It is powerful to see yourself reflected in history, in a story, or even in a room. That power is a profound sense of comfort, knowing that you are not alone, there are others like you. It is a feeling of belonging.
Too often as a queer Jew of color I have felt alone: my people absent from Hebrew school lessons, traditions, and communal practice. I have grown to expect that I will be the only queer Jew of color at services or at any other Jewish social gathering. And, despite being welcomed in word time and time again, I have struggled to feel like I belong. What I needed was to know that I was not the only one. I longed to feel at home in a Jewish community I so desperately wanted to call mine.
I turned to the Internet, Googling to find pieces of myself reflected in others. I found it easy to find LGBT Jews or to find Jews of color, there were even whole organizations working to support these identities.
But, finding people at the cross-section, both queer and of color proved to be a challenging task. Eventually, I found a few. My search led me to Raffi Freedman-Gurspan, Michael Twitty, Y-Love and more. It took hours of Googling to feel like maybe just maybe Judaism could hold me. I had finally found my nugget of hope.
My personal googling project became bigger when I realized that likely I wasn’t the only one on a mad Google hunt. This needed to be easier for all of us. No Jew should need to spend hours on the Internet to feel like they might belong. So, I reached out to the Jewish Multiracial Network and proposed a collaboration to pull together all the resources we could find for LGBTQ Jews of color to make that search just a little easier.
Our work putting together this resource list led me to some of my now-favorite resources like an Eli Talk given by Ilana Kaufman and the writing of Aurora Levins Morales. That project is almost complete and although our list is not super long, I could not be more proud to provide a mirror to other queer Jews of color.
And to say to all who have been searching: We belong. You and I are both here, and we deserve a community that we see ourselves in and that sees us for the tremendous beauty and strength that we bring. This is for you.
Keep your eyes on the Jewish Multiracial Network. Kathryn’s collaboration will be live later this month.
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