Black and Jewish in America - Balancing Race and Religion

If the tone of my entries on this blog sometimes seem to take particular issue with the divisive politics of the right, it's only because their narrow-minded vision of America stands in complete contrast to my own upbringing.

For me, as an African-American growing up in Bethesda, Maryland in the suburbs of Washington, DC during the 70's and 80's, understanding my own sense of cultural identity was often a perplexing challenge. Being the only, or one of a few black students in schools that were overwhelmingly white was often a lonely experience.

So I was naturally drawn to David Matthews 2007 book Ace of Spades; an eye-opening non-fiction account of his being raised in Baltimore in the '80s as the son of a Jewish mother and liberal African-American journalist father. I felt a kinship with Matthews (pictured left) for wrestling with the strange sense of cultural "in between-ness" and his memoir, which I bought last Spring after hearing an interview with him on NPR, has helped me to re-examine my own childhood.

He's an interesting writer who uses language like a hammer and I kept a dictionary next to my bed to look up the many words I'd never heard of.

Though I grew up with Jewish friends and our next door neighbors were Jewish, I'd never really heard of black Jews until hearing news reports about Israel air-lifting Ethiopian Jews from famine-stricken Africa to Israel during Operation Moses in 1984 and Operation Solomon in 1991.

There are indeed populations of African-American Jews living here in America, in last Friday's New York Times, Trymaine Lee penned an interesting piece on a small population of black Jews who live in Brooklyn, New York; and their search for an identity that balances religion and race.

Their story, like Matthews, struck me as a timeless illustration of the ongoing struggle of people from so many different religions, races and nationalities to find their place in the changing landscape of America.