Pride, no prejudice: we’re young, Jewish and blackPosted in Articles, Identity Development/Psychology, Judaism, Media Archive, Religion, United Kingdom on 2019-02-01 16:22Z by Steven |
Pride, no prejudice: we’re young, Jewish and black
The Jewish Chronicle
London, United Kingdom
2019-01-31
 Yasmin Bowen (left) and Vivien Sinclair (Photo: Benjamin Mole) |
Drake, Sophie Okenado and Craig David: three big name examples of Jews who are black. So why do so many people assume all Jews are white? Karen Glaser met some teens who challenge that stereotype.
On Shabbat, frummers often stop Lia Grant on the streets of the Jewish neighbourhood where she lives and ask her to ring doorbells and switch on ovens for them. They preface their requests with a quick explanation of Shabbat and the type of work they are prohibited from doing on Judaism’s day of rest.
However, what they do not know is that far from being a potential Shabbos goy, Lia is a fellow Jew. So by asking her to work, her frum interlocutors are inadvertently committing a serious transgression: they are entreating someone who is obligated to keep Shabbat, to violate it.
“When I tell them I’m Jewish, very awkward shock washes over their faces,” says the JCoss sixth former whose mother is Jewish, Israeli and Nigerian, and whose father is Nigerian and Scottish.
It was a similar story when Lia first joined the Jewish secondary. “Are you Jewish?” her classmates would ask her. And six years later, her intersectional identity often elicits a similar response from non-Jews: “Wow! There’s such a thing as a black Jew?”…
Read the entire article here.