Who’s a Jew? I’m a Jew.

I wrote this nearly a decade ago, and thought I’d share it with you. I welcome your stories as well. -src

Who’s a Jew?
By Sheree R. Curry, Copyright 1998

I went to an invitation-only Jewish event the other day that was being held at the reception hall section of a club downtown. A security guard stopped me at the door to tell me that a private party was going on inside and that I must want the club’s main entrance around the corner. I didn’t think twice about his comment, spun my heels and went to the other door in search of my event. At this main door another guard tells me that there is a cover charge to enter. “I pre-paid. My name should be on the Hadassah guest list,” I announced. “Oh,” he said, “You want the Jewish party. You have to enter it from the street side.” He proceeded to direct me back to the first entrance I approached. As I walked back down the street shaking my head at the confusion, it dawned on me that the “private party” the first guard mentioned is my party. He must have assumed I had the wrong event since I am an African American trying to enter a Jewish affair. I sauntered back up to guard number one and said calmly that the party going on inside is where I am suppose to be. He was skeptical and asked me several questions such as “Whose sponsoring the party? How much did you pay?” When semi-convinced he allowed me inside. However, his eyes followed me as I checked in at the receiving desk and a hostess scratched my name off the master guest list. Once inside, on two different occasions, other guards — both of whom were African American — stopped me to let me know that I had wandered into a private party. I just played it cool and let them know they were the ones who had made the mistake.  

This downtown incident was not the first time someone questioned my right to be among my own people, or assumed I’m not Jewish. I do try not to let it bother me too much, because after all I did choose this religion and as a black Jew, I stand out. Yet still, I have my days when I feel offended. I grieve for the several black or biracial Jews who were born Jewish whom I know. I cry internally because one day my own children will have such encounters and I’m the one who would’ve put them in that situation. It must be so much tougher for blacks who are born into Judaism only to have others deny them a birthright.

During my six years as a member of Hillel, the Jewish student center on campus — over a decade ago, I must have seen at least five or six non-white Jews pass through the building only to have their right to be there questioned. I have witnessed about half of them have their Jewish identity questioned.

One African American woman passed through Hillel one year. Many people started to whisper “Who is she?” “Is she Jewish?” Others turned to me assuming she was a friend looking for me, or that since she is black, I would know her. I admit that I, too, was curious about her religious background, just as curious as I was of two young black English-speaking overseas students I saw wandering around Ben-Gurion University in Israel when I worked there. Curiosity is a part of being human, but I did not ask these students about their religious affiliation just as I didn’t with the young woman at Hillel and no more than I would expect a stranger to ask any of us.

When I was introduced to the young woman at Hillel, it took less than a minute to realize that Taija is Jewish. She was wearing many Jewish pendants and symbols on silver chains around her neck. She said that her mother wanted her to find a synagogue as soon as she arrived on campus so she wouldn’t get out of the habit of attending Jewish functions. There. My curiosity was satisfied. I never had to ask a thing. The curiosity of the other Hillelniks, however, was not as easily pacified. People wanted to know if her mother had converted, if her father was a white Jew, and so on. (Actually, I later learned that her great-grandmother had been Jewish even.)

I couldn’t help but feel sorry for Taija. I’ve answered questions like those being tossed her way so often in my tenure as a Jew that it is impossible to count the number. These are not questions that any Jew need to answer, especially to people whom one has never seen before and may never see again.

My most disgruntling “Who’s a Jew” encounter occurred at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. The incident probably hit me hard because the four months prior to that point most people I met in Israel assumed I was Jewish, no questions asked.
I had gone that day to the Wall with a friend of mine, a Hillel assistant director who coincidentally knew Taija. I journeyed two hours to Jerusalem from my temporary home in Beer Sheva to visit my friend on her last day in the country. We decided to go see the Western Wall since she hadn’t been there yet. It would be my second visit.

Thousands of people must visit the Wall everyday. Jew, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, or whatever religious preference one has, no one is deterred from visiting the Wall. On this particular day there is a group from Germany, a gathering of North American college students, an Israeli class of young Ethiopian, Ashkenazi and Sephardi children, the secular and the religious. If someone had a message to give the world, this might not be a bad place to deliver it.

I am a few steps behind my friend who is approaching the Wall for a better look. “You better take my picture,” she says as she stops to hand me her camera, “or no one may believe I was even here.” I look through the viewfinder and then take a few steps forward, then backwards until I have the area framed just the way I want it. Now, I’ll just wait for her to get closer to the Wall and I’m sure I’ll have the perfect picture.

Just as I’m wondering if it’s sacrilegious to be taking photos while some people are genuinely praying at this Wailing Wall, I hear a voice to the right of me. Someone is asking, “Are you Jewish?” I turn to see some middle-aged women handing out fliers from behind a little wooden cart. One of them was speaking to a tourist who is now walking away. I’m curious why is it important for them to know someone’s Jewish background just to hand out a piece of paper. I am more curious as to how they would react to me if I approached them.

