Minority within a Minority aish.com

A young African-American woman, who happens to be Jewish, tightens her braids while knotting her scarf. She straightens her colorful African print dress and gets ready to light the Sabbath candles.

The serenity of this Friday evening ritual unfortunately dissipates the next day when she enters the synagogue, encountering the stares and whispers of members of the congregation as they speculate, often within earshot, about her Jewishness.

Roughly 435,000 American Jews say they are African-American, Asian, Latino/Hispanic, Native American or of mixed race.

This is the case for many Jews of color who are weary of having to define and explain their family tree to curious fellow Jews. Most Americans still think of a Jew as someone whose skin is white. The reality, however, is that nearly seven percent (roughly 435,000 individuals) of this country's approximately six million Jews say they are African-American, Asian, Latino/Hispanic, Native American or of mixed race, according to a study by the Institute for Jewish and Community Research.

Many date their lineage to biblical times. Some Jews of color come from African or Middle Eastern lands, while others (or their forebears) were adopted into Jewish families. Some have a Jewish mother or grandmother, or come from converted families. Others credit their embrace of Judaism to curiosity about the Hebrew Bible and an appreciation of Jewish theology and traditions.

Yavilah McCoy is a second generation Jew and represents the fourth generation in a family line of what she calls African-American "seekers of truth" through Judaism. Her great-grandmother was the first in her maternal family line to investigate Judaism and take steps toward Jewish practice. Her grandfather, a civil rights spokesman and labor union leader, emphasized the significance of the African-American struggle for freedom, justice and equality that is deeply ingrained in McCoy's philosophy and message.

McCoy's parents were drawn to Judaism and chose to raise their six children in the Orthodox tradition. She was raised in Crown Heights and other Brooklyn neighborhoods.

Her education reflects diversity. She attended a chassidic elementary school, a Modern Orthodox high school, the State University of New York at Albany and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. In her career as an English and Judaic Studies educator, McCoy found opportunities to teach in Reform, Conservative, Modern Orthodox and chassidic day schools.

McCoy, who resides in St Louis with her husband, Dr. Pinchas McCoy, and their four children, is the director of Ayecha Resource Organization, a national not-for-profit network that provides networking, advocacy, and support for Jews Organization in the U.S and offers educational resources to rabbis, educators, students, and outreach professionals aware of the need to increase communal appreciation of Jewish diversity.

What are some of the challenges faced by Jews of color?

I don't view being a Jew of color as a burden, but rather as a gift.

The biggest challenge faced by Jews of color is helping people understand that Jewish identity can be wider than being white and European. Speaking only for myself, being a Jew of color is less about challenges than it is an opportunity to bring a sense of social justice to the Jewish community. I don't view being a Jew of color as a burden, but rather as a gift.

Why do you prefer the term "Jews of color" as opposed to "black Jews?"

It binds me to both my own African heritage and the many Jews from different cultures around the world who, historically, have had brown skin. I refer to the Jews of Iraq, Iran, Tunisia, Yemen, Ethiopia, etc. For me, being a black Jew is not an anomaly in Judaism. Being a Jew of color incorporates more than just the color of my skin.

Why is it important to connect to your African culture?

I wish to acknowledge the African-American experience in this country and pay attention to the lessons that can be learned from America's struggle against racism and oppression. I think the level of political and economic comfort that many Jews feel in our current society has allowed them to forget some of the valuable lessons that that struggle has brought to the Jewish people over time.

What is the general black community's reaction to Jews of color?

I'm not comfortable making generalizations. What I can say is that I have met some African-Americans who embrace Jews of color and their history as part of the African-American experience, and who celebrate the diversity of spirituality that has flourished among people of color in America. Unfortunately, the experience of slavery robbed many African-Americans of the ability to choose their own religious practice since Christianity was forced upon us. Those in the black community who know this celebrate Jews of color.

I've met others, however, who have not been so kind. Upon meeting me, they have taken the opportunity to spill out their Christian rhetoric. They tell me I will burn in hell and I need to be saved from damnation. While this is not the case with most African-Americans I've met, there have been instances -- especially when traveling down south -- when being black and Jewish among my fervently Christian sisters and brothers of color has not been comfortable.

Do you ever get tired of having to explain your Jewishness?

