Noam: Hey everyone, welcome to Wondering Jews with Mijal and Noam.
Mijal: I’m Mijal.
Noam: And I’m Noam and this podcast is our way of trying to unpack the biggest questions being asked by the Jewish people and about the Jewish people. We don’t have it all figured out. You know that, but we try to figure some things out together. And it’s fun. It’s fun to do this. Whether or not we figure it out, but it’s about the process of learning, of speaking, of listening, of engaging. And we do that. We try to do that on every single episode.
Mijal: As we say every week, our absolute favorite part of this show is really wandering with you. So please continue to share your questions, suggestions, feedback, whatever’s on your mind by emailing us at our new and improved email address, wonderingjews@unpacked.media. That’s wonderingjews@unpacked.media.
Shout out to Charlie L. who got in touch with us to share how much he enjoyed last week’s episode with our special guest, Sarah Horwitz. We missed you, Noam. As well as to share that he was really compelled by an interesting idea that Sarah shared, that Judaism has been colonized, which I think we should continue to think about. So thank you so much, Charlie, for reaching out. And everyone, just keep listening and let us know what you think.
Noam: And I gotta give a shout out to Derrone, my friend Derrone, who said to me, was the biggest compliment ever, he said to me, Noam, you know what? Wondering Jews is amazing, and the very best episode that’s ever been done is the one when Mijal was with Sarah. And I was like, Derrone, you’re so sweet, but the truth is Sarah is the absolute best, and that conversation was riveting. I loved it. So, Mijal and Sarah, so cool. Really, really cool.
We’re going to get into a very interesting topic in a minute, but before we do that, it’s about to be Passover, and the two of us have just great Haggadot. so, Mijal, just say the Haggadah that you have that you think is so important.
Mijal: So there is a new Haggadah that just came out by the Hostage Family Forum. It’s an Haggadah of freedom and it has the traditional commentary in Hebrew, Aramaic and in English translation. And then it has a lot of passages by hostages that have returned and also by families of current hostages in Gaza. So we’ll put the link in the show notes, but I think it’s like a very important way to, you know, we’re going to be talking about captivity and bondage. So to keep front of mind the fact that we still have part of our Jewish people held captive in Gaza and that we’re praying for them.
Noam: Such an important piece of work and I’m really excited to get my hands on that one. And then I have a Haggadah that I have that’s written by Judah Mischel. It’s called Badarach, really just incredible, insightful, thoughtful, inspirational. There’s so many powerful stories that the Jewish people have throughout our history, throughout our tradition. And what Rav Judah does, as he’s called by his dear friends, what he does is he shares that we’re all badarech, we’re all on our journeys in a very personal, individual sort of way. And we all connect to different stories and different parts of our story. So I love, love, love, love this Haggadah, Badarech. Such an awesome and inspirational read. I’ve found myself getting up early in the morning even to just read the stories and to get myself ready for Pesach.
Okay, so Mijal. Mijal, you wrote a really powerful piece in the Sapir Journal. The Sapir Journal is a journal that’s put out by the Maimonides Fund. The editor-in-chief of it is Brett Stevens, and the director of the Institute is my brother. and you’re a scholar in residence at the Maimonides Fund.
And you wrote a really, really just compelling and…I don’t know if I’d call it brave, but we can get into that because I want to know what the feedback has been, but important article called Why I Am Not a Jew of Color.
And so I want to talk to you about this topic and I want to qualify it a little bit because today we’re going to be wondering about this concept of Jews of color.
And in my life, I divided in it up into two different categories. Category number one is that like when I read this article, I was thinking, you know, 95% of the people that I work with, that I have a professional relationship with, the schools that I talk to, the students, I think this would be like insanely compelling and they’d be so interested in it. And then I would also argue that 95% of my immediate friend group might be like, I don’t really know what you’re talking about. seems like a really intellectual topic. Jews of color, not Jews of color. What does this even mean? What is this language? Is this just an intellectual topic or is this something that’s very relevant to really everyone?