I step up to their little “paper stand” and ask what is the literature they are handing out. One woman pulls out a piece of paper from a shelf on the cart and hands it to me. In bold letters on top, it reads: “For the Non-Jew.” Inside I laugh. I tell the woman, “Excuse me, but I’m Jewish.” She apologizes and puts the literature back into its place on the shelf and doesn’t motion toward the other version, the one “for the Jew.”

The second of the three women behind the little stand blatantly asks me, “Did you convert Orthodoxly?” Inside I’m still laughing, but at the same time I’m disappointed. I’m disappointed in all the Jews who immediately assume that a Jew of color is a convert. I tell this cart woman that this is not a proper question to ask someone. She rethinks her question and then asks, “Is your mother Jewish?” Her new question doesn’t satisfy me. It’s a leading question, just as the first.
These women at the cart aren’t the first to make such assumptions, and they will not be the last. I remember a time in college when at a Jewish function I was introduced to a woman nearing 70 years old. Her first question was, “When did you convert?” Her assumption, just like the one made by the woman at the Wall, insulted me. I wanted to retort to the old woman that I was not a convert, but I didn’t. In those years, I wasn’t sure what the proper response was, perhaps I’m still not sure. Such questions are an invasion of my privacy.

If someone were to ask me, “Are you Jewish?” I answer. For people to wonder whether or not I am Jewish, that doesn’t bother me, it seems more understandable. As a Jew of color, I know I’m not your typical Jew. However, for people to assume that I am a convert, or that my mother is, simply because I do not fit their stereotype of a Jew, that is what bothers me.

“Excuse me,” I tell the woman at the Wall, “but that is also not a question you should be asking me. If I say I am Jewish you should just take my word for it. Now, may I have the literature for the Jew, please?”

The third woman, who has been quiet up until this point, says, “You may have this one.” Once again the literature “For the Non-Jew” is pushed my direction. I tell her no thank you and mumble under my breath as I walk away, “Why if I’m a Jew should I want the hand-out for the non-Jew?” Actually though, I am quite curious what the literature “For the Non-Jew” had to say.

I walk back near my friend who is taking her time approaching the Wall. I start taking several photos of her as she touches the Wall and as she admires an awfully large birds’ nest that was built on the Wall. I’m wondering if those birds realize what an important structure they’ve built their nest on. I wonder how many people have questioned their right to be there. I wonder what my friend will think of the women behind the wooden cart. She prides herself in intercommunity work and bridging gaps, religious or cultural. She also had been disappointed with the unwelcome treatment Taija received from the Hillel community.

When my friend rejoins me, I tell her about the women at the cart. I also tell her that I have to approach them once more. However, I’m not sure why I want to approach them again. Do I think I can educate them? Maybe. But perhaps it’s just that I am curious about what they will do now.

With my friend by my side, I walk up to the women and their little “paper stand” again. “I’ll try one more time,” I say to them. “May I have the appropriate literature, please?” The second woman turns to the third and says something in Hebrew along the lines of “Should I give it to her?” They decide “yes” and the first woman hands me the literature “For the Jew,” which is not even marked as such.

The second woman apologizes to me for the earlier encounter and says it’s just that they have to be “careful.” I’m thinking, “Careful of what?” when she adds, “You know how I knew you were really a Jew?” I want to say, “Because I said I was?” But she gives me no time to answer. “Because you got angry,” she says. “What a bunch of poppy-cock,” I tell myself. “Does she think born-Jews are the only ones who would get angry at such prying?”

I tell the second woman that I know my Jewish law. I tell her that it is “inappropriate” to ask someone about his or her Jewish background. That it is just not supposed to be done. The woman asks me where is that written. I tell her it is written in many Judaic texts. At the time, I couldn’t say exactly where it was written, but as someone who constantly has to “prove” my Jewishness, I have been aware of the saying for many years now. My friend comes to my aid by chiming in: “You are not supposed to remind converts about their conversion and by asking people about their Jewish background, you don’t know who you may be reminding.” The woman says she has never heard of such a thing. I tell her that it is true and she should simply ask her rabbi. “Oh, but we have spoken to the rabbi,” she says. “We have his approval to be here and to ask these questions. Everything is approved.”

I hope the woman will re-ask her rabbi and that he will quote to her from the Sifrah, which explains that you must not wrong a proselyte through speech. Do not say to the proselyte, “Yesterday you have worshipped idols, and now you have come under the wings of the Shechinah (Devine Presence).” Simply stated: “You do not remind a convert of his past.”

My friend tells the woman that whether she has heard of this law or not, it is rude and simply embarrassing to people to ask them such questions. But the woman doesn’t care. She says so. It’s her job, her duty to ask. Perhaps the woman also hasn’t heard the quote from the Gemara of Baba Mezia. “One ought therefore to beware of publicly shaming anyone, whether he be young or old, one should not call a person by a name which he feels ashamed, nor relate anything in his presence which humiliates him.”

“You’d be surprised at how many people think they are Jewish when they really aren’t,” says the woman. “There are people who later in life learn that they aren’t Jewish because their mother isn’t Jewish because she was converted by a Reform rabbi.” Oh, my heart is bleeding. What a task it must be to decide who is and who isn’t a Jew.

