Black Jewish voices

NEW YORK — As Enzi Tanner participated in an online Havdalah ceremony marking the end of Shabbat on Saturday night, May 30, his city — Minneapolis — was being torn apart during a fifth night of unrest following the death of George Floyd, a black man, in police custody there last week.

Tanner, a social worker who supports homeless families, said the ceremony — hosted by Jewish Community Action (JCA), a local group, Jews for Racial and Economic Justice (JFREJ), a national organization, and Edot Midwest Regional Jewish Diversity Collaborative — conveyed a powerful message for black Jews like him.

“As the Jewish community reaches in and says how do we support their cause and how do we support the black community, it’s really important that people reach in to black Jews and other Jews of color and realize that we’re here,” Tanner said. “And we need our community.”

We reached out to black Jews including Tanner to understand their feelings and their message.

Ginna Green is on the boards of the Jews of Color Initiative, the Jewish Social Justice Roundtable and Political Research Associates.

The current moment, for me, is one of numbness. I rejoined the rest of the world in grief and rage a little bit late, as I was scrambling toward Shavuot as things in Minneapolis and all over were reaching a flashpoint on Thursday.

I went into lighting candles that evening with a sense of weight and trepidation, because I did not know what would be true come motzei Shabbat two days later.

I was on edge the entire chag. Listening to my 16-year-old black Jewish son leyn Megillat Ruth and playing Shavuot Spot-It with my five-year-old daughter brought me moments of joy, but not enough to ease my spirit. I knew it would come, but how I had not imagined.

I am deeply appreciative of the fact that when Shavuot ended, I was overwhelmed by texts from white folks — Jewish and not — offering support, and checking in.

The last several days have been exhausting, but the truth is that the last five years have been exhausting, and the last 400 years have been exhausting. Every black person is tired.

What I need from white Jews and white people is yes, please keep calling, keep texting and asking how I am, and all the other black people you know.

Also, call and text your fellow white Jews and people: Ask them what they did today to dismantle white supremacy. Give them three places to donate; three black people to learn from; three new classes to take or books to read.

The work of beating back white supremacy is a burden that can’t be left to black folks. We all need all of us. Every black person is tired.

I also want to see the Jewish community embrace radical possibility. A month ago, folks were pointing out the major change a pandemic had made possible. Radical shifts in work. Expectations. Air quality.

But racism has been an American epidemic for 400 years, and it is against the backdrop of this transformational pandemic — and one that is taking black lives disproportionately — that we see the grief and rage and impact reach epic proportions.

There are solutions of varying radicalness that black folks have been proposing for years to right the systemic wrongs of a nation that black people built: reparations; universal basic income; mass decarceration; defunding police.

Hammers and nails won’t be enough to build what must come next for us all to thrive — we need bulldozers and forklifts. Embrace the radical possibility and help make it true.

At the risk of belying the danger and concern and fear and worry that are real and present, I am also hopeful. The US is breaking, painfully, visibly but not irreparably. The cracks have always been there for us to study. Perhaps now we can create the place that holds us all.

Gulienne Rishon is a diversity expert and chief revenue officer for TribeHerald Media.

I am thankful for true allies, who understand that this is not the time to center their own experiences. I am thankful for true allies, who understand that the experiences they and their ancestors have had are to be used in this moment as empathy, and that no one is denying them their experiences in asking them to listen and learn.

But mostly, if one more white-presenting Jew tries to tell me today that they don’t have white privilege (not that they aren’t white, but that they don’t have white privilege) because they’re Jewish/the Holocaust/Jews got kicked out of schools, I might lose my mind. I should not have to deal with people telling me that my story (the black part) doesn’t exist because my story (the Ashkenazi experience) exists.

But I do. And I am confident that part of why G-d put me in the skin of a biracial Jewish woman descended from a Kindertransport survivor, a WW II veteran who was kicked out of his Hamburg Gymnasium for being Jewish, and two Southern black Virginians, is to help us as a people face our sinat chinam and take responsibility for being the light unto the nations by helping, not closing our ranks and denying the pain others feel because of the freshness of ours.

Facilitating difficult conversations about race is literally my profession. Yet, some days, I’m just a person behind a keyboard on Facebook who came out of our day of rest hearing that the world erupted in flames, and I look at the beautiful brown skin of my daughter and her parents, and I’m angry and afraid.

I’ve worked so hard to have these conversations with grace when you’re caught up in your feelings about the complexity.

On a day when it’s not about the complexity, but processing and mourning actual death, can you please give the same grace to mine?

Anthony Mordechai Tzvi Russell is a musician who blends traditional Yiddish and African-American music.

Let’s get real here, American Jews: You are living in an Old Country, whether you choose to recognize it or not. The state-sanctioned violence visited upon black communities happens in ghettos you can easily pronounce, in towns you visit without the aid of a tour guide and cities you reside in without a granted law of return.

So, who are you in this narrative, this country from which there is no real option of flight, this century which is your own, your heartless ruler, hands slick with the blood of children and refugees, the cavalries, maintaining “order” on your behalf over a people whose mere existence for centuries has been deemed disorderly?

Solidarity with black people doesn’t require a radical act of historical imagination. You are here. We are here. You know what to do. Do it. Now.

Enzi Tanner is a social worker in Minneapolis.

Yesterday we hosted a Havdalah with JCA and JFREJ and I did a little talk and for me the thing that is really real for me is black Jews and Jews of color all across the country during this time have been incredibly supportive and amazing and just speaking for me, it has made this time so much more doable and bearable.

I also say that because at this time, it’s also important that as the Jewish community reaches in and says how do we support their cause and how do we support the black community, it’s really important that people reach in to black Jews and other Jews of color and realize that we’re here. We need our community.

And the other thing is: believe us. When George Floyd said I can’t breathe, he was not believed. When black women tell doctors and nurses during childbirth that they’re in pain, they’re not believed which is why they die at a higher rate.

We don’t want to have to give a dissertation when we say we’re experiencing racism in our communities. We want to be believed. And in this moment now, it’s really important that, in those situations, that we’re able to be believed.

When we say our elected officials aren’t doing the best job they could be, we want that to be believed, we don’t want to be told that they’re doing the best they can because we’ve been here for far too long and our cities are literally burning and we just need folks to believe us and to support us.

And to reach out to the Jews of color, the black Jews within the community as well as reaching out and being in it for the long haul. This isn’t about just one person, this is about all these different people and different things. And it’s hopefully not just about right now, it’s so that a different world will be possible.

Evan Traylor is an educator, activist and soon-to-be rabbinical student at HUC-JIR.

Right now, black Jews are grieving. We’re grieving for George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery. But we’re grieving for so many more lives, black lives, that have been taken from this earth far too early because of brutal, systemic racism. And that pain isn’t going away tomorrow, or next week, or next month. It’s going to last for generations to come. And, if we want a better world, we have to change the system.

I’m grateful for so many white Jewish allies who have reached out, comforted me, supported me not just over the last week, but for years now. And right now, we need more from our white Jewish siblings, and more from our Jewish institutions — we need support, allyship, resources, and strategies to confront racism in our community, and in our world.

We are all created in the image of G-d — it’s time to build the Jewish community and world that makes our Torah true in this age.

Shira Hanau contributed reporting.