I do get tired, but I manage my energy for the situation by choosing whether or not to answer questions, and when I do, being sure to answer them on my own terms. It took me a long time to figure out that it wasn't my job to prove my Jewishness to the rest of my community.

I didn't mind answering questions from people who genuinely wanted to get to know me and build relationships. But in many cases, I found it extremely isolating to be quizzed by total strangers out of sheer curiosity, as if I were a museum piece for people to gaze at and talk about how fascinating I was, and then walk away and tell their friends. When people want to be friendly and get to know me as a valued part of the Jewish community, it is always my pleasure to engage them in discussion.

Are there Jews of color who have left Judaism due to all the obstacles?

Sadly, many have left Judaism and Jewish practice. This is a shanda [a disgrace]. We don't do enough to bring dark-skinned Jews closer to Judaism.

Are Jews doing enough to include Jews of color in the fold?

I'm not sure the issue is Jews of color being included into the fold as much as the "fold" becoming an environment where all Jews can thrive, serve God, and live with one another in peace.

David Menasse

David Menasse lives in New York where he attends college. He looks like a typical student, hanging out on campus laughing with friends between classes.

But as a Jew of color, he actually lives a very lonely life. Menasse's mother is Jewish but his father is not. He grew up without much religion in his home. He embraced Judaism as a sophomore in college.

One always hears of dating hardships in Jewish circles. Has this been particularly difficult for you?

I'm a Jew and that's all that should matter.

I don't get set up too often and when I do, it's usually with an Ethiopian girl. I don't particularly like this, since I'm American and I would like to marry someone whose family is Americanized. Matchmakers feel that if I'm black and she's black, it's a match. Whenever I hear Ashkenazi singles complain, I get upset because I'm a ba'al teshuvah from a divorced home andI'm biracial. Try selling that to a shadchan!

Why don't you like focusing on your African heritage?

I'm a Jew and that's all that should matter. I don't feel any connection to Africa or other black people. I connect to Jews.

Sometimes, in an attempt to bond, other Jews talk to me about the latest rap song or what's going on with police brutality. That really bothers me because it makes me feel like an outsider. I grew up in Flatbush so I'm just as sheltered from all that as any other Orthodox kid.

Sheree Curry Levy

Sheree Curry Levy is a journalist and ethnologist who chronicles stories of black American Jews and other Jews of color.

Levy is a Jew by choice. She became interested in Judaism while a senior in high school after taking a comparative religion course. Studying to become a Jew as a college freshman, she converted to Judaism during her sophomore year.

Levy, creator of BlackandJewish.com, created in 2000 as a way for black American Jews and their friends to communicate, is member of the Alliance of Black Jews and resides in a Minneapolis suburb with her husband and two sons.

How does the rest of your family feel about your conversion?

I'm lucky because they have embraced it fully. It's never been a problem.

Are holidays especially hard on you?

Not at all. I live in a different state from my family, ensuring some distance between us during the major Christian holiday seasons. My mother is very supportive.

Did you find dating and finding a marriage partner difficult?

Not really. My husband and I met at a Chanukah party. I endured the same issues as other singles.

Do your children face any challenges as Jews of color?

They have a regular childhood. They are still young, five and four. Thus, they are not fazed by any of this.

Professionally, has your religious practice been a problem?

No. When Fortune magazine hired me, I told them that I have to leave early on Fridays and it wasn't an issue. I was the only employee to leave early on Fridays despite there being other Jews in the office.

What about your community's reaction to you?

Currently, we live in a small community that blends very nicely. Living in Israel for several years was most embracing since once Israelis determine you're not a tourist, they assume you're Jewish and focus on when you're making aliyah.

Are you frequently assumed to be Ethiopian?

No. They have distinct features. Actually, I was once asked in Israel if I was Whitney Houston!

What message do you have for the Jewish community?

People need to stop making assumptions about Jews of color. We are not all converts. It should not be assumed that every Jew of color is a Hebrew Israelite.

Additionally I would like to see Jews of color represented more in Jewish publications and illustrations.

As for converts, the Torah teaches us that we are not supposed to remind a convert of his or her status. Unless someone is a kohen, it's just not relevant.

