December 20, 2016

INTERNALIZED ANTI-SEMITISM + WHITE PRIVILEGE: AN AMERICAN IDENTITY

Aliza Abolafia

English 300 – Haivan Hoang

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Introduction התחלה

When I set out to write this piece, I tried to leave myself out of it. I wanted it to be about the

racism of the Jewish community and the internalized oppression that paralyzes generations of

Jewish leaders from acting on values of social justice. Millennia of anti-Semitism have

seemingly afforded these same leaders indefatigable cognitive dissonance in the face of racism

and bigotry and an obsession with self preservation which at times feels illogical and paranoid.

But the truth is that I am not trying to attack the decisions that generations of Jewish leaders have

made in the face of horrible prejudice and violence. I am not here to criticize or make judgment

on choices that were made by my ancestors before me, for me.

Though I feel anger and disappointment and shame well up in me each time I think about the

inaction and irresponsibility of my community, I feel a deep love and commitment to my people.

This essay seeks to interrogate my own complicity in white supremacy as a Sephardic Jewish

woman living in the grey area of erasure and white privilege. This is an attempt at telling the part

of my story that has larger implications for our society as a whole.

I have divided this piece into three sections: Water, Fire, and Earth. Each section represents a

different aspect of my Jewish identity and how it relates to race in the United States. In writing

this multi-media essay I have tried to explore parts of my social consciousness that are guarded

by pain and guilt. In the wake of Trump’s historic electoral victory, I feel obligated to give voice

to the pieces of myself that have been robbed by the oppressive hierarchies which are the

infrastructure of our American society.

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In the first section, Water, I juxtapose the Jewish ritual bath and the public pool as a metaphor

for assimilation and erasure for Jews in the first half of the twentieth century. The mikvah is a

place of transformation, conversion, and unabashed celebration of Jewish life. During the early

twentieth century, many public swimming pools were “Gentile Only”, segregating the pool on

grounds of hygiene, and buying into anti-Semitic tropes. Later, the pools were opened to anyone

who looked like a gentile. For me the metaphor is clear: Only by denouncing your heritage,

assimilating, and becoming White and Christian, can you truly belong in America.

The second section, Fire, is a social media collage documenting the willingness of many Jewish

communal leaders to embrace the racism, bigotry, and anti-Semitism of Steve Bannon out of

fear. The section is named after the movement of young Jews called #FireBannon who are

standing up and allying themselves with other minority groups seeking justice. They are wearing

their Judaism proudly in the face of hegemony and claiming the parts of their identities that have

been slowly erased from their upbringings and consciousness by assimilation. I have compiled

screenshots from the days and weeks after the election documenting posts by Jewish activists

calling on Trump to #FireBannon. Next to each screenshot I have written a question, some of the

many that have struggled to the surface during this process emotional reckoning.

I try to pull all of this together with the third section, Earth, which is an attempt at understanding

how Whiteness became an aspiration and a form of safety for Jews in the U.S. I use the

experience of my grandmother to try to reflect on the ways that internalized oppression exists in

my daily experience and life, even though I often fail to acknowledged it. I try to recognize

contradiction of assimilation, which is both feared and revered in equal parts in my family.

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I struggle to find the balance between mourning the part of me that is marginalized by daily life

in America while recognizing the privilege that my white skin affords me. I am writing this essay

to undermine the expectation that my whiteness defines my activism and that my Judaism

demands my assimilation. I am afforded the privileges that I have today because my Nona was

able to choose whiteness seventy years ago, and I am white today because my Nona was given

no other choice but to assimilate.

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Water מים

In Judaism, a mikveh is a bath designed for the purpose of ritual immersion. The word

“mikveh,” as used in the Hebrew Bible, literally means a “collection”—generally, a collection

of water. The custom of bathing in the mikveh is thought to be responsible for keeping Medieval

Jews healthy during the Bubonic Plague. There are numerous laws dictated by rabbinic

authority which define the prescribed uses and structure of the mikveh.

The first public outdoor swimming pool in the United States was built in Belmont,

Massachusetts in 1912 under the direction of a wealthy resident named Henry Underwood.

According to local historian Richard Betts, "Mr. Underwood felt that the boys and girls in his

neighborhood were not having as many good times as he used to have in his boyhood”, and so he

decided to donate his empty railroad lot to building a playground and swimming pool for the

children of the town at his expense. "Hereafter, our children are going to learn how to swim at an

early age, and nobody can drive them out of this park as they have been driven off private land,"

said Underwood, referencing recent altercations between children and adults in local backyards.

Certain regulations of the swimming hole barred adults, allowing them to use the pool "only in

such hours as the little persons will be unlikely to want to use the park” and it was the happy cite

of play from the moment it opened its doors. Children learned to swim and spent hours playing

outside in the newly opened facility.

Immersion in the mikveh is customary under a variety of circumstances: before your wedding,

before Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement), to finalize a conversion to Judaism, and to sanctify

new new dishes. It is a space of purity and holiness and transformation. A convert walks down the

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seven steps into the warm water of the mikveh and immerses fully - covering every strand of hair

with water - a total of three times. The convert is accompanied by a witness who stands by the

edge of the bath, an observer to the final step of the conversion process and the first to greet and

welcome the Jewish person into their community.

The mikveh is the ultimate celebration of Jewish identity. To bathe in the mikveh is to affirm and

reaffirm one’s connection to the Jewish people and Jewish law