“How can you be Black and Jewish?”
I know it’s a question that’s on people’s minds a lot, and I know that the polite, educated answer is something along the lines of, “Jews are a multiethnic, multicultural, multiracial people. We come in all colors, speak all kinds of languages, live all over the world. So, of course there are Black Jews.”
That’s what I say when I wanna get my point across without scaring white people.
But sometimes, what I really wanna say is, “Do you have any idea how Black Jewish people are? Do you have any idea how Jewish Black people are? Far more confusing to me than my Black ass showing up in a synagogue is how anybody can know anything about Black and Jewish history, languages and cultures and come away thinking that Jews have more in common with white folks than they do with Black folks.”
(This ain’t the post for some hotep nonsense about the original Jews being Black and all the “white” Jews we see in the media being recent converts and fakes. Start your own post if you wanna be on that.)
I can hear you thinking it now, “Eshu, I love you, but what the fuck are you talking about?”
I’m talking about that feeling of familiarity when I experience the call-and-response element of Jewish prayer. How we don’t just say the words, but make music with them and dance to them. Shit, all that’s missing for it to be a service at a Black church is a couple of women shouting, “Hallelujah!” and fainting in the aisle. I can’t even say that because I’m sure that happens on a weekly basis in some ultra-Orthodox services, and the ones doing it are men.
I’m talking about how Hebrew, our sacred tongue, is an Afro-Asiatic language and how the Levant is smack dab between Africa and Asia. How the Tanakh mentions Egypt, Nubia and Ethiopia how many times. I’m talking about how we put our own spin on the languages of the places we’ve been forced to live in and created rich, colorful dialects and languages of our own like AAVE, Ladino, Judeo-Arabic and Yiddish.
I’m talking about how the oral tradition manifests in Jewish and African cultures, both in our homeland and in the diaspora. I’m talking about the way we tell stories not as a dry recollections of events, but as a form of self-expression that is equal parts history, theater, stand-up comedy and philosophy. I’m talking about the way we argue, the back-and-forth where we get so into it we slamming our hands on the table and stomping our feet and taking off our shirts, but we still love each other at the end of the day. I’m talking about turning a good insult into an art form. I’m talking about how much we value communication and dialogue. How giving somebody the silent treatment can be worse than cussing them out.
I’m talking about how there’s always food whenever we get together, and I don’t mean water and crackers. If we ain’t fasting, we gonna eat. I’m talking about, “Who made the kugel?” being the Ashkenazi equivalent of, “Who made the ‘tato salad?”
I’m talking about how we relate to our families not as people we live with who have the same last name as us, but as critical components our identity. How Mama or Ima is another name for God, the creative and sustaining force who inspires love, awe and terror. How family don’t just mean mom, dad and kids but grandparents, great-grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and neighbors. How we got that grandma or that aunt who stay all up in our business even though we grown but we won’t tell ‘em off because that’s just disrespectful. I’m talking about how we can say Pookie ain’t shit and Shlomo know better than to act like that, but people outside our family better not open their mouth.
I’m talking about how centuries of oppression has developed a keen sense of humor about ourselves and the dominant cultures we’re forced to live in. I’m talking about how centuries of being blamed and persecuted for shit that people made up about us has inured us to the slings and arrows of misfortune.
“How can you be Jewish and Black?”
Shiiiiiit, how can you not be?
