This Is What Jewish Looks Like
It’s long been a point of pride that Jews are a multicultural people with roots in every corner of the planet; that we are of all hues; that our grandparents spoke Yiddish and Hindi, German and Malayalam, Hebrew and Amharic.
After all, our global Jewish community is composed of the descendants of Jews who moved to present-day Iraq after the Babylonian Exile, Chinese Jews whose ancestors were Persians traveling the Silk Road, European Jews living all across the Continent long before the word Ashkenazi was ever uttered and African Jews scattered from Ethiopia to Mali for thousands of years.
Their descendants, in turn, migrated to the United States, where an estimated 12-15 percent of the Jewish community are Jews of color, including many of African descent.
For Black History Month, The Temple Emanu-El Streicker Center will celebrate our richly diverse experience through the personal stories of four prominent Black Jews who will talk about life as a minority within a minority and discuss what the Jewish community needs to do to turn the word inclusion into a reality.
Rebecca Walker
Monday, February 1
A writer, feminist and activist, Rebecca Walker is the author of Black, White and Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self, her account of growing up as the only child of Jewish civil rights lawyer Mel Leventhal and Black writer Alice Walker. Most recently, she’s an author and designer of the podcast and interactive journal What's Your Story? A Journal for Everyday Evolution.
Avishai Mekonen
Monday, February 8
A photographer and filmmaker born into the Beta Israel community, Avishai Mekonen chronicled his journey from Ethiopia to Israel as part of Operation Moses and on to the United States in the documentary film 400 Miles to Freedom, which explores racism and diversity in the Jewish community in the United States, Israel and beyond. He will show selected clips from his films.
Rabbi Isaama Goldstein-Stoll
Monday, February 15
Senior Jewish educator in the Chaplain’s office at Yale University, Rabbi Goldstein-Stoll grew up in the Reform movement, from NFTY (the Reform Jewish Youth Movement) and URJ Camp Harlam, to her ordination at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. She is active in Be’chol Lashon, an organization dedicated to serving Jews of Color, and is an advocate around issues of Jewish diversity.
Michael W. Twitty
Monday, February 22
A culinary historian and anthropologist, Michael Twitty is the author of The Cooking Gene, the James Beard Foundation book of the year in 2018. Twitty is a popular speaker about how we process our identities through food, as he does in his matzo meal fried chicken and black-eyed pea hummus. He is currently tracing his personal journey as an African American Jewish man in his forthcoming Kosher Soul.
All events in the series start at 6:00 PM EST