Reprinted with permission from The Jewish Press

This Year we are Free

Last Thursday night Avi married Tamar in Petach Tikvah (an Israeli city whose name means “opening towards hope”). It was a glorious wedding. I have known Avi’s family since he was only two or three years old and they were new immigrants from Ethiopia, nearly 25 years ago. Avi’s grandfather was one of the renowned leaders of his people, elderly and back bent from his troubles, who guided his extended family through the dark of night across deserts and battlefields when they left their village near Ambover in 1984. They didn’t leave because of famine or poverty like millions of other Ethiopians during those years, but because they had been told that from a refugee camp in Sudan they would be gathered to Irusalem, their ancient hope. It is easy now to be cynical about this legendary exodus. The path of Ethiopian-Israelis has not always been easy or kind. But during the summer in college that I lived with Avi’s family and for many years afterward I remember his grandfather sitting every morning with a white leather bound copy of Dawit or Psalms, the same one he had carried on a shoulder strap across the desert, singsonging his praises for the bounty of survival and redemption that had been granted to his loved ones.

I attended a few weddings that summer in the Galille. They were folksy affairs conducted in the big courtyard between low income housing units. All the immigrant women in the neighborhood brought heaping stacks of grey injera bread and there was usually a big pot of boiling stew at the center. Sometimes a neighbor brought a krar or some other Ethiopian stringed instrument and everyone sang their village songs, clapping in unison. There was a lot of anger during those years towards the Chief Rabbinate’s demand that new immigrants undergo “conversion for the sake of stringency” before they could be officially married by an Israeli rabbi, but people still managed to have a good time, and sometimes an immigrant Kes also came to bless the proceedings. Chief Rabbi Shlush of Netanya had ruled (like Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef) that no conversion was necessary, and the religious establishment adopted a pragmatic compromise by allowing him or his representatives to perform weddings anywhere in the country. By midnight neighbors would start complaining about the noise and sometimes tossing things from open windows and it became something of a local joke that any really good wedding would be broken up by the police eventually. The families I knew lived in development towns with no jobs and poor schools and it really was hard to imagine sometimes how they would get ahead.

It had been a good few years since I last saw Avi’s family, and I thought a lot about that first summer as I mingled with five hundred other guests and sampled fancy finger foods at their beautiful, stylish reception. It wasn’t just the relative economic success that held my attention though, but the joyous self-confidence and cultural creativity that the affair bespoke. Some of the old customs had been attenuated, it was true. No more clapping processions from the bride’s house to the groom’s and no long blessings in Amharic. The rabbi in his black coat and hat was a jovial Ethiopian immigrant who had studied at an Israeli yeshiva. And there was the typical Israeli kitsch of sparklers and smoke coming up from beneath the dance floor as the couple made their first appearance after the ceremony. An expensive DJ moved seamlessly between the latest hits from the Addis Ababa club scene and Israeli Mizrahi favorites like “We are Believers, Sons of Believers” and the occasional American love song. The Ethiopian shoulder dancing was raucous, and when I left around midnight there was no sign of the party slowing down—and no neighbors throwing tomatoes either.

For the next three days the family celebrated on a smaller scale at the local community center near their home, with catered Israeli schnitzel for the young people and homemade injera for their elders. Some of my friends have been back to Ethiopia for months at a time to visit, to do business or to seek traditional healing, and others have spent time in New York, Germany and Italy. But Israel is their home and they are entirely at home there in their skins and complicated identities. Avi’s cousin, one of my best friends in the world, is now a fire fighter who helped to battle the blaze in Carmel earlier this year. He speaks an easy Hebrew slang, but his children also grow up hearing plenty of Amharic.

It is characteristic in academic and journalistic circles to focus on problems and insoluble dilemmas, of which there are many. Some Israeli patriots find it hard to understand the continued and powerful attachment of Ethiopian-Israelis to the land of their birth. Some of my far-left colleagues in the US, by contrast, cling to the utterly implausible theory that Ethiopians were convinced to come to Israel out of some kind of Machiavellian plot to settle the West Bank or to become a cheap labor pool for Israel (neither of which has come to fruition). But the truth is both simpler and more complicated. It is more complicated because Ethiopian Jews like others today live in a globalized world of intimate connections across national and cultural boundaries in which it is difficult to pigeonhole anyone. It is more complicated because alongside the promise, Israel has also been a land of tremendous and ongoing challenges for Ethiopians and others who have made it their home. There is discrimination and impatience with difference, and the constant threat of violence or war. Another friend whose highschool class visited the “peace bridge” in Nahariyya lost several classmates to a terror attack during the 1990′s.

