If you follow me on Instagram, you know I have been posting nonstop about Judaism and antisemitism the last few weeks. Luckily, the reception has been overwhelmingly positive (on Instagram at least – Twitter is a different story…) but I felt as though I needed to expand a bit more on those posts in a full blog post here.
To start off, I already have an entire blog post about my (ongoing) identity crisis, which you can read here for some background. I feel as though my identity crisis will not be resolved anytime soon, but ironically this resurgence of antisemitism is helping me crystallize my identity somewhat. More on that later! For now I will speak a little bit on my own experience of being a Sephardic Jew.
Growing up, I never felt “othered” for being Jewish. I was born and raised in a very middle class and lowkey suburban neighborhood in Northwest Washington, DC, where I went to a very diverse public school with liberal families up until the end of 2nd grade. During this time, I also practiced Judaism at home with both sides of my family, who are all Jewish.
In 3rd grade, my brother and cousins and I all transferred to a Jewish private school in Rockville, which I attended up through the end of 8th grade. Although we didn’t move to Rockville until right before my Bat Mitzvah in 7th grade, my life essentially moved to Rockville in 3rd grade.
Obviously my whole life was all Jewish errthang at this point! At school, I spent half the day studying and learning in Hebrew (language, religion, history, etc) and the other half learning secular subjects (English, math, science, etc). My family was going to the newly built Sephardic synagogue in Rockville at that point, where all the Moroccan Jews in Rockville congregated for weekly services and holidays.
Until the end of middle school, my ENTIRE life was suffused with Judaism, and it felt as though we were the majority, despite learning in school that we in fact were not. However, most of the Jews I went to school with were Ashkenazi (Russian/Eastern European descent, aka “White”, which my mom’s side is), whereas my dad’s family and everyone I grew up with are Sephardic (Spanish/North African descent, which doesn’t have an aka cuz there is no equivalent race in our country’s racial categories), so I was still a minority in that sense, and always saw myself as “mixed” between Sephardic and Ashkenazi.
When I switched to public school in Potomac for high school, I was really over the whole religion thing and the sheltered culture of the Jewish private school, and just ready to make friends with non-Jews and not have my life center so much around Judaism. I guess you could call it a typical teenager rebellion phase!
Secularizing my life was fairly easy to do, although there were still enough Jews at my school that I never felt too out of place and never experienced any hatred or discrimination for being Jewish. That being said, my high school was predominantly WASPy and very rich/privileged, so I definitely did not feel like I fit in and ended up hating it so much I graduated early!
In college, I found a great group of friends that I had an amazing college experience with. Most of them were White, but there was a BIT of diversity, and even the White friends I had in college were much nicer and more down to earth than the ones I went to high school with.
I had a few Israeli friends (who were Jewish, obviously), and I really enjoyed the connection I made with them. I also was fortunate enough to go to Israel for the first time on my “Birthright Trip”, which was a very fun and meaningful experience for me.
If you have never heard of Birthright, it is basically a ten day trip to Israel that is free for any Jewish young adult, sponsored by philanthropists and the state of Israel. The point of the trip is to connect us to our culture, history and religion, and many do end up “making aliyah” aka moving there later on.
After college I lived in LA and San Diego for four years, where I think I only had two Jewish friends the whole time – one of which was Ashkenazi and the other was Moroccan (and ironically went to the same synagogue as me growing up and we never met until one fateful day in San Diego when we were both hula hooping on the beach!!)
Toward the end of my time in San Diego, I was finishing my Master of Social Work program, working at the ACLU and getting really involved with political and social issues. It was also 2016, so there were a lot to get involved in! Because of the rampant police brutality that year, I became very passionate about Black Lives Matter and was fiercely committed to aligning myself with and advocating for that cause. A lot of my life became a matter of White versus Black, with me identifying even less with the White “identity” or culture I had spent so many years surrounded by.
By the time I moved back to DC three years ago, Judaism was such a small part of my daily life and outward facing identity that I didn’t really know what to do with it. Judaism for many Americans (including myself), is more of a cultural thing than a religious thing. I consider myself a very spiritual person and also consider myself Jewish, but the faith and spirituality I have found do not stem from my religion or religious beliefs.
I still did (and do) consider myself Jewish and claim that with pride, but I have recently felt like it is a separate part of my identity than what I portray to the world. As in, at home with family, I am Jewish and Moroccan, but to the world, I am this mixed looking girl that doesn’t really fit into any race box. “Is she White? Is she Black? What is she??”
Despite clearly looking not White, many people label me as such due to the complexity of my racial ambiguity, and the fact that many people see anything that’s not Black as automatically White. (And don’t even get me started on how everyone who is MENA is lumped into White on the Census still – see this blog post for more about that).
Because of the importance and energy I put into being an ally to Black people and BLM, I did not really think my Judaism was relevant, nor did I think antisemitism was a big enough deal to bring up in that context. In fact, I would be the first to dismiss it as “not a big deal anymore” and DEFINITELY not as big of a problem as racism against Black people. I also vehemently called out racism among my Jewish family members, having a zero tolerance policy for any of that shit!
It literally was not until a few WEEKS ago that it dawned on me how big of a problem antisemitism still is in this country. It took Deshaun Jackson and Nick Cannon making very public hateful statements about Jews – rooted in very ignorant beliefs espoused by the famous antisemite Louis Farrakhan – more on him in a later blog post – for me to realize how prevalent antisemitism still is.
The fact that it was being publicly voiced and NOT vehemently denounced was bad enough, but coming from the Black community – who I had already poured my heart and soul into advocating for – was such a slap in the face to me and something I took very personally.
I had to delete my Twitter, because it was such an echo chamber of uneducated ignorant claims about Jews being “fake Jews who stole Judaism from Black people who are the real Israelites”. This is a concept I need to do more research into, but it was very clear that the people in these Twitter threads knew less than me, and were just regurgitating things they had heard because it sounded good to them!
After taking a much needed social media break for a few days, I got back on Instagram and actively sought out accounts that were pro-Jewish and posting helpful educational material that I could learn from and post for my followers to learn from as well (see my Instagram story highlight labeled “Judaism” if you missed any of those posts).
Not only have those newfound connections given me the strength and encouragement I needed to continue speaking up for my Jewish people, but it paved a way for me to find others with experiences similar to mine: Jewish people of color (even Black Jews) who do not fit into the “default” Jewish box, let alone the non-Jewish box.
I will continue searching for clarity about my identity and ways to not only present it to the world but also understand myself better, but for now I am Moroccan, Jewish and proud of it! 💕
