Tag: Forward

  • Jews of Color Get Personal and Political at First-Ever National Gathering Forward 2016-05-04 Sigal Samuel, Opinion Editor If you want to get black Jews, Mizrahi Jews and a Palestinian-American Muslim to burst into tears at the same time, invite Yavilah McCoy to talk about hair. Speaking at the opening plenary of the Jews of Color…

  • The New Jewish Diaspora? Forward 2016-04-28 Sam Kestenbaum Shavei Israel For centuries, world travelers dreamed of finding distant Jewish tribes in the faraway corners of their known world — over the mountains, in remote villages, practicing customs preserved in isolation. Today, a quick Google search will do. In Facebook groups and on Skype, on Whatsapp…

  • On Jerusalem Walls, Artist Memorializes Hebrew Israelite Rabbi from Harlem The Assimilator: Intermarrying high and low culture Forward 2016-03-31 Sam Kestenbaum, Staff Writer Wikicommons / Solomon Souza / YouTube When Rabbi Mordecai Herman would visit the Lower East Side of the 1920s, then teeming with Jewish immigrants from Europe, he cut an intriguing figure. He…

  • Jewish Uses and Abuses of Martin Luther King’s Memory Forward 2016-01-18 Jared Jackson, Founder/Executive Director Jews in ALL Hues Four years ago, I made a promise to myself: I would not accept any more invitations to speak to the Jewish community on Martin Luther King weekend. Since then, I have dutifully kept that promise. But…

  • Meet April Baskin, the Multiracial Face of Reform Judaism Forward 2015-11-28 Allison Kaplan Sommer (Haaretz) Image: Haaretz See also: “Black and Jewish: New Reform Leader Works to Bring Marginalized Groups Into the Tribe” on 2015-11-25 from Haaretz. To meet April Baskin is to see the change in American Jewry personified. A tall, confident, 32-year-old with an impressive…

  • Does ‘Half Chinese, Half Jewish’ Condemn Me To Being Neither? Forward 2015-08-21 Rachel E. Gross When I was four years old, my father introduced me to his colleague, Jing. “Are you Chinese?” I asked, eyeing her shrewdly. “Yes,” she replied. “So am I,” I said. “And shoe-ish, too!” My father likes to tell this story,…

  • I’m a Mizrahi Jew. Do I Count as a Person of Color? Forward 2015-08-10 Sigal Samuel, Deputy Digital Media Editor Eye of the Beholder: Sigal Samuel has been considered white and non-white, depending on who’s looking. (Image: Martyna Starosta) Am I a person of color? You’d think there would be a straightforward answer to a…

  • The Original Rachel Dolezal Was a Jew Named Mezz Mezzrow Forward 2015-06-16 Seth Rogovoy As we all know, Rachel Dolezal was by no means the first white American to take on aspects of African-Americanness in her persona — calling Elvis, is anybody home? — although she will go down in history as one of the…