Yet there is also a simplicity here that deserves attention. The people who walked across the desert carrying little more than Psalms have found their own distinctive way into the Israeli pottage. They vote, serve in the army and struggle to save a few shekels like everyone else. This year they will sit with family at a Passover seder like everyone else and laugh or argue about whatever it is that big families laugh and argue about. But they will do it in the land that their grandparents only dreamed of.

The traditional Passover Haggadah begins with a passage written in Aramaic that was almost certainly composed after the destruction of Jerusalem by Rome and the exile of the Jewish people. “Let all who are hungry come and eat… This year we are here, next year in the Land of Israel. This year we are slaves, next year we will be free.” The Jewish people and the State of Israel confront massive and difficult challenges in the months and years ahead. But do we give ourselves the opportunity to celebrate what has already been accomplished, beyond anyone’s reasonable expectation? The simple opening of the Haggaddah has resonated with generations and still does. But as I sat last week at Avi’s wedding with those words echoing through my head I couldn’t help thinking: “This year. This year we are here. This year we are free.”

: Israeli Ethiopian students lag far behind other Jewish counterparts - Haaretz

By Or Kashti

In addition to lagging behind scholastically, children of Ethiopian origin say they have had to endure racist remarks almost three times more frequently than such remarks were reported by the general population of children surveyed.

Significant gaps exist in achievement between students of Ethiopian origin and those of all students in the Jewish sector in standardized tests, a recent Education Ministry report revealed.The largest and possibly most significant gap is in eighth-grade math, where students in the Jewish sector overall scored an average of 50 points out of 100 and Ethiopian-Israeli students scored 26. In other subjects, including English, Hebrew and the sciences, the gap was between 18 and 25 points.

"The education system has still not found the way to improve the scholastic achievements of this community," says Roni Akale of FIDEL, the Association for Education and Social Integration of Ethiopian Jews in Israel.

The recently completed report is based on the achievements of students who were born in Ethiopia or whose parents were born in Ethiopia, on the standardized tests administered nationally between 2007 and 2010 by the Education Ministry to children from the fifth to eighth grades. The report also states that gaps between children of Ethiopian origin and others have been noted as early as the second grade in terms of proficiency in Hebrew.

The report also notes that children of Ethiopian origin said they have had to endure racist remarks almost three times more frequently than such remarks were reported by the general population of children surveyed.

Last year, the Education Ministry said there were 35,884 children of Ethiopian origin in the school system, of whom 21,717 were born in Israel. Of the total, 53 percent were studying in state religious schools, as opposed to a national average of 17 percent of all children.

In last year's English test, eighth graders in the Jewish school system in general scored an average of 76 points in English, as opposed to 59 among children of Ethiopian origin. In Hebrew, the scores were 72 for all students opposed to 59 for Ethiopian-Israelis.

Most of children of Ethiopian origin come from poor families, and the report attempted to check the extent to which socioeconomic background explained the relatively lower achievements of the Ethiopian-Israeli children. In comparing the results of the latter children with poor children of other backgrounds, the gaps narrow slightly, but were still significant. The report concluded: "Gaps in achievement are not only the result of socioeconomic background, and there are additional factors connected to these gaps, for example, in language and culture."

In scrutinizing the school environment, the report noted that 38 percent of Ethiopian-Israeli children reported being teased about their racial origin, as opposed to 14 percent of all children.

David Maharat, director of the Steering Center for Ethiopian Immigrants in the Education System, said, "Ostensibly investment in the [Ethiopian] community by various official bodies is great. Perhaps it would be better to give the money directly to the members of the community, who would know best what to do with it to change the situation."

The Education Ministry said in response that last year a five-year program began operating in schools "to focus on advancing scholastic achievements among students of Ethiopian origin." NIS 20 million was given to the program this year, and the identical amount will be given next year. Another program to help advance the scholastic achievements of Ethiopian-Israeli students and their families has been funded at NIS 200 million, the ministry said.

Ethiopia The Home of The Ark

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Ethiopia Has The True Ark