How my Jewish identity keeps me in the fight for social justice today.
A friend came to me recently with questions about cultural appropriation. With sincerity she asked, “how do we tell appreciation from appropriation?”
This is a question I hear frequently and one that to me is so easily answered through my Jewish identity. Appropriation occurs when a dominant culture takes from a culture it oppresses. To anyone confused about why do-rags, cornrows, and/or dreadlocks on white people are considered to be appropriation, I offer you this scenario:
Imagine it is post WWII-Germany, before any acknowledgement or reconciliation for the Holocaust’s atrocities came to be. You and your Jewish family live meagerly in survival mode, traumatized by what was, the tension of what still is, and fearful of what could still be. Years go by as you carry this burden on your heart and mind. Then, a new fashion hits the streets. Germans are wearing yarmulkes and rockin’ payot. “Big deal,they say. “It’s just a hat. It’s just a hairstyle.”
Except, it’s not just anything. It’s the head covering and hairstyle that made your ancestors pay with their freedom. It’s the hairstyle and head covering that got bricks thrown through their store windows and synagogues. It’s the hairstyle and head covering that cost them their lives.
I have one Jewish parent and one German parent meaning that by blood, I identify with both the oppressor and the oppressed, which translates to my identity as a Jewish American woman. Growing up Jewish in a town filled with WASPs, I was on the receiving end of my fair share of anti-Semitic taunting. Kids threw pennies at me on the schoolbus & called me a “dirty Jew.” I’ve been privy to the presence of neo-Nazis in America my entire life, because as Jews we have to keep our finger on the pulse of those who would have us extinguished. During this same time period, I, a white girl, started wearing my hair in dreadlocks all throughout high school. Hindsight is 20/20 and I hope that my lived experience is a clear example of how being oppressed in one sense does not preclude someone from turning around and being an oppressor in the same breath.
I hear so many white people trying to exclude themselves from the work of dismantling white supremacy because at some point in history, their people were enslaved and oppressed, too. From where I stand, this is not a reason to opt-out, rather, it is the most personal & meaningful reason to opt-in.
As people previously enslaved & attacked, it should make our ears more sensitive when people cry out that they, too, are being targeted. Our experiences should move us to form walls of protection around them, letting oppressors know we will not allow their tyranny. Not now, not ever, never again.
Watching present day America unfold has been textbook know-your-history-so-you-don’t-repeat-it type stuff. Thank you to my Hebrew school teachers for impressing upon me the danger signs of fascism, hatred, & evil as displayed by the Nazi party. As I continue to unlearn and take action towards an America that values and uplifts BIPOC, I keep in my heart all the Jewish people who didn’t get to live their full lives. I look to the spirit of the non-Jews who broke man-made laws to fight for the divine rights of all, like Oskar Schindler, Hermine “Miep” Gies who housed Anne Frank, and even to silver screen characters like Rosie Betzler from JoJo Rabbit. Just as they were not Jews, I am not Black, Brown or Indigenous, yet I am committed to using my resources to move humanity forward in the right direction.
