Liz Kleinrock is accustomed to people telling her, “You don’t look Jewish.” The Korean Jewish transracial adoptee co-authored a book called “What Jewish Looks Like” to dispel the idea that there’s just one way to look Jewish.
She moderated a panel on May 13 about belonging, intersectionality and the Jewish community in honor of Jewish American Heritage Month. Sponsored by the American Jewish Committee and DC Public Library, the event took place at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library in the nation’s capital.
“The library thought it would be a great opportunity to feature this important book,” Alan Ronkin, the regional director of AJC Washington, D.C., said in an interview. “I think it’s been a great opportunity to hear from Jewish folks we don’t always hear from.”
“The book offers so much — it has folks of color, folks of varying abilities, people from different cultures and backgrounds,” Joshua Maxey, one of the panelists, said. “It’s an important reminder that as Jews, we are not this monolith and we bring so much rich history, common history, but we all have individual strengths that create a beautiful mosaic of who we are as a people.”
The panel included Maxey, the executive director of Bet Mishpachah, D.C.’s LGBTQ+ synagogue; Ruth Behar, a Cuban American author, anthropologist and professor; and Ari Ne’eman, a disability rights advocate and professor of public health. In addition to their diverse identities, they are all Jewish.
Jewish history and culture has historically been presented in a very narrow lens, Kleinrock said at the event. In running a workshop on Jewish identity, she found that for many outside the Jewish community, their only education around Jewish folks focuses on the Holocaust.
“We know that’s not how we only want to be defined,” Kleinrock said at the event. “Caroline [Kusin Pritchard, my co-author] and I wanted to reclaim this idea of who Jewish people are … and to really embrace and celebrate the diversity of who we are.”
“What Jewish Looks Like” features vibrant illustrations and brief biographies of Jewish historical figures and modern-day people. Behar is one of the 36 “Jewish heroes” spotlighted in the book.
Born in Cuba to two Jewish parents — her mom Ashkenazi and her father Sephardic — Behar has often been subject to the question, “How can you be Cuban and Jewish? Do you have one Cuban parent and one Jewish parent?”
“I grew up continually having to explain who I was and how I came to have this odd mix of identities,” Behar said at the event.
Maxey works with Jews of color and LGBTQ+ Jews in the District to ensure that community members like himself feel at home within the Jewish community. Coming from a “very Conservative” non-Jewish religious background, Maxey’s first encounter with Judaism came as he walked by a “beautiful building” in the Upper East Side of New York. That building was a synagogue.
A docent invited Maxey inside and said, “You have a place here.”
“Even though I wasn’t Jewish at the time, she really opened up this golden way of thinking to me that as a proud gay Black man, I have purpose in this world and I have a mission in this world, and that religion doesn’t have to be opposed to that,” he said.
Ne’eman discussed being inspired by disability rights advocate Judy Heumann’s strong Jewish identity. Despite being turned away from her yeshiva due to the fact that she used a wheelchair, Heumann remained a “prominent figure in the Jewish community” and active leader at Adas Israel Congregation in D.C., Ne’eman said.
He added that Heumann “always” asked young, disabled activists if they had a place to go for Seder or Yom Kippur. The “mother of the disabilities rights movement” held Shabbat dinners during protests, including the historic 504 sit-in of 1977.
“It just gave me this incredible feeling because it said to me that it was possible to reconcile the identity as a disability rights activist, a disabled person and my identity as a proud Jew, and those two things could live together,” Ne’eman said. “I didn’t have to have the Jewish world and the disability rights world, but I could be a proud Jewish disability rights activist.”
Kleinrock echoed this sentiment, adding that she’s not 50% Asian and 50% Jewish, but 100% Asian and Jewish.
“They all live inside me simultaneously and I can’t separate them, and I would never want to separate them because then I wouldn’t be who I am,” she said.
Behar said she wants people to know that just like Jewish doesn’t have one “look,” Jewish people don’t all speak the same language. There’s English and Hebrew, but also Yiddish, Ladino and Judeo-Arabic, among other tongues.
Ne’eman emphasized the importance of communal solidarity. Jewish identities sometimes don’t fit into preconceived notions — such as fitting neatly into an ethnic category — which can “strike some people as weird.”
“Because of that weirdness, I think it’s really important for us to find ways to stick together,” Ne’eman said. “Being Jewish is really what taught me the value of that sense of connection.”
Kleinrock cited a study that found that Jews of color make up at least 12% to 15% of American Jews. Looking towards the future, she expects that number to grow.
“I hope this diversity truly becomes the fabric of who we are,” Maxey said.
