Op-Ed: How I learned to embrace my Black and Jewish heritage (via latimesopinion)
In the small town in New Jersey where I grew up, the Jewish population was almost nonexistent. I was always embarrassed to admit I was half Jewish. It was bad enough I was one of the only Black kids in our school, but to reveal being half Jewish meant I was going to be known as “the Black Jew” — a heritage of two of the most oppressed peoples in history. The ridicule would never end.
But through a string of personal encounters with family members and with history, I eventually came to think that maybe my Black identity was connected to my Jewish identity, as I found common themes between our peoples’ experiences. What seems to separate us — our skin, our culture, our history — is really what binds the Black and Jewish people. We have defied persecution and slavery and genocide and systemic and institutional racism and antisemitism, but we’re not defined byour struggles.
After my paternal grandfather died when I was 9, my Jewish father, whom I rarely saw, thought it would be a good idea for me to meet his mother. He and I drove to Long Island in New York a few times to visit her. I remember looking at her strangely, trying to find myself. I scanned her eyes, her lips, her skin, looking for anything I could attach myself to. She fed me a bowl of matzo ball soup and watched me eat it.
On some level, I was excited to search my name as if looking for validation, for acceptance in this place, as if to say: I am family to this too. On the kiosk screen, I typed my last name, “Loeb,” and was flooded with results. The historian said that if our Jewish relatives came from Europe there was a greater chance one or more of them were Holocaust victims or survivors.My generation is the last that will hear about the Holocaust from survivors like my grandfather.
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