Are Jews White People?
Photo by . liane . on Unsplash
Shemot/ Exodus 25: 9
“Exactly as I show you – the pattern of the Tabernacle and the pattern of all its furnishings — so shall you make it.”
The Holy One did the Israelites a huge favor by giving us explicit instructions in this week’s Parshat Terumah about how to build the holy Tabernacle, the sacred place of worship, while they were wandering in the wilderness. These unambiguous instructions gave little room for interpretation and lots of certainty about what the Divine wanted in the way of a sanctuary.
Abraham Joshua Heschel, in the prologue of one of his greatest works The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man, wrote about our fascination with “things of space”:
Thing is a category that lies heavy on our minds, tyrannizing all our thoughts. Our imagination tends to mold all concepts in its image. In our daily lives we attend primarily to that which the senses are spelling out for us: to what the eyes perceive, to what the fingers touch. Reality to us is ‘thinghood,’ consisting of substances that occupy space; even God is conceived by most of us as a thing. The result of our ‘thinginess’ is our blindness to all reality that fails to identify itself as a thing…
And perhaps it is not such a coincidence that this week’s parsha about building the Tabernacle, a thing of space, is the backdrop for the controversy swirling around Whoopi Goldberg’s statement that to her eyes, as an African-American woman, the Holocaust wasn’t about racism, since it was one group of white people (Nazis) murdering another group of white people (Jews).
And then later on that evening, while appearing on the Stephen Colbert show, Whoopi gave an illustration of why she saw it that way by noting that if a group of KKK members were marching down the street and she (Whoopi) were standing next to a Jewish friend, she would feel compelled to run away to save her life, while the Jewish friend might not feel compelled to run, because as a Jew, the friend would be perceived as white and therefore, not a target by the Klan.
And all of this brought up an old memory.
As a student at the Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion, the rabbinical seminary of the Reform movement, I was selected to be part of a Black-Jewish Dialogue group with African-American seminary students from The Interdenominational Theological Center.
One of the most impactful conversations we had transpired at the beginning of our weekend when someone suggested that we discuss what it felt like to be black or white.
I was the first Jewish student to be asked to address the topic and I started by saying that I didn’t feel that my primary identity was white, but rather, that I was Jewish.
All of the African-Americans laughed, shaking their heads ruefully at my apparent blindness, and one student even challenged me by saying: “But you ARE white. That’s obvious, isn’t it?”
And I responded by saying, “Yes, superficially you are correct. My skin is considered ‘white’ but that isn’t my primary definition; that’s not how I view myself. I walk as a Jew in this world. My experience isn’t like that of a white American Christian. I don’t feel secure like someone who belongs to the majority culture. I feel like an outsider when I’m in a room of white Americans. I know that to be Jewish means there are people who would like to kill me, just like there are people who would like to kill you.”
And they were shocked. Because the categories by which they constructed reality did not include someone like me. To them the world was divided literally into black and white. Just as it is (was?) for Whoopi Goldberg.
Today, I would be more aware (and hopefully more articulate) about white privilege, the notion that because one looks white, one enjoys more benefits in society and is judged more favorably.
But beyond that, I wouldn’t change a thing that I said then and still feel today.
Heschel expresses the issue so well-- The result of our ‘thinginess’ is our blindness to all reality that fails to identify itself as a thing…
We believe that what we see—what is perceptible through our senses-- is reality and all else is not.
Yet, identity is not something that can be seen, while it is often a huge determinant of how we understand our world and what our experience is within it.
As the JewBelong marketing campaign states: “We’re just 75 years since the gas chambers. So no, a billboard calling out Jew hate isn’t an overreaction #EndJewHate”
In addition, what Whoopi does not account for are the millions of brown/black Jews who had to flee their native homes (primarily in North Africa, Ethiopia, the Middle East and Iran) because of Jew hatred and who could only find refuge in Israel, which thankfully was established in time for them (unlike European “white” Jews who, by and large, were not able to successfully flee from the Nazis because Israel wasn’t yet a sovereign country.)
And she misses the many brown/black Jews who do live in the United States but are not always perceived as Jewish because that characteristic (as with a white-looking Jew) is not always apparent until one probes beyond the superficial.
Finally, she clearly doesn’t account for Jews who “look like Jews,” i.e., those of our Orthodox brothers and sisters who dress distinctively enough that they are identifiable as Jews, even though they also “look white.” These types of Jews are often objects of hatred, be it verbal or physical harassment.
Just ask relatives of mine who lived through the Crown Heights riots in 1991 or more recently the December 2019 shooting that took place at a kosher grocery store in Jersey City, New Jersey, or the Hasidic Jews who were injured (and one murdered) when an intruder with a large knife burst into the home of a rabbi in Monsey, New York, during Hanukkah.
These Jews were identifiable as Jews and died as a result EVEN THOUGH THEY WERE WHITE-LOOKING. We Jews who may not be as identifiable as Jews still recognize that we are targets simply waiting to be discovered.
All this comes to remind us about how arbitrarily we construct reality and how imprecisely we use our words.
“Race” is a discredited concept biologically. There literally is no such thing because humans are so incredibly similar on a DNA level. A little more melatonin here or there is biologically insignificant.
And yet… we humans have given that biologically insignificant difference in melatonin so much importance— whether we are someone who possesses more melatonin or someone who hates those who possess more melatonin.
As my grandmother would say using a Yiddish expression: It’s all narishkeit (nonsense). Except that people treat it seriously and so it must be dealt with seriously.
As Adam Serwer has written in The Atlantic: “It is not necessary for race to be real for racism to be real. It is only necessary that people believe race to be real.”
There were times in our past when Blacks and Jews worked hand in hand to overcome prejudice aimed at both groups, because both saw similarities in each other’s experience. I urge you to read/watch this article from Jewishunpacked.com on 9 Things You Need to Know About the Black-Jewish Relationship in America.
In my opinion, Whoopi Goldberg’s comments are products of a flawed and overly simplistic, but sadly increasingly common, perspective insinuating itself into many progressive worlds— everything is reducible to black and white. No other categories are as important or even truly real.
And this is a very dangerous perspective because as another Atlantic writer, Yair Rosenberg, cogently points out: “Judaism predates Western categories. It’s not quite a religion, because one can be Jewish regardless of observance or specific belief. But it’s also not quite a race, because people can convert in! It’s not merely a culture or an ethnicity, because that leaves out all the religious components.”
In other words, ‘Jewish’ as a category is not something that most Americans, or for that matter, most other cultures, understand. It doesn’t fit into their neat boxes.
And when people don’t understand something, they either dismiss it (as Whoopi did) or they demonize it (as anti-Semites do).
So Rabbi Efrat, what’s the answer to the question: Are Jews White People?
As with so many complexities, the answer is yes and no.
Now, go and learn.
Shabbat Shalom