Mijal: Well, first of all, Noam, I’m impressed. You read the whole thing. thanks for it. Thanks for doing that. was long. Twice? my gosh. Why twice? Poor you. It’s like I barely wrote it once, you know, it’s like…
Noam: I did. I read it twice. I read it twice. Yes. Well, I read it twice because… No, no, no, no. There’s like poetry in your language at times. And the first time I read it, I read it as just a consumer of Sapir. The second time I read it, I read it to prep for the show.
Mijal: Thank you.
Mijal: Okay, okay, fine. All right. Yeah, so I think that you’re right that this was an article that is talking to a conversation that’s been really alive in what we might call the Jewish establishment. That’s been really alive in academia, in the Jewish nonprofit world, in areas like that. And that there’s a lot of concepts here or maybe a lot of debates that wouldn’t have been present in the more popular discourse.
At the same time, I do think this topic has big broad implications for all Jews and just people who think about America in general. I’ve gotten actually like a, a lot of feedback. I’m trying to, I try to respond to everybody that reaches out to me. It’s, taking a while.
Noam: So what’s the most provocative or controversial thing you’ve gotten in response?
Mijal: The responses that I got, and the people who are listening don’t even know what I said yet, but the responses that I got overwhelmingly were very positive and thanking me for writing this. And then some people did ask, I think there wasn’t so much disagreement. It was more like questions, like, well, but then what about this? Or what about that? Or like, how then should we help Jews who are dealing with racism? Or is the implication to what you’re saying that we should be OK with calling Jews in America, white, there were a lot of big questions that people had to follow up on this.
Noam: Okay, so what was your thesis? What was the thesis of this piece?
Mijal: Okay, so the thesis, okay, and I’m gonna try, sometimes when you write something so long, and this is like the edited shorter version of what I originally wrote, which was probably closer to 8,000 words, but thank God for, you know, Phil and other editors at Sapir.
Noam: Shout out to Phil Getz. That guy knows how to edit a piece.
Mijal: Phil is the best, yeah. Thank you Phil for saving me for myself. So my thesis was like this. I took on this label of “Jews of color” and I argued on a personal level, I argued that it shouldn’t be used to identify someone like me.
Noam: Even though you are from Argentina, originally from Syria, your skin complexion is not white.
Mijal: Yes, even though A, I am not white, but B, even though there was an effort by researchers and scholars to define “Jews of color” to include people like me. So that was like one argument. And the second argument, was that I was opposed to this term as applied to me, not just because I don’t think it should for different reasons, but also I identified its usage in the Jewish establishment as often having a vision around Jews and race that I disagree with because I think it flattens the complexity of Jewish history and the American Jewish experience.
Let me try to break that down for you, Noam. A different way of saying that is that I argued that the way the category of Jews of color was created and the way it was applied was basically, I’m going to say it’s like a little bit sharper than the way I wrote it with more nuance, was basically accusing white Jews and the white Jewish establishment of a certain amount of bias and racism in terms of how they think about Jews. And I argued like, can I read to you the exact quote?
Noam: Yeah, read it. Yeah.
Mijal: Okay.
As a non-white Jew, I don’t identify as a Jew of color, because the term often feels more focused on white Jews than on people like me. Specifically, for many, the political project linked to the term Jews of color insists on coloring white Jews with the white guilt of American racial discourse.
That was like a lot to unpack right there.
Noam: Yeah, yes. Why do you love that paragraph?
Mijal: I think it’s a good thesis statement and it already has disclaimers that I carefully put there.
Noam: Well, I would add one other part of what I think is your thesis, which is that it’s just actually your last paragraph, which I’ll read out loud, which you said:
I once spoke with my father, a Sephardic rabbi, about a clear instance of discrimination he faced in an Ashkenazi network. Jokingly, I said, let’s write an op-ed about Ashkenormativity and racism for a liberal news outlet. It’ll go viral and fix this immediately. My father, whose brown skin reflects his Argentinian and Syrian roots turned pale. You want me to betray my Jewish brothers and sisters in public?
I actually think that’s a big part of your thesis also though.
