Last year, I spoke with a group of Israelis studying for master’s degrees in American Jewish Studies at Haifa University. They were on a two-week tour of the United States, and Washington, DC was one of their final stops before heading home. As I was describing the contours of the American Jewish landscape, I said something in passing about Jews of color. One of the Israelis interrupted me: “All we’ve been hearing about on our trip is Jews of color,” he said, visibly exasperated, while the other students nodded. “I’m Mizrachi [a Jew of Middle Eastern or North African descent]; am I a Jew of color?”
It’s not surprising that this expression felt foreign to these Israeli students. While “Jews of color” is not an exclusively American term, it was born of this country’s complex interrelationship between race and identity. It highlights both the usefulness and the limitations of taxonomies, as well as their power. And as understandings of race and diversity continue to evolve, the term “Jews of color” is evolving as well, reflecting the Jewish community’s reckoning with race and its own racial blind spots.
Lewis Gordon, a professor of philosophy at the University of Connecticut and founder of the Center for Afro-Jewish Studies at Temple University, remembers first hearing the term in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It was an extension of “people of color,” then being used to build coalitions between different marginalized groups. More specifically, it was a way to see beyond the binary of Ashkenazi Jews (whose families come from Central and Eastern Europe) and Sephardi Jews (whose families originated in the Iberian peninsula) when discussing Jewish identity. An umbrella term, it encompassed Jews with family origins in African, Asian or Latin American countries or those who identified as Black, Latino, Asian, Indigenous or of mixed heritage. Sometimes Sephardi and Mizrachi Jews were included, sometimes not.
Even those who considered themselves Jews of color were sometimes surprised by how many other Jews identified in the same way. In 1997, when Gordon was a professor at Brown University, he remembers being asked to serve as a faculty adviser for a Jews of color club. “I expected 35 of us to show up,” he recalls. Instead, he walked in “and there were 300 students in the room.” A trend developed, and communities for multiracial Jews and families began forming nationwide. Groups such as the Jewish Multiracial Network on the East Coast and Be’chol Lashon in California were met with enthusiasm.
The term “Jews of color” really came into its own in 2001 when Bridges: A Journal for Jewish Feminists and Our Friends published an issue titled “Writing and Art by and for Jewish Women of Color,” featuring submissions by Jewish women of African, Asian, Latino and Native American heritage. In the issue’s introduction, journal editor Shahanna McKinney-Baldon advocated for the term “Jews of color” to be widely adopted. Using it, she wrote, “can be a political act” as well as a way for people to tell their stories, think critically about identity—and “have conversations about things like the personal and political significance of labeling oneself and being labeled.”
As with all questions surrounding Jewish identity, whether one identifies as a Jew of color is complicated. It depends in part on how one views oneself and how one is viewed by others. It is also “influenced by geography, by generation, by socioeconomic status, by denomination of Judaism and by the kind of relationship you have with Judaism in the first place,” says Aaron Samuels, cofounder of Blavity Inc., a digital community for Black millennials, and a poet whose work includes the collection Yarmulkes & Fitted Caps. It’s also possible for a Jew to be perceived as white in the wider world, but as a Jew of color in the Jewish community, or vice versa. It’s not uncommon, says Lindsey Newman, the director of community engagement at Be’chol Lashon, even for Jews from the same family to identify differently. “‘Jews of color’ is a very broad term. It has porous boundaries,” she says. “And that is part of its power and also part of the challenge that it poses.”
For Mizrachi Jews these challenges can be especially acute. Rachel Sumekh, the founder of Swipe Out Hunger, a group that addresses food insecurity among college students, says that as an Iranian-American Jew, she is legally classified as white but “when it comes to moments in life, someone can label me very differently from what a form says I am.” Sumekh identifies as a Jew of color and finds it odd that people assume she would rather be considered white. Her identity, she says, is much more nuanced. “That’s why I love the phrase ‘Jews of color,’” she explains. “Because it’s all-encompassing.” Hadar Cohen, a Syrian-Iranian Jew who also identifies with the term, feels more ambivalent; she says programs and communities for Jews of color can still be Ashkenazi-centric. “Just because it’s a space for Jews of color, it doesn’t mean that there’s going to be an understanding of Mizrachi Jews,” she says, or of their distinct racialized history.
Conversations about the term “Jews of color” cannot be disentangled from the ongoing debate over Jewish whiteness. According to Lewis Gordon, both Jews and anti-Semites of past generations would be surprised by the phrase, even finding it redundant, as historically Jews were not considered white. “It’s very difficult to make your location the intersection of Africa, Asia and Europe and be homogeneous,” he says. After the Roman exile, in the rabbinic period, Jews dispersed all over the world, taking on a minority status in the societies they entered. Whether it was Ethiopia, Persia, India or Italy, “everybody thought their Jews were ‘The Jews,’” says Gordon, meaning they assumed all Jews looked like those they encountered.
(Photo credit: Marissa Vonesh)
“This wouldn’t have mattered, if not for the fact that the people who came to dominate much of the world were European people,” explains Gordon.
European colonialism led to the spread of the racist notion that being a full human meant being white. While Jews were initially considered a separate race in Europe, the concept of race in the American colonies blurred distinctions based on skin color. Some Jews were seen as white, which was not initially problematic but eventually evolved into the belief that real Jews are white, contrary to the global Jewish experience.
Jews often sought to reframe themselves from a race to an ethnicity, a transition that was somewhat successful in America. Despite facing discrimination, Jews of European descent were able to enjoy privileges associated with whiteness in the United States during the 20th century. However, Jews who did not fit the white category were often overlooked.
Efforts to highlight the diversity of Jews, particularly Jews of color, have led to the term “Jews of color” becoming more mainstream. But even as this term gains traction, Jews of color still feel marginalized and treated as exceptions within the Jewish community. Research to determine the number of Jews of color in the United States has been hindered by inconsistent methodologies in existing studies, highlighting a lack of awareness about the diversity within American Jewry.
The term “Jews of color” has faced criticism for being too broad and potentially overlooking the unique experiences of different groups. Some prefer using more specific designations like BIPOC to acknowledge the distinct challenges faced by Black and Indigenous people of color. Recent events, such as the killings of Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, and Breonna Taylor, have sparked calls for action within the Jewish community to combat anti-Black racism and create more opportunities for leadership among Jews of color.
While the term “Jews of color” serves as a tool to elevate the identities and experiences of people of color within the Jewish community, the ultimate goal is for the community to recognize and embrace its multiracial makeup without needing such distinctions. It is important not to get bogged down in semantics, as the focus should be on addressing racism both within and outside the Jewish community. I believe it is important for the Jewish community to shift its focus towards addressing the harm that is being done, rather than getting caught up in what people are being called.
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