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July 2, 2008 | 9:03 am

Conversions up, African-American Jews on the move

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

This spring, we saw a flashbang in Jewish-black relations with the saga of Daphna Ziman and the Rev. Eric Lee. Those waters have smoothed, and this week in New York, a former colleague of Martin Luther King Jr’s (no, not this one) said it is essential to both blacks and Jews that the communities identify their shared needs:

“As blacks and Jews, the wind may blow, the rain may beat down on an old house, be it a house in Brooklyn, Atlanta, America, Israel or Africa, but we all live in the same house,” Rep. John Lewis, a leader of the civil rights movement who stood behind Martin Luther King, Jr. on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, told a group of Jewish and black leaders in Brooklyn this week.

“We are one people, one family and we must stay together and build a society at peace with itself.”

Agreed. Interestingly, though, in an increasing number of cases, Lewis’ comment that “we all live in the same house” is especially true. What do I mean? Well, beside the reality that blacks and Jews have similar political sentiments, and the fact that Jews have historically felt the brunt of persecution whenever a society discriminated against anyone, there is a growing community of African American who are, in fact, Jewish.

Would you believe it numbers 150,000?

From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

The notion of black Jews is hardly new. The Jewish history of worldwide migration has led to Jews of every ethnicity. But much of the black Jewish experience in this country has flown under the radar of other Americans, [Temple University’s Lewis] Gordon said. That’s because many black Jews historically practiced privately or in segregated communities, he said.

The population was “swept up in the tides of racism in scholarship and institutions” that saw Jews as exclusively white, even though American Jews of European descent did not consider themselves white until recent decades, Gordon said.

“There have always been communities of either black people who are already Jewish or black people considering coming to Judaism. What is different is that institutional structures are changing,” he said.

“There is an increased effort to creating a welcoming environment for them.”

Gordon speculates that as many as 1 million black people in the United States have Jewish roots, among them African-Americans, African and Caribbean immigrants and Afro-Latinos.

Which is why Gordon thinks that, among the rising numbers of black Americans coming to Judaism, some of them are simply returning to it.

That’s how Sivan Ariel sees her experience.

Born to a Catholic family in the Virgin Islands, Ariel now believes her biracial grandmother practiced Jewish customs she learned from her mother.

“She would always talk about the laws of God” and the Exodus story, Ariel said. Her grandmother would light white candles, which now remind Ariel of those lit on the Sabbath.

“She was the only person I knew that actually did that, so I wondered if it was actually witchcraft,” Ariel said with a chuckle.

Growing up with only knowledge of Ashkenazim, I was ignorant enough about tanned Jews, let alone black Jews. There is an even more complex story than that of most American Jews, and dovetails with this comment about a true Passover Exodus.

One person bringing attention to the often voiceless community of black Jews is Lacey Schwartz, a New York attorney and documentary film maker who learned in college that she was conceived after her mother had an affair with a black man.

Photo
Schwartz’s film

Though finely attuned to the color of her skin, Lacey Schwartz — Schwartz, she reiterates — was raised in ignorant bliss in Woodstock, N.Y. The only child of her fair-skinned parents, she describes a sort of upbringing as iconic as any other American Jewish kid raised during the 1980s, complete with Hebrew school, a bat mitzvah, youth group, even her parents’ separation at age 15. “I was a nice Jewish girl in upstate New York,” she says, lapsing into a kind of East Coast Jewish whine.

Remarkably, no one in her family discussed Lacey’s dark skin and distinctively curly hair, nor did they acknowledge she was biracial. “People go day to day, and don’t talk about things,” she says, knowing well from experience.

But while Lacey’s family ignored the obvious, not everyone else did. When she was five, a boy in the nursery school playground insisted on checking the color of her gums to determine whether she was white or black. As a teen, black girls ostracized her. Whenever people questioned her identity, “I always said I was Jewish,” she says. Looking back, Lacey identifies herself as an interloper in a game of “which one of these things doesn’t belong.”

Schwartz’s film about being black and Jewish, “Outside the Box,” is so named because it was her college application that tipped her to added ethnicity; she could never figure out which to mark.

Hat tip for the AJC article to Bruce Feiler, who has been fixated with the theme of the Exodus story in American society, which is the focus of his next book.

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I personally have no problem marking ethnicity surveys. As a Jew I mark ‘Other’, because Jews are never on the list.

Comment by Ben Plonie on 7/02/08 at 11:35 am

I sense you may not have run across this item:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3561097,00.html

Maori tribes to reinforce Jewish people?
Dozens of indigenous Polynesian people of New Zealand discover Judaism, study Kabbalah; one even converts to Judaism

and
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3449686,00.html

Jewish tribes want to make aliyah

Tens of thousands of requests submitted to Interior Ministry in past two years by residents of Third World countries seeking to immigrate to Israel, claiming to be members of ‘10 lost tribes’ (quotes from Yediot)
“... According to estimates, millions of people in countries across the world – including Nigeria, South Africa, Uganda, Ethiopia, India, China, Russia, Peru, Portugal, Brazil and Spain – are demanding that Israel recognize their Jewish status.”

The Jewish people are the Israelite refugees from the Kingdom of Judea alone, remnant of the tribes of Judah, Benjamin and Levi. Does anyone think that the foreign colonial Arab Occupation will persist when the other tribes are reunited with us? Among those tribes are some of the world’s premier fighters (not that peaceful means to regaining the full extent of Israel won’t be tried of course).