Mijal: Yeah, yeah, I, I agree. But let me maybe unpack that a little bit. Part of what I saw in that episode, and I really remember this moment. And the reason that this stayed with me is that even though my suggestion was half joking, I realized how much I wanted to, I was basically suggesting to him, let’s take this dynamics that you’re experiencing and let’s use this moment in America and the way that America is thinking about race with a lot of the implications there. And let’s superimpose that because it’s gonna help you go viral and get certain things. And my father was like, why would I do that? Which doesn’t mean by the way that you shouldn’t fight discrimination or you shouldn’t call it out. But it was almost like holding on to this like American racial discourse and American racial binary and saying, I’m gonna use that as a way to deal with things in a way that will, by the way, flatten a lot of complexity and a lot of nuance from the American Jewish community.
Noam: Does ‘flatten complexity,’ does that mean just overly simplify things? Is that what you mean by that?
Mijal: Part of it is that a lot of the discourse in America around race assumes a certain binary. It assumes that the black and white binary in America is the most important one to think about people in general. And very often in some parts of the left, it assumed a certain power dynamic in terms of oppression and oppressed that come together with that racial binary. So that’s a little bit what this means.
Noam: Right, right, right. And the term Jew of color mirrors another term, which is people of color. Right?
Mijal: Correct, correct. Which is, I didn’t write about this, Noam, but there’s some people, for example, I have a friend who’s, who’s biracial and he doesn’t feel comfortable using the term Jew of color for himself, but he feels comfortable saying Jewish person of color. Okay. But it’s complicated. It’s all complicated.
Noam: Okay. So I’m going to be the annoying guy.
Mijal: Be the annoying guy.
I’m going to be the annoying guy, but I think it’s tough sometimes when you’re trying to communicate and you’re trying to be so sensitive and empathic and you use the wrong term and there are people in the same room
that want you to use opposite terms. So what do you do about that?
Mijal: Yes, 100%.
Noam: Like, you and I present in audiences, what are we supposed to do? And if people listening who don’t present in audiences and they want to be sensitive, good, empathic, compassionate people, what terms should they use? Black and brown Jews, Jews of color, Jewish people of color. And if you don’t like being called a Jew of color, and someone else likes being Jew of color, who looks exactly like you, what do we do?
Mijal: Yeah, yeah, good question. Well, first of all, I would say terms are always going to be clunky. And whenever we use a term, Orthodox, Reform, Black, whatever it is, they’re going to be clunky. And there’s going to be people who are not going to like those terms the way that they’re applied to them. At the same time, I think we can be careful on how we use language. So I’m pretty careful when I use language. I won’t say like all Sephardic Jews say the following.
But you know what? I wasn’t writing in a way that’s basically just saying, Hey, like stop using this term because I don’t like it. There was a certain moment in which a study came out that really shaped the conversation and the policies in the American Jewish community.
Noam: Let’s get to that study in a bit. really want to. That’s the one that says that 12 to 15% of Jews in America identify as people of color, correct? Something like that?
Mijal: as Jews of color.
Noam: Jews, sorry, Jews of color.
Mijal: Yeah, but by the way, that’s important because it’s not me just saying, hey, you’re being insensitive in a talk. It’s there was like this, this became almost like policy in many parts of the Jewish community.
Noam: Right, I remember that study came out. by the way, I’ve cited that study so often when I go to speak in different environments.
Mijal: Really?
Noam: Yes, I cite it all the time because people say, when people say, a lot of people do, when people say Jews are white, first of all, then the response is actually 12 to 15% of American Jews identify as Jews of color. And in Israel, over 50%, therefore, are not white. And therefore, that’s utilized, it’s instrumentalized in some sort of way that says, we’re not as bad as you think we are because we are not, and I might be white presenting, but you know, my friends aren’t, so we use it in that way.
But let’s get to that in a bit, because I probably stepped on something there. You said in the beginning of your piece, you said, I’ve encountered racial bias in everyday spaces and in Jewish spaces. What have you gone through? What racial bias have you gone through?
