By Sasha Dominguez
On the first day of religious school this year, I introduced myself to the class. “Hi, my name is Sasha Dominguez, I am going to be your teacher.” One of the students in my class responded, “Dominguez? That’s not a Jewish last name?” My students, like so many young Jews, are not getting any explicit education on what it means or looks like or sounds like to be Jewish in the United States today, despite the fact they are in a religious school class with two Jews of color and have a Jewish-Hispanic teacher.
Perpetuation of white-Ashkenormative Jewish culture is not only an incomplete illustration of Judaism, but it is also causing Jews of color and other non-Ashkenazi backgrounds to disconnect from their Jewish life all together. The desire among the racially and ethnically diverse folk within our Jewish communities to hold both their Jewish and “other” identities simultaneously must be met by the elite of our institutions teaching a multi-faceted history of who we are as American Jews.
Statistics show that diversity in the Jewish community is growing due to intermarriage, cross-cultural Jewish adoption, and influx of Jewish immigrants to the United States from the Middle East, Spanish speaking countries, etc. Their presence in our country and communities is exemplary of our need to teach the stories and histories of racially and ethnically diverse Jewish populations in the United States.
In my Jewish Day School’s graduating class, there were twenty-two of us, three of us are Jewish-Cubans (Jewbans). After college I lived in Miami Beach for several years, where I worked at a synagogue with a significant Jewban population. In my HUC year in Israel class, four out of forty-five students are Jewbans. I know based on national statistics, it is not the norm that on three different occasions in my life I was part of a significant Jewban population. Nevertheless, this is my experience.
In all of these situations I was given very few resources to explore anything outside of the white-Ashkenormative narrative. Jewish educators need to proactively incorporate the rich racial and ethnic diversity that make up our Jewish community in the United States. They should utilize the human resources, because there are Jews itching to tell their dynamic stories in many, if not all, communities. Take advantage of the digital age we live in and expose your students to podcasts, videos, articles, etc. As Jews in the United States today, we all hold complex identities. Jewish educational and institutional leaders ought to present their plethora of experiences and identities to their constituents as well. If we as Jewish educators cannot start these conversations around our Jewish identities and our students Jewish identities, who can?
I am not suggesting that Jewish educators reinvent this wheel. Yes, there are organizations such as Be’Chol Lashon and the URJ’s Jew V’Nation Fellowship. Both of which are dedicated to making the Jewish community more ethnically, culturally, and racially inclusive, with hopes to cultivate Jewish leaders of color. I am concerned though with the Jewish individuals and communities who are not aware of this work or these organizations.
I also hear those who would say that this population is a minority within a minority. We have enough issues to address as a united Jewish community, why should we divide ourselves even further? For this precise reason, we must address the needs of those who are ethnically and racially diverse in our community because the Jewish community has been isolated and made ‘other’ since our inception. In ignoring this issue within our own community, our Jewish educators are defying key Jewish values such as klal yisrael, tzedek, and gemilut hasadim. We must step up and educate the entire Jewish narrative. Only then can we create a stronger Jewish community, empowering the Jewish future to serve the world with justice and acts of kindness and compassion, rather than putting up these guards for those in our very own communities.
My student was wrong, Dominguez is a Jewish name because I hold it. It’s not his fault that he had this assumption though. My name is not traditionally Jewish, but this lens can’t be the only one through which we view our Jewish communities. For the sake of all of the ethnically and racially diverse Jews in this country, we must teach a multi-faceted history of who we are as American Jews.
Sasha Dominguez is a concurrent masters student in Jewish Education and Jewish Nonprofit Management at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Los Angeles.
Teach them American Jewish history. The first American rabbis and cantors, Seixas and Morais. One of the first Jewish-American landowners, Gomez (the Gomez Mill House is in upstate New York — those -ez names appear to be associated with Jews, by the way). The second Jewish Supreme Court justice, Cardozo. Etc, rtc.
Seems that our “traditional” American Sephardi community prefers to quietly keep to itself, proudly passing down its traditions from generation to generation in its own effective traditional ways. Otherwise, given their internal strength and resources, we’d be hearing a lot more from them. After all, if they wanted us Ashkenazi cousins to know more about them, wouldn’t they be the ones to be doing the outreach, much as the Russian-American Jewish community and the Israeli-American Jewish community are beginning to do? And maybe even the modern Latino-American Jewish community! Go Jewbanos!
Our community has so much to gain from embracing its diversity. The whole can definitely be greater than the sum of its parts. But, realistically, each part needs to find its own voice and the power to amplify it within the larger American Jewish community.
I’m headed to a meeting of the committee overseeing the 2020 election of the US delegation to the next World Zionist Congress. Hopefully, all sectors of the American Jewish Community will run slates for the election so that the American delegation to the Congress will be as diverse as our community really is.
Racism against non-white Jews is pervasive in the Jewish community, and unacceptable.
“Ashkenormativity”, however, is really not a thing. As the brilliant Rokhl Kafrissen has shown:
http://rokhl.blogspot.com/2015/04/why-isn-thing.html
To Chaver Steve – why is it the responsibility of Sephardi Jews to reach out to you to further your education about them? Why do they have to “want you to know about them” in order for you to want to know about them? Do you only read history and biography when the people being talked about put the book in your hand? If you’re not interested, that’s your prerogative, but the idea that it is always and only up to minority populations to educate majority populations is misplacing the burden. When looking for delegates, why not actively search out diversity instead of expecting it to come to you? Whether you intend to or not, you’re speaking from a place of privilege, and if you want to be an ally and to learn, then you need to be actively open, not passively expect others to do the work.
??? ?? Sasha! In this age in the USA where the rights of every individual to self define are being upheld through the courts and beyond, it is important that Jewish educators engage their learners in inclusive perspectives that highlight the historical, diverse richness of ?? ?????!