Angelique
Favorite Jewish food: Matzo ball soup, hand’s down.
Favorite Jewish holiday: It’s changed since I’ve gotten older. Yom Kippur is my favorite. The high holidays in general, but I think Yom Kippur is the most meaningful to me. How would you describe your identity? I’m Black and Jewish, or sometimes I call myself Blewish. Do you feel like your looks and experiences are included in the general picture of what a Jewish person is? Not at all. I have experienced my own share of microaggressions, and have watched my father experience them too. So many people identify Judaism with the way that you look. There’s a moment of truth that I’ve witnessed happen with folks that I know, that I’m around. Not only do people not think that I’m Jewish, but often when I tell people I’m Jewish, I’ve been not only met with surprise, but I’ve been asked more times than I can count to prove that I’m Jewish. People usually just say “Prove it”. |
How does this affect your feelings about Judaism?
I’m very cautious about what Jewish spaces I enter into. To this day, I feel the need to go above and beyond in those spaces to prove that I belong there. It’s something I battle with, why am I doing this. This past year, I was trying to figure out with my daughter if she was interested in becoming a bat mitzvah, so we’ve been on a journey to see if there are temples that we might feel comfortable joining. I’ve watched myself in those spaces go out of my way to demonstrate my knowledge of Hebrew or some of the prayers. I just think to myself, “Gd, you’re still doing this, you’re still proving it”. I am cautious about those spaces, and I find that I almost can’t control my urge to belong and be accepted. Do you feel like you’ve generally been welcomed in Judaism? Why or why not? In general, I do feel like I have been, when I can get out of my own head in those moments. If I’m thinking about my experience being outside of my own temple and interacting with new friends who are Jewish, I generally find Jewish communities to be welcoming communities. Your work is so important because I think there is such a misunderstanding that Jews look differently. There’s an expectation or stereotype around Judaism that works against us as a community in ways that are understood externally, but I don’t think it’s understood internally how we stereotype ourselves and each other. Do you feel like you’ve been able to find communities where your whole identity is accepted? The moment that I started to accept my own identity, I have found individuals where I feel very accepted. I feel like my own temple growing up, I felt very accepted and seen in that space. I don’t think that if the question is, as a Black Jewish woman, are there communities I enter where people understand that, no. I don’t think so. I think there are people who genuinely care about me, who know me, and accept me fully for who I am. |
"There’s an expectation or stereotype around Judaism that works against us as a community in ways that are understood externally, but I don’t think it’s understood internally how we stereotype ourselves and each other." |
" Those were some of the microaggressions I had felt for the first time, of being asked to prove it, being looked at with skepticism and interest and amusement." |
Can you talk more about your experiences with Jewish identity and spaces specifically growing up and as a young person?
Yeah. I grew up in Hyde Park, which is on the South Side of Chicago. It is an academic neighborhood, and is very racially diverse. There are a lot of mixed families in Hyde Park. I think that biraciality was pretty common amongst my friends. That said, I think that our family and maybe one other were mixed between Black and Jewish. In our temple, we were anomalies. I went to Hebrew school twice a week, I went to Sunday school, my sister and I were both bat mitzvahed and confirmed. Judaism was a huge part of our lives. I was on a Jewish TV show when I was in sixth grade called Beyond the Magic Door where we lived in the town of Dreidel and sang and danced and talked to puppets. It was a huge part of my upbringing actually. When I went to college, I think that’s when I noticed the most the uniqueness of my upbringing. Not just because there was such a mixture of people from different races, but also the fact that I was Jewish as well. I went to school in Ann Arbor at the University of Michigan, and I didn’t feel part of the Jewish community there. I didn’t have an interest in joining a Jewish sorority. Those were some of the microaggressions I had felt for the first time, of being asked to prove it, being looked at with skepticism and interest and amusement. Actually, I never really joined any other temple. Judaism became something that was part of my return to home, to my parents’ home. It wasn’t something that moved with me and evolved. It was like your favorite theater or restaurant, it was a place that you visited because you were home, not because it was necessary as part of who you are. Having my parents pass away, and having a child and a husband who is not Jewish, I returned to the same temple to see if that was actually a place for her to fall in love with Judaism. It wasn’t until recently that we started to visit different temples. Actually, when I was in my 30s, after my mother had passed away, who was such an influence in my life and the bearer of Jewish culture in many ways, the idea of going on a spiritual journey was very interesting to me. I started to wonder how much of Judaism and my upbringing really meshed with my own spiritual ideas that I had picked up along the way in my life. I believe in karma, I believe in the golden rule, I believe in reincarnation. There’s a patchwork spiritually I had put together that had to do with the kind of person I wanted to be on the planet, and I was really interested in how those ideas were grounded in Judaism. I’ve been on my own journey trying to figure it out. |
How does your work with philanthropy and nonprofits connect with your Jewish values?