Mijal: Well, there’s a lot and some of it also depends in the question of our intent, right? Is there intent to be racist or can you say things that end up just, you know, being racial bias, even if people aren’t trying to be racist? I have a crazy amount of interactions of people who ask me where I’m from and then they’re like, no, but where are you really from?
Noam: Why is that- wait, why is that racist?
Mijal: That’s what, that’s why I said before, because it depends around like intent. If you care about intent or not in certain parts of the discourse around racial justice, that would be viewed as a microaggression that has a certain racial bias because it immediately tags you as somebody who’s like not from a certain place and from another.
There’s been a lot of instances in which I was treated, as though I am not educated, or as though I am less informed about certain issues. So I don’t want to get into all the specific examples, but it happened to me, it happened to me and my kids, like in a school that my kid used to go to in Manhattan, that was like not a Jewish space. It happened to me a few weeks ago when I had a meeting in the Department of Education, I was trying to like get some services for one of my kids. And this was really hilarious, Noam, but the person, they knew I was South American because they asked me a lot of questions. They were not super friendly. Midway in, whatever, they asked me about my education and I said that I had a PhD. And she like stopped the interview. And she was like, what? She said it.
Noam: Like she was proud of you.
Mijal: Wait, Noam, I know she said it because I wrote it to my friends as it was happening, three times she stopped and she was like, I am so proud of you. I’m so proud of you that you made it. Yeah, I’ve had interviews where people, yeah, yeah. I mean, I’ve had explicit comments to me about people like me saying, you know, in your families, in your communities, you’re not so intellectual, you’re not so educated, you don’t know so much. I’ve had a particularly bad job interview in which, I mean,
Noam: she was proud. So nice that you brought her pride. You’re a nachas man, you give people nachas. give even that person nachas. That’s all.
Mijal: Again, if I hadn’t written it right afterwards, I would think that I’m making it up. But someone was like, well, why are you trying to leave people like you and work with other people? Don’t be like Barack Obama, who left the black community to work with white. Like, you know, a lot of different comments, again, in both non-Jewish spaces and Jewish spaces. So again, that’s why, whether we see racial bias there or not, sometimes I think it was very, very clear. And sometimes I think it was like, maybe the intent wasn’t there, but the effect ends up existing.
Noam: Can I ask you an incredibly provocative question?
Mijal: I don’t know, go for it, let’s find out.
Noam: Have you ever benefited from being from your background?
Mijal: That’s not a provocative question. I’ve actually spoken about this. I’ve said you can very strategically use your background as a minority to be given certain platforms in America right now. I think that’s quite obvious in terms of where things are. And I’ve often, I’ve often like said it quite openly, like I’m here because I come from a certain background and I’m going to be here and speak. so, so a hundred percent, I’ve had that even as I’ve had like a lot of, again, I don’t want to minimize what it does to you when you continue to encounter people in school, in higher education that make comments, that question your intelligence or your ability to do certain things. so those things can live together at the same place at the same time.
Noam: It could be really damaging. And in the piece you actually speak about, hey listen, there is racial problems that the Jewish community has, but that people have come to you to speak about, whether they’re from black and brown communities, and they come into synagogue and they feel like they are othered. And that’s a very, very real thing that happens in the US at times.
And it’s happened throughout Israeli history, by the way, as well. I could easily go down and do a deep dive into the challenges of the integration of the North Africans and Middle Eastern Jews into Israeli society in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, to the point that there was a movement called the Black Panthers modeled after the Black Panthers in the United States of America. So this is a very real thing that the Jewish world contends with and needs to continue to contend with.
Mijal: Yes, what I would say is that there’s sometimes a different flavor to what bias looks like. Like in Orthodox spaces, I’ve experienced a different kind of bias than in liberal Jewish spaces. Even as in both, will experience certain bias.
Noam: What’s the difference? What’s the difference? That’s interesting.
