A New Year, a New Identity

Well, here I am. After an almost two year hiatus of focusing on myself, school, and honestly not having the patience to sit down and write, I am finally back and hopefully for good.

Welcome back beautiful people, the three of you that keep up to date on my life.

Chag Semeach and Shana Tova. I hope you all had a lovely Rosh Hashanah. I’m back today with what seems to be a recurring theme in my writing: Judaism.

However instead of the usual politics and depressing rants about all the awfulness that has been going on in America and in our world, I’m here to talk about culture.

Around the High Holidays is when I truly feel my Jewishness is put to question. Not to be vulnerable on main or anything but, as a patrilineal Jew, I have never felt like I belong in any Jewish space, especially on the High Holidays. The depth of spirituality that I see the people around me experience on these important days touch my soul, not necessarily out of some divine connection, but because I feel disconnected from my community here on the mortal plane.

In my last blog post almost two years ago, I discussed how I felt strength in numbers. The turmoil of the political world was dividing everyone yet somehow, the Jewish community remained steadfast on inclusivity. In a world two years post 10/7, it’s difficult to not feel that sentiment dwindling.

Post October Seventh, many more secular Jews turned to religion in a more devout way. This includes many of my own friends. While I am blessed with a circle of people who support me through thick and thin, I have had people close to me go full orthodox and suddenly refute my Jewishness. Even the ones that didn’t actively say I wasn’t Jewish suddenly were deeply involved in communities that I somehow was “not the right fit for.” There were so many communities throughout New York that welcomed me with open arms but it is difficult not to focus on the people that didn’t. Questions circled my head for months:

“Is there something wrong with me?”

“I’ve seen practicing Jews with tattoos, why am I not enough?”

“Why is my Jewishness determined by my mother, when my father’s Soviet passport still had ‘JEW’ written in it when he immigrated?”

“Did I not fight shoulder to shoulder with you when it mattered?”

It hurts, being told time and time again that half of your parentage invalidates your entire identity. But this is not the first time I have felt this way.

I’m a mixed kid of the early 2000’s. I know, the jokes write themselves. Slam poetry, Logic (the rapper), Ginny and Georgia. l will admit, I was a victim of mixed kid angst. Who wouldn’t be growing up in such a self segregated city as New York? [This I will unpack in a different post]

I was always fighting against who I am in hopes of becoming something I am not. But really, who am I? I am 20 years old and still fighting that inner battle every day and will continue to for the foreseeable future. Being mixed does not help me answer that question, especially considering how ridiculous my ethnic combination is.

Being the child of a Soviet Jew and a Haitian possibly Middle Eastern first gen American created a crossroad I have been stuck at my entire life. I don’t want to hit you with the stereotypical “too black for the white kids too white for the black kids” because that wasn’t it. I’m not African American, so that was not a community I was desperate to belong to. But the lacking Caribbean community in my area made it hard for me to explore that part of myself. My mother working all the time did not leave her much time to teach my sister and I about our Haitian heritage.

Despite my Russian background being more readily available for me to learn about thanks to my father’s flexible job, I was embarrassed of the Russian language drills and strange foods. I, like many young children of color, just wanted to be an ordinary, humble, white picket fence American.

As I got older, I came to terms with the fact that I wasn’t going to magically become some all american blue eyed blond girl. But suddenly I did not have a community and by extension, I had lost my identity. Pretending to be white was definitely not the move, yet dropping that fictitious label left a void I did not know how to fill. I then gravitated to my black side. However due to the aforementioned lack of Caribbean culture in my neighborhood, I forced myself into a community I had originally believed I categorically did not belong to, the Black American community. I had friends, but many of those people were fake, falling for a personality I curated based on stereotypes, ideas of what I thought Blackness was. I wish I still had photos of the corny outfits I wore pretending to be “street” and “tough” when I lived in a peaceful Jewish neighborhood bordering on Yonkers.

Now looking back, I can confidently say that I am not African American and have never been. That is its own beautiful culture that I have the privilege of learning about this semester, but I am the grandchild of Haitian immigrants who did not have the same generational history of American slavery. So now let’s talk modern day.

Who am I?

What is my identity?

Well I can confidently say that I am proud and open about my Russian heritage. There is no part of me that is embarrassed about the grammar drills and reading exercises I did as a kid, so much so that I get confused when people are shocked to discover that I, a black presenting woman, speak Russian.

I am Jewish. Since 10/7 I have been more loud and proud of my Jewish heritage than ever. My mother had always encouraged that part of my culture despite her not being Jewish herself. Between being pushed to go on birthright as soon as possible to celebrating Hanukkah right alongside Christmas and convincing my father to pass on his yeshiva era knowledge onto his very secular children (yes my father went to yeshiva. I even have photos), my mother was constantly pushing my sister and I to explore that part of our cultural history.

It’s thanks to my mother that I took an active interest in reconnecting with my heritage, especially after October seventh when she supported my growing curiosity. She cleared her whole Saturdays for me to help me out when I was exploring being shomer shabbos. She found me Jewish communities and bought me Jewish literature. This is why I struggle to understand why so many people in the Jewish community don’t accept my Jewish identity. Judaism has this beautiful concept of homecoming for secular Jews: Teshuva. Why is it that I must renounce the blood of my mother if she is the one who encouraged me, who ultimately brought me home?

While the Haitian identity has always been a struggle to connect deeper to despite my efforts, I make the choice to search more and complete that part of my identity. My mother’s heritage and strength is what made me return to my own, and I will not leave her culture by the wayside.

While I may not be Halakhically Jewish, I will not hide my mother’s culture to be accepted into Jewish spaces anymore. She is the one who made me ba'alat teshuva. And these high holidays, I will be praying for her.

Happy 5786