Comment by Ben Plonie on 7/02/08 at 11:49 am

B"H
Kol Hakavod to the author and persons featured in this article. It shouldn’t matter what the color of our skin is, but rather the Jewishness of our Neshama and the practice of all things Jewish.

Comment by Moishe on 4/18/10 at 1:22 pm

I am very glad that African Americans, Americans of African Descent, Persons of Color, (Regardless of what you term yourself), have come to the reality of their Jewish roots and began to personally acknowledge our place in Jewish/Hebrew history.  Since the 60s we as Black Americans have learned alot about our history and how we came to be here.  Our Ancesters were Kings, Queens, metal workers, sailers, soldiers, stonecutters, canal diggers, farmers, builders of cities and of pyramids to name a few. We came from the civilizations of Egypt, Babylon, Nineveh, Sumeria, Kush, Seba (Sheba), Israel, the civilizations of the Niger, Ghana, Songhay and the Indus.  Everywhere that our ancesters went and what types of atrocities that we had to face at the hands of our fellows Human brothers and Sisters we survived and kept the faith of the convenant that was made with God.

Comment by Shmuel Kush Yishmerai on 5/27/11 at 11:34 am

Not so fast, Shmuel. There is a great difference between saying that:

1) Those Israelites who were of color had been exiled into the Diaspora like the Ethiopian Beta Israel (and incidentally subjected to the same bigotry and oppression by all the black gentiles as non-black Jews were by non-black gentiles).

and saying that:

2) the black people of America or the world were the original Israelites (and by implication that non-black Jews are not Israelites).

I sense you are saying the latter. If that is true you would have to get in line behind all the other pretenders to the title, none of whom will ever get anywhere anyway. This website is not the place to spread the Farrakhan/Hughley propaganda.

Comment by Ben Plonie on 5/28/11 at 8:33 pm

Shalom Ben Plonie.  I am not saying that Black people did everything under the sun in Human experience but I am saying that people of color whether they was from Africa, Arabia, Mesopotamia, Israel, Egypt or the Western Hemisphere has played major roles and made serious contributions to the advancements of Human Civilization and Struggles.  Yes, I am aware that there are people out there that are trying to attributed all human achievements to Blacks just like there was people who attributed all accomplishments to persons of Europeans ancestry.  My point is that the Human march to a higher civilization and a greater degree of morality was share by all peoples of the Earth.  We (Human Beings) have lost so much of our history due to wars, barbarism, slavery and natural disasters that we barely know that we all are the children of GOD.  I am just trying to relay to people of color that the ancient human experience,(good or bad), also involved people of color.  I hope that this note explains a little better my previous statements and that you and others will see these words as statements of truth and not propaganda.  (See 1st Chronicles 1:8, Genesis 10:7)

Comment by Shmuel on 6/02/11 at 9:34 am

Shmuel,
When you put it like that it is impossible to disagree with you. Among the first lessons in the Torah is that all humans descend from one couple inspired by God to rise above animal origins and animal nature. God’s plan was a humanity united in His recognition and service and it still is. Obviously there have been ups and downs in our relationship with God since Adam and He had to invent Jews in response to specific events for specific reasons and a specific purpose. In a very real sense race is irrelevant and for practical purposes does not exist in a meaningful way. That is why there is no Biblical reference to race as a divisive factor.

But you didn’t put it that way. You said that “Americans of African Descent… have come to the reality of their Jewish roots and began to personally acknowledge our place in Jewish/Hebrew history. As far as I am concerned Americans of African Descent except for a very few of specific background (no different in that way than Americans of non-African Descent) have no Jewish roots or place in Jewish/Hebrew history. That is not a putdown. Worldwide, 499 people out of every 500 are not Jewish. Nevertheless, you are probably aware that there is an immoral movement to undermine and steal Jewish identity no less than the movement to undermine and steal the Jewish homeland.

Comment by Ben Plonie on 6/02/11 at 7:52 pm

Brother Ben Plonie.  I have to disagree with you, cause there are many Americans both thoses of African descent and those of non African descent that have Jewish roots, some born while others converted.  I am a African American, (American of African Descent), that has recently converted to Judaism and in the process came to an awareness of the Jewish culture, history, (that I didn’t know), commmunity and their relationship with GOD.  I also dug into my own personal family history and found that one of my mothers’ ancestors was a SEPHARDIC JEW.  Jewish people have traveled to every country on the planet and have been banished from most of them due to the dominant powers desires to have Jews convert to their religions or leave the country in order to avoid being exterminated. They took Judaism with them to these countries and have affected different cultures and peoples the world over. In school I learned of the Jewish holocaust in Europe and the genocine that the European Jews suffered at the hands of the Nazis.  It remainded me of the holocaust of the Middle Passage and the years of slavery, (that I learned from my family), that was suffered by my African ancestors.  The country of Israel was formed in the ancient homeland of Canaan, (where the ancient kingdoms of Israel and Judah once stood), to provide a haven for the Jewish people where they could live and practice their religion in peace.  Yes, there are people and forces out there that are trying to destory Israel and that is something that we, Jews regardless of whatever philosophy,etnicity or country must not let happen.  We must all do whatever we can to ensure that Israel continue to exist.  Shalom Brother.

Comment by Shmuel Kush Yishmerai on 6/12/11 at 2:15 pm

In that case, Shalom Brother back. I often feel that it is the sense you just described that Abraham was told that his descendants will be as the stars and the sand on the beach.

Comment by Ben Plonie on 6/12/11 at 9:16 pm

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