Mijal: I’m going to say, I’m going to simplify a lot. So I think in Orthodox spaces, what I’ve often, in Ashkenazi majority Orthodox spaces, I’ve often experienced, like there’s an acceptance that I belong because I am quoted as like Sephardic and Middle Eastern. And that’s like a normative part of the Jewish experience. But it’s often come with a lot of, you know, like prejudice about it being backwards or it being like less advanced or like, you know, well-meaning, so exotic, so colorful.
But like a lot, like so many, so many comments and very often just like trying to like minimize the contributions or not give the same place or just really not have, not everybody of course, but clear instances of a lack of respect or dignity to the experiences of my community or like the, that Sephardic Jews don’t have an intellectual history is one example that always drives me nuts.
In liberal spaces, especially in the past few years, I’ve encountered much more of an eagerness to be inclusive. And at the same time, a lot of ignorance. So even if people will come and they would use the term Jew of color for Sephardic Jews, meanwhile, most Sephardic Jews just really, really don’t use that. Or they would assume that socially conservative Sephardic Jews agree with principles in diversity, equity and inclusion, where those tend to be really opposite to each other. Or they would assume that they can speak about Sephardic Jews as supporting, back in the day, BLM, because they’re part of the same community. So a lot of assumptions actually, incorrect assumptions, and also a lot of value judgments. If you’re a Sephardic woman who has a feminist consciousness, you might find your community is oppressive and awful to women or things like that. So there’s often a different flavor that comes in terms of bias.
And one of the things that was important for me to highlight in the article, and part of the reason that I’ve been frustrated with the term Jew of color, is that I have friends who are black Jews, I have friends who are Asian Jews, their experience walking into like a random shul in the Upper East Side, Upper West Side, know, Manhattan or anywhere else is very different than mine. And it was really important for me to highlight that because I think some of the discourse has kind of not allowed us to really focus on the problems that we have and the things that we have to do to fix them.
So, so definitely really important for me to name that and to actually say that even as I am critical of some of the ways we’ve approached the work of addressing some of these things in the past, it doesn’t mean that I want to do nothing. You know what I mean? Like I’m not saying, I’m not saying racism doesn’t exist or like we have no work to do or like diversity doesn’t matter. I’m not saying any of that. I actually want to do it better. And most of all, I want to do it honestly.
Noam: That’s great. That’s great. OK, so let’s get into the crux of the matter. The crux of the matter is in 2020, this article came out that the study came out that said that 12 to 15 percent of Jews in America identify as Jews of color. And you did something interesting, which was you had opinions on it and you didn’t speak out when the report came out. So first of all, why? Why was this report so important? What did it say that was so important? And are you proud of the fact that you didn’t speak up then?
Mijal: Ooh, you like asking nice questions, Noam. So the report, why was it so important? So it was a report commissioned by what was then called the Jews of Color Field Building Initiative by a group of researchers in Stanford. And they didn’t collect new data. They looked at previous studies and they gave this estimate 12 to 15% of American Jews are Jews of color. Now part of what this report did, and again, I think it’s really important to highlight this, is that that was only that finding was reinforcing another argument of the study. And that other argument, and I’m going to say it simplistically, I’m not quoting them. I’m saying my own words simplistically. That argument was basically saying, hey, organized Jewish community, you have been commissioning all these studies and you have been commissioning studies in ways that the studies that existed until now systematically under-counted non-white Jews.
That assertion was basically, I’m going to say it in a sharp way, even though the report didn’t say it, that assertion was basically accusing the established Jewish community of a certain amount of systemic racism that basically undercounted Jews of color. So it was basically saying like your metrics, your tools, the way that you see Jews in your community has been undercounting, okay, Jews of color.
It’s a pretty serious thing to say. And it’s a way it’s funny. No, I’m before you said that you highlight the number of Jews of color as a way of saying, Hey, we’re not all privileged, but bad. What this argument did and what many other arguments have done is they do that while they say, while they accuse, while they give certain guilt to the white Jews.
Noam: I totally get what you’re saying. And I’m wondering, I know it’s not the exact same thing, but it feels like there’s an analogy. You know how like a lot of people in the Israel advocacy world, and, it could be, it doesn’t have to be an advocacy at all. So it could just be teaching the history and the reality of the state of Israel, over 50% of Israeli Jews are actually not white. And the reason that’s shared is obvious, right? Is that similar to the, is that also a political act in the same sort of way?