I do think that is a big part of Tikkun Olam. One of the things I really like about Yom Kippur, my favorite Jewish holiday, is that I feel like it’s the spiritual cleaning of my closet. It happens every year at the right time, in the fall where I am naturally self reflective. I love that it’s a year’s time, I can look back at a bite-sized piece and really think about what I can do better. The last two years, as part of the Days of Awe, I’ve talked to my staff about reflection and I’ve asked for their forgiveness as we’ve been through this deep racial justice process because I felt like care for them was something that I did, but not as well as I could do because we were doing so many things so fast. I’ve actually brought my practice of Judaism into my racial justice workspace. I think the concepts of Tzedakah, and the different levels of Tzedakah, I think about that a lot in philanthropy as a guide. What do you think we could do as a larger Jewish community to make our spaces more welcoming for people who identify differently from the norm? It’s interesting because my Rabbi gave a sermon a few years ago about why Jews need to stop calling themselves white. I thought it was so interesting. It was around the time the Laquan McDonald video had been released, but it was certainly well before these concepts of racial justice were being talked about as they are now. When you do start to study anti-racism, you can understand how socially constructed ALL race is, but whiteness in particular. You understand that different ethnicities at different points get invited into whiteness, like Irish people. There used to be signs saying things like, “No Dogs, No Irish”. There was a second class citizenry assigned to Italians. And then eventually, you can actually see this on the census, Irish are invited into the white race, Italians are invited into the white race. That is something that happened with Jews as well. There was a lot of comradeship in the 60s between Jews and Blacks, everyone seeing themselves as marginalized. Then, there was an intentional assimilation into this larger culture. My mother was part of that generation that shortened their last names so they didn’t seem Jewish, got nose jobs so they didn’t seem Jewish. My mother and a lot of her friends were part of that. Part of the exchange of assimilating into a white supremacist culture is a loss of your own culture. We similarly see the decrease in membership in temples, a decrease of youth in Hebrew school, and all of this. There has been some political construation of what is happening in Israel, and how Zionism does or doesn’t align with Judaism. This is a whole other bottle of wine, but there has been interfaith fighting and critique between Orthodoc and Hasidic and conservative and reform Jews. I would actually say that the first step is internal work that doesn’t ignore race, but dives into the construction of race as an identity, and where that does or doesn’t align with Judaism, with the practice, and with the values. Unpacking and understanding the work that you’re doing with this project in particular to see that we are not a monolith, with looks or spirituality. That can only lead to greater acceptance. |
"There was a lot of comradeship in the 60s between Jews and Blacks, everyone seeing themselves as marginalized. Then, there was an intentional assimilation into this larger culture. My mother was part of that generation that shortened their last names so they didn’t seem Jewish, got nose jobs so they didn’t seem Jewish. My mother and a lot of her friends were part of that. Part of the exchange of assimilating into a white supremacist culture is a loss of your own culture." |
"[My Rabbi] sort of raised me to be a questioner, to use my power and privilege on behalf of others, critical thinking, the concept of the Talmud of the Mishnah. That’s all a part of who I am." |
Does Judaism/identifying as Jewish play an important role in your life? Why or why not?
Yes. I identify as a Jewish woman. It is an important thing for me, one, because it is who I am, how I was raised, it’s part of my DNA. Two, because of the tenets of Judaism. The way Rabbi Wolf sort of raised me to be a questioner, to use my power and privilege on behalf of others, critical thinking, the concept of the Talmud of the Mishnah. That’s all a part of who I am. I also think it is important to me because there feels like, in this moment, very confusing conflict at times between Black communities and Jewish communities. You see a rise in anti-Israel sentiment amongst social justice movement. It’s a fine line between being anti-Israel and antisemitic. It’s important for me, as someone who stands in the interstitial space between different identities that are often seen as opposites, to be understood as fully embracing of all different communities, and embodying the nuance and complexity and similarities between cultures. What is your favorite part about being Jewish? I am a yenta in the real sense of the word. Yes, I’m a connector and a matchmaker, but I’m also a busy body with good intentions. I’m known as the job yenta. Recruitment firms are always sending me jobs, I’m constantly talking with people who are looking for work. I’ve probably placed like 15 people in jobs in the last year, just as a side gig. I’m also a board yenta, so I’ve placed like 6 people on boards this past year. I’m also just a yenta yenta, I’ve introduced couples who ended up getting married, I became ordained online. I’ve actually conducted three weddings, I’ve conducted a funeral sadly. This whole desire to bring people together, whether it’s for work, volunteerism, or love, that is a big part of who I am. The yenta-ship is real for me. |