Dafna Wu, a 48-year-old San Francisco nurse, resembles her Chinese father more than her Jewish mother. She’s been Jewish her whole life, but she’s used to walking into synagogues and having people ask who she’s with, as if she didn’t belong there of her own accord.
Wu and her lesbian partner, Barbara Cymrot, an Ashkenazi Jew, have two children. One was born to Cymrot and one to Wu, both were adopted legally by the other mother — and both bear a strong resemblance to their sperm-donor fathers.
The elder daughter, Ruby, 24, looks like the Jewish man whose sperm Cymrot used to become pregnant. Ruby looks “like someone from a Vishniac photo,” Wu says. When her daughter was a baby, Wu adds, “people thought I was her nanny.”
But the couple’s youngest child, 9-year-old Amalia, who comes from a Chinese-American sperm donor, looks Asian. The Hebrew school she attends is filled with mixed-race children, but the parents in the congregation are all white. Amalia is in the minority, which concerns Wu.
“All my life I’ve had to defend being Jewish,” Wu says. “I don’t want her to have to explain her Judaism, or be exoticized for it. I just want her to be a kid, not ‘that special, multiracial kid.’ ”
That’s why Wu brings Amalia to retreats and holiday celebrations run by Be’chol Lashon, a San Francisco-based organization for ethnically and racially diverse Jews and their families. At these events, including the most recent retreat Oct. 2-4 at Walker Creek Ranch, a half-hour west of Petaluma, Amalia plays with other Jewish children who are black, Hispanic and Asian, as well as a sprinkling of white kids from nonconventional families.
They study Hebrew, celebrate the holidays, read Bible stories and learn about Israel. But they also talk openly with their counselors about what it means to be Jews of color, to juggle an identity people can’t see with the one proclaimed by their skin.
About 5.4 percent of America’s Jews are non-white or Hispanic, according to the 2000-2001 National Jewish Population Survey. A 2004 study by the Institute for Jewish and Community Research, Be’chol Lashon’s parent organization, puts that number at about 10 percent.
Nevertheless, say activists in the field, the prevailing assumption in this country is that Jews are white, and that Jews of other racial or ethnic backgrounds are adoptees or converts. But increasingly they are not, as the children of mixed-race couples grow to adulthood and begin raising their own Jewish children.
And as their numbers grow, mixed-race Jewish families face the same question often put to interfaith families: Is there a need for separate programming? The answer, judging by the growth in the field, seems to be yes.
After 12 years of holiday programming in San Francisco and six years of annual fall retreats, Be’chol Lashon ran its first summer camp this past June, when a critical mass of its families’ children reached the 8 to 12 age group.
An East Coast organization with similar goals, the Jewish Multiracial Network, founded by white Ashkenazi parents of black children, last summer formally passed leadership on to the next generation and is now run by and for Jews of color.
Both organizations have greatly expanded their activities this year. “This is a population that is growing, that deserves our sensitivity and is not getting it,” says Paul Golin, associate director of the Jewish Outreach Institute.
Golin has participated in Jewish Multiracial Network events with his Japanese wife, and he expects their future children to face the same questions she experiences in Jewish settings. “I’ve learned a tremendous amount of what it means to have white privilege,” he notes. “I was fairly oblivious to it before. There’s white privilege in America, and Ashkenazi privilege in the Jewish world.”
But Be’chol Lashon founder and director Diane Tobin says she notices a “marked increase of interest” in reaching out to non-white Jews within the greater Jewish community. “Diversity has become a very popular issue, especially with the election of Barack Obama,” she says.
At Be’chol Lashon’s recent Sukkot retreat, parents interviewed say they don’t want to segregate their children from the larger community. Most, but not all, send their children to mainstream religious schools and belong to synagogues, and look at the Be’chol Lashon activities as supplementary, giving them space to explore their connection to Judaism without having to explain who they are.
Tobin created Be’chol Lashon with her husband, the late Gary Tobin, 12 years ago when they adopted Jonah, who is black. The Tobins’ daughter Sarah Spencer, who was 21 at the time, was in on the decision. “We thought it was important to have a community where Jonah and kids like him would not have to choose between their identities, where they didn’t have to be black sometimes and Jewish sometimes,” she says.
Spencer, who has a 2-year-old son with her husband, a black Jamaican, says at first she wasn’t sure there was a need for the new summer camp. “But every parent I’ve talked to in the program says they’ve been looking for this,” she says. “So it seems there was a void.”
Children who attended the summer camp say they feel the difference. “I have more friends that understand me here,” says 10-year-old Aviva Davis.
Lori Rosenstein, 37, who was born in Korea and adopted by Jewish parents from Vermont, led a retreat workshop to teach children how to answer well meaning but nosy questions about their background. “If a child is of a different race, people feel entitled to know their story; they ask questions that are personal, even intrusive,” she says. “I tell them, you have choices: You can walk away, you can share what you feel comfortable sharing, or you can educate.”
At both Jewish Multiracial Network and Be’chol Lashon, mixed-race or non-white children who grew up in the organizations are taking over from their parents’ generation. The biggest shift took place within JMN this June, when 36-year-old Tanya Bowers of Washington, D.C., was elected the group’s first black president. Now the younger generation is setting the agenda.
Within Be’chol Lashon, young non-white faces are more prevalent in the group’s leadership. Kenny Kahn, 27, son of a white Jewish mother and black non-Jewish father, is a veteran of Hebrew school, Jewish summer camps and an Israel program, and has been coming to Be’chol Lashon for 12 years. He now serves as head counselor at the retreats and summer camp.
Kahn grew up in Richmond and attended Reform Congregation Beth El in Berkeley. “I had my Richmond friends and my Beth El friends,” he says. “Being able to mediate between those two worlds has become a theme in my life.”
Kahn never experienced anti-Semitism in the black community, nor raised eyebrows in the Jewish community. But he relishes the space Be’chol Lashon gives him and his peers to explore their Judaism at leisure with others who share their backgrounds and concerns.
“In California we’re blessed with tolerance,” he says. “But tolerance is just the first step to acceptance, and that’s what we need more of in the Jewish community.”