Mijal: I think it really depends how it’s done. First of all, I distinguish between not white and Jew of color. I feel very comfortable saying that I’m not white. I think it’s complicated. Is that set in a way that then accuses the 50% who’s white of…
Noam: No accusing. It’s used in a way that to demonstrate again that there will one is that they’re indigenous to the area. That’s one utilization of it.
Mijal: But there’s something even more basic, Noam. It’s used to just to show that people know nothing about Israel.
Noam: That’s also true. That’s fair.
Mijal: Yeah. yeah, but I agree with you. But this actually, this is what’s so interesting about this. It’s like, we have to look at what conversations the world is having, and then we feed ourselves into those categories to try to argue about who we are. And that’s complicated, you know, because Mizrahi Ashkenazi, Sephardic, these are not exactly categories that fit into race, but America often, and in the past few years, especially has tried to fit a lot of categories into race, which is complicated.
Going back to that study, so in 2019, this comes out and it argues this. Now I want to just note something elsex. Part of the reason this study was important and it was released shortly before George Floyd was killed, which just really heightened the stakes. Part of the reason it was important, it was that that estimate had what I would call confidently serious methodological flaws. Not only in like constructing a really broad umbrella and just putting everybody in without even testing whether those populations like the term, but also the way that it used certain local studies and certain national studies and also the way that it ignored the Pew study, which is like the most important, most methodologically rigorous national study of American Jews that gave a much lower figure.Noam: Was the figure 5 to 8 %? that what it was? Yeah. Right, that’s what it
Mijal: Pew 2013 said 6%, Pew 2020 said 8%. And this is the category that Pew uses is not Jew of color because people don’t choose that. That category is non-white or Hispanic. And Hispanic Jews, by the way, majority are white in America. So it includes white Jews as well, just also Hispanic. It would also include you, Noam, if you had a survey and you were like, I don’t identify as white because of different reasons because I don’t feel comfortable with a racialized discourse around Jews in America, and you choose other. If you would have chosen other in a survey, you would have been included in this percentage. So any white passing European Ashkenazi Jew who would choose other would also be included in this numbers.
So going back to this, this, this estimates had like serious questions that people that’s researchers had, whether again, how they constructed the category or the kind of like statistical work that went to determine it. The problem was, and I’ll get back to Suwaydi and speak, is that the second people started asking questions, they were shut down and they were called racist. Okay, very publicly. was all done in public. It was very, very public.
So let me just clarify this. Let me just make it a little bit sharper. If someone says, this is our estimate, and this estimate shows that the American Jewish community was not acting well towards Jews of color because it’s much higher than previous estimates, then the second you question the estimate, they’re going to say, wait a second, are you not trying to help us with the work of fighting racism? You know what I’m saying? If the estimate itself is part of the proof, right, of a certain vision of the Jewish community, the second that you ask it, you’re opposing the work of anti-racism. Does that make sense?
Normal: Yes, it makes sense. it makes for a difficult climate to be curious and to ask questions. By the way, I was just thinking of a journal that I would create to rival Sapir. It’s called If I Had the Guts. And then like, the articles that would emerge in this journal called If I Had the Guts. Like I’m trying to think of articles that I may have written and then never sent to publish, like examples of these. But like what, so are you happy? Did you make the right decision?
Mijal: I think it would have, I’m definitely not like proud that I didn’t write then, but I’m also not upset with my past self because I understand what was going on back then. And to write at that time would have very quickly put me in a very specific box in the organized Jewish community.
Noam: There’s also the idea, though, that in the Bible, in the Hebrew Bible, it says, you should reproach your brothers and sisters, but you have to do it in a way that essentially they will hear. So it’s also the case that five years ago, if you shared an idea that was the same idea that you have now, it might not have been the right time. So there’s no value in offering rebuke if the person listening isn’t interested to hear what you have to say, or if the undecided voter isn’t interested in what you have to say at that moment.
