Alana Reina

Can American Jews Celebrate Christmas?

Can American Jews Celebrate Christmas?

In case you haven’t noticed on my Instagram, I halve been going Christmas CRAZY! I have been decorating, DIY-ing, baking, eating, drinking, watching and listening to anything and EVERYTHING Christmas or holiday themed! I normally get really obsessive over things I like, but I have never been obsessed over Christmas like this. I noticed this year that EVERYONE seems to be more obsessed than usual – people were posting about Christmas before Halloween! – so I at least feel like I am in good company. However, it definitely begs the question: am I *allowed* to be this obsessed with Christmas, as a proud Jew? It is a question I have been thinking and talking about a lot the last few weeks, and while I don’t think there is any singular or correct answer, I thought I would share some of my musings and personal experience here! First of all, I…

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Being a Sephardic Jew in a World That’s Black and White

Being a Sephardic Jew in a World That’s Black and White

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…

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Racially Ambiguous: A Memoir

Racially Ambiguous: A Memoir

“What are you?” The question seems innocuous enough, but hear it enough times and it starts to creep under your skin. What AM I? The older I get, the less sure I feel about my identity, and the more desperate I feel to know my identity so I can own it and assert it with pride. I know I am not the only one – the rise of mail-in gene testing services proves that there is demand for identity clarification! Growing up, it was simple enough. For most people, identity development doesn’t begin until early adolescence, and despite feeling like an outsider in most social situations for most of my life, the question of my identity didn’t begin until I moved away to college at the age of 18. For the first time, I was living away from the net of built-in identity markers that I took for granted while…

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