How can I be Jewish when I am black? |
How can I be Jewish when I am black?
The Jerusalem Post
2015-02-09
This is a hypothetical question that I’m always, almost asked by my many Jewish friends, associates and acquaintances. In my haste I’d assumed the answer to be obvious until I discovered the subtlety behind which the real dynamics of the question are hidden. What follows is my hypothetical ‘answer’ to the question. There are many parts to be considered before this question can be answered fully.
There are enough parts to fill a book in fact, such is the volume and complexity of the rules that are visited on he or she born inter-racial black and Jewish who then approaches the gates of the shul in search of a refuge from a sometimes racially hostile and anti-Semitic world. I am a mischlinge, and would have been murdered alongside the 6 million had I been alive in Germany in WW2, a war in which my Jamaican grandfather fought through his service in the Royal Air Force as a 15 year old boy where he helped defend the world from Hitler, and helped save the Jews, while stationed in Berlin. A man with such courage, candor and grace, is it any wonder that my grandmother, a Jewess, should fall in love with him on his settling in 1950’s England?…
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Tags: Ella Bennett, Jerusalem Post, The Jerusalem Post