Mijal: Yeah, I think back then to have spoken out against this, I don’t know. I think it would have been good for the discourse, but bad for me, if that makes sense. And I’m just honest about that. It’s funny, someone texted me a friend and she was like, oh, Mijal, you’ve been talking about this for five years. I’m glad you finally wrote the article that you wanted to write five years ago. And I’m like, ouch. Or someone else wrote to me, they’re like, wow, what a brave article. And I’m like, nope, it’s not brave. Would have been brave three or four years ago. Right now, I think it’s just okay.
But it’s complicated. I think that it’s not just in the Jewish community in America. Like the discourse around race was just so complicated and people were being canceled right and left. I was paranoid actually around these things. There was a real climate of fear. I think if I would have written out about this back then, it would have been good for the discourse, but for me, because it would have pigeonholed me into this topic alone. Like I would have been identified with this topic and I care about it, but it’s not.
Noam: Right. And now, if you speak to people on the different side of the aisle on this, do you think there’s more openness to the conversation, even if you disagree with each other?
Mijal: I think 100%. I’ve heard from so many people who were involved in this in different ways. Not everybody, but I think.
Noam: wow. Yeah, sometimes timing really matters. Sometimes timing really matters. Can I ask another question? Somewhere in this, in your dissertation here, you make mention of the civil rights movement, is that right?
Mijal: Yeah, I was trying to understand why is it that so many of us were okay with this inflated statistic and we’re okay with the kind of climate in which we couldn’t ask questions. You know what I mean? It’s like, why is it that so many of us were like, okay. And I argued that it came out of like guilt because a lot of American Jews realized that we hadn’t dealt with big questions around race and class in America. But I argued that came together with a move, and I’m not saying this is like the authors of the report, I’m just talking about that cultural and intellectual moment in America, that came together with a move in which there was an attempt to do like a certain revisionism of history.
So that revisionism included minimizing the role of Jews in the civil rights movement, and also trying to pigeonhole Jews as privileged and white and trying to argue, for example, that racism, that antisemitism doesn’t fit, like it’s in a lower place than racism because it’s not systemic or this or that. I think there was a real, legitimate project for greater recognition for people of color in America and black Americans and non-white Jews and black Jews and that this movement in some spaces got caught up in an ideological moment that had a very sharp sense of a racial binary and very sharp ideological distinctions. And I argue American Jews and Jews in general, are unknowingly, we don’t fit into a lot of the narratives.
Noam: We don’t fit. We really don’t fit. And have you ever been to Selma?
Mijal: Yes, I have.
Noam: Have you been to the museum? I’ve been to the museum there and I asked the docent there there about Abraham Joshua Heschel. And I don’t, in your article, I do have the anxiety that I don’t want to be considered self-absorbed to think that the story of civil rights was about the Jewish people, but Jewish leaders played a real role, very real role in the civil rights movement. And I asked the docent there where Abraham Joshua Heschel was in all of the pictures. And he goes to me, who’s Abraham Joshua Heschel? And it was such a crazy moment for me because I was like, Abraham, like, like the guy that’s in the front of the, you know, he would march next to MLK. He’s like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. I’ve heard of him. There’s a picture of him somewhere back there. And this was just two years ago.
On the one hand, like I said, I don’t want to come across as self-absorbed that civils rights is about the Jewish people. It’s not, it’s not, it’s not, it’s not. And there was a major role. I recently spoke at a school in LA, this private school in LA, and I read to them aquote that I want to read to you. I read to them this quote. I said:
Is an evil which most of us condone and are even guilty of, indifference to evil, where you remain neutral, impartial, and not easily moved by the wrongs done unto other people. Indifference to evil is more insidious than evil itself. It is more universal, more contagious, more dangerous.
And then I asked everyone who said this quote. And all the students raised their hand and said, Martin Luther King Jr. And I said, nope. And they guessed next name, Malcolm X. I’m like, nope. Then they, so what was it? And then I held up this book that was written by Julian Zelzer from the Jewish live series about Abraham Joshua Heschel. And it was Heschel who said that. Ideas that are quite similar to MLK.
And there is a huge part of the Jewish story which likes to view itself as playing a major role in the civil rights movement. And I do think that Heschel and MLK had very, very similar things to say as, as did other important Jewish rabbis like Joachim Prinz and others. So I was really taken by this part of your piece as well.
Mijal: Yeah, well, I’ll just say, Noam, like, I was in that same museum and I don’t know that I’m bothered if Heschel is not, you know, prominently displayed in a museum like that. What I was much bothered by was when the movie Selma came out and where he was literally cut out of the picture. So that to me is like a form of historical revisionism. And that’s what I mean. I’m like, we cannot build a better world based on lies, aand we as Jews should not be okay with our story being changed. Again, it’s not our story, but I’m like, why are you just taking the Jews out of the picture?
I wanna read to you, if it’s okay, like, I’ll read myself, which is awkward, but I’ll read to you two paragraphs that I think get to the point of the piece. Yeah. Sorry, one more thing. there were big implications from this study and this discourse, like, changing of like board members, allocations in Jewish organizations. Like this wasn’t just an intellectual exercise. Okay.
The reason for all this socio-historical political gymnastics is simple. Jews as a social, historical, political and religious category defy America’s simplistic identity politics binaries. Historically, Jews have been persecuted by Christians and Muslims, capitalists and Marxists. Their aristocracy and the peasantry, the wealthy and the poor. In America, Jews, the majority of whom read as white, are the most frequent targets of religious hate crimes, accused by Christian nationalists, the nation of Islam and Black Hebrew Israelites of the same nonsensical cosmic crime, being fake Jews. This, not long after 6 million were systematically murdered in Europe for being real Jews. Add to this the fact that white nationalists accuse white Jews of being fake whites.
The fact is that Jews are inconveniently complex for the stories that America, and not only America, tells about itself. Jewish history disrupts simplistic frameworks of race and power to such a degree that it requires ideological contortion. Jews had to be forcibly assimilated into whiteness as a moral and political category to make them fit into America’s racial story. That project involved the erasure of key elements of Jewish history.
That’s my paragraph.
Noam: Why, tell me why you showed it.
Mijal: Because I think to me this is like essentially, like it took me a while to understand why I cared enough about this. It’s not just like a term being applied to me that I don’t like. This to me just felt like it was taking the Jewish story, the Jewish people, and we’re so complex and so multifaceted and just, you know, flattening us.
And also not allowing us to really deal with our problems in an honest way and using our own Jewish tradition to figure out how to have a covenant where everybody feels a sense of belonging.
Noam: Yep, yep, yep, agreed. Powerful, powerful, powerful ideas. And I really do encourage everyone to continue to think about these ideas, not just read the piece, but to think about the ideas that you brought up in this article and to deal with the tension. One of the things that I just really love about this conversation is that, there are certain things that are simple in life, certain things that are complex in life. And when you simplify the complex you’re doing something wrong and we complexify the simple, you’re doing something wrong. The identity of the Jewish people is complex and the conversation around this is complex and you provided some history some context and some language and some guidance for how to think about all of these complex topics.
Mijal: Thank you. I love that sentence, Naam, that we shouldn’t simplify the complex and complexify the symbol. That’s really good. Yeah. Thank you for reading it twice, Noam. Really appreciate it. Third time? That much, Joy? Just kidding, just kidding, just kidding.
Noam: So let’s see what we can do with that.
Noam: With joy, with. Anyway, Wondering Jews with Mijal and Noam is production of Unpacked, an OpenDor Media brand. Subscribe wherever you’re listening to this pod and follow Unpacked on all the regular social media channels. Just search for it at Unpacked Media. And if you enjoy wandering with us, please share this and other episodes with your friends, family, whoever you think will enjoy it too.
And most of all, be in touch with us by writing to us at WonderingJews@unpacked.media. That’s WonderingJews@unpacked.media. This episode was hosted by me, Noam Weissman.
Mijal: And by me, Mijal Bitton.