I ask her, “If my friend had come up to you wanting the literature and said she was Jewish, would you have asked her if she converted or if her mother was Jewish?”

“No,” says the woman, adding that she can usually tell who is Jewish, she “can read it in their souls.” What a gift. Not every Jew possesses such a gift. I stop laughing inside and just feel pity now. My friend is actually also a convert. How amazing it is that the cart lady could read the Jewishness in my friend’s converted soul, but not in my own.

I wonder what the cart woman would have read in the soul of one white woman convert who went to the mikveh, a sort of Jewish baptismal pool, the same day I did that early week in February 1988 that my conversion became final. There’s a greater probability Sandra (not her real name) would’ve “passed” for a born Jew just by the nature of her skin tone. I find this a little disconcerting, if only because I never felt Sandra took her conversion process as spiritually or religiously as I did.

On our morning drive with the rabbi to the Indianapolis synagogue that housed the mikveh, Sandra turns in her seat and says that her conversion “is part of the deal I have with my fiancé. I convert to Judaism for him and he learns Spanish for me because of my Hispanic ancestry.” I’m bewildered. She just equated 2,000 years of Jewish tradition and devotion to God to a Spanish 101 course. I didn’t find it fair that I’d have to dunk myself three times in a body of water from which this woman would’ve just emerged. I wanted the rabbi to stop the car, turn to Sandra and say, “I’m sorry, Sandra, but you’re not worthy of our religion.” I glanced at him through his rearview mirror, hoping to catch at least a glimpse of disappointment in his face, but it was stoic. This is the same man who had come to me one day after months of studying together and said, “Sheree, you’re ready to take the final steps of becoming a Jew. I know in your heart and soul you are already a Jew because when you refer to the Jewish people you say ëwe’.” How did he identify Sandra as being ready? Was it because her wedding date was only a few weeks away? Regardless of Sandra’s sincerity, as a white convert, she will be less of a target for people like the women at the cart than I will.

There was a time once when I and another Jewish friend of mine went to eat at a kosher dairy restaurant in the Midwest. I had just moved to the area and was still sizing-up the few kosher restaurants in town. I had heard that this particular restaurant was quite good, and as someone who keeps kosher but had not lived in an area with kosher restaurants for many years, I was very excited about trying the food.

As we entered the restaurant, before we were even shown to our seats, the owner asked us why did we come to eat at a kosher restaurant. “Are you vegetarians?” I guess he assumed only two categories of people would eat at a kosher restaurant that serves no meat: vegetarians and Jews.

“No. We’re not vegetarians. The place was recommended by a friend.” That’s what I answered, but what I wanted to say was, “No. I’m a Jew who keeps kosher.”

And while I was wondering if the owner asked all his customers this, or just the ones who don’t fit his preconceived idea of a Jew, my friend whispered to me, “What a schmuck. This kind of thing always happens to me.” To her? I hadn’t considered the effect on her. She’s a white Jew with blond hair and blue eyes. Many people, she said, never seem to think she is Jewish because of them. I wonder what if the woman from the Wall had been at the restaurant. Would she have been able to read this friend’s Jewishness in her soul. The restaurateur surely didn’t possess such a gift.

The woman behind the wooden cart is still talking. “It’s nothing racist though,” she says in explanation of how she is able to read a Jew’s soul. It may have nothing to do with racism. It has everything to do with discrimination. I learned that at the kosher restaurant. Racism is not the point I want to make to the women, or the point I’ve been wanting to make to the countless number of people who have asked me, or worst yet, assumed I was a convert because of the color of my skin. The point is, even if one thinks another is a convert (or anyone else who doesn’t fit a prescribed idea of who is a Jew), one still shouldn’t ask. It’s not anyone’s duty to divide the Jews between those born Jewish and those who converted.

There’s another thing that makes me both laugh and cry. On this piece of literature “For the Jew,” which basically includes a brief history of the Western Wall, it is written: “The Lubavicher Rebbe has called for an increase in brotherly love, charity and a greater observation of the Mitzvot.” Perhaps one day the women with their little “paper stand” set up by the Wall, as well as others, will understand that it is a mitzvah, a good deed, not to ask someone about their Jewish background.

When I chose to enter this religion with a history of oppressed and persecuted people, I assumed I might face added discrimination from non-Jews, but I did not think about the prejudice I would face from other Jews as this black in a predominantly white religion. I did not fathom the depression and loneliness I would feel being among my newly-acquired family. I did not know I would have days when on the inside I would cry, while trying to maintain a Herculean front. Had I realized all of this, it wouldn’t have affected my decision to become a Jew, but perhaps I could have prepared somehow. For inspiration in 1991, I called author Julius Lester who chronicled his experience as a black Jewish convert in the book Lovesong: Becoming a Jew. He told me: “I don’t look to be accepted. I go into a synagogue with the attitude that I have as much right to be there as they [the whites] do.” That’s the same strength I try to maintain.
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