing communities around the world – Ethiopian Jews, Ugandan Jews (subject of a recent piece in the LA Times), Indian Jews, and Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews from Spain, North Africa and the Middle East, to name a few.

Jonsson hints at a history of Jews with one non-Jewish parent of color, though he ignores the growing numbers of Jews born into non-Jewish communities of color – some in the U.S., more in Latin America and Southeast Asia, and some adopted into U.S. Jewish families. (Full disclosure: my synagogue was the subject of a NY Times article on this “phenomenon.”)

Reading this, I realize it sounds like a hatchet job. In all fairness to Jonsson, he’s obviously trying to find an angle (the Obama candidacy) through which to point out to his readers the existence of Jews of color, something he may have just found out about for himself – who knows?

But his argument contradicts itself. He attempts to use as evidence – for this recent phenomenon of African American Jews – a statement by Lewis Gordon, of the Center for Afro-Jewish Studies at Temple University in Philadelphia that “there are as many as 1 million Blacks with Jewish blood in the US.” This is hardly evidence for a brand new trend.

I for one wish he had used it as a jumping-off point for a more complex analysis of, say, the way Jewish communities that think of themselves as white treat Jews of color, or the ways in which the whitening of American Jews in both the public perception, and many communities’ identities, has affected the ability and desire of Jews to fight racism in the US.