{"id":62595,"date":"2021-12-14T02:52:04","date_gmt":"2021-12-14T02:52:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=62595"},"modified":"2021-12-14T03:05:36","modified_gmt":"2021-12-14T03:05:36","slug":"on-passing-and-not-trying-to-pass","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=62595","title":{"rendered":"On Passing and Not Trying to Pass"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Passing and Not Trying to Pass<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

My Jewish Learning<\/a>
\n2015-07-22<\/p>\n

Tema Smith<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

I am black, and I am Jewish.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve always found comfort in the and<\/em> of my identity \u2014 that simple part of speech that joins together two disparate things: two families, two histories, two cultures, two heritages, two skin colors, two lineages of trauma, two pathways to North America<\/a>. As the offspring of both, I am equally neither.<\/p>\n

Lately, I spend a lot of time within the proverbial \u201cwalls\u201d of the organized Jewish community. As a Jewish professional, my day-to-day life is dedicated to synagogue operations \u2014 specifically, membership and communications. While in many ways I am \u201cat home\u201d in the Jewish community, to this day I still feel out of place within the communal mainstream. And, contradictory as it may seem, it is the fact that I can easily pass<\/a> for the Ashkenazi<\/a> majority that leaves me feeling this way.<\/p>\n

I should say: I never asked to pass. The fact that I can walk into Jewish settings and instantly fit in leaves me with a bad taste. At the same time, I remember recognizing my own thoughts when I read Katya Gibel Azoulay<\/a> quote her son in her seminal book, Black, Jewish, and Interracial: It\u2019s Not the Color of Your Skin, but the Race of Your Kin, and Other Myths of Identity<\/em><\/a>: \u201cI\u2019m not going to put up a sign that says I\u2019m black just to be accepted,\u201d she relays, writing, \u201cas far as he was concerned, the idea of \u2018learning how to act Black\u2019 was the theater of the absurd.\u201d…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Passing and Not Trying to Pass My Jewish Learning 2015-07-22 Tema Smith I am black, and I am Jewish. I\u2019ve always found comfort in the and of my identity \u2014 that simple part of speech that joins together two disparate things: two families, two histories, two cultures, two heritages, two skin colors, two lineages […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,395,125,3601,8,6462,820],"tags":[195,13223,29826],"class_list":["post-62595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-autobiography","category-identitydevelopment","category-judaism","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-religion","tag-katya-gibel-azoulay","tag-my-jewish-learning","tag-tema-smith"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=62595"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62595\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62605,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62595\/revisions\/62605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=62595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=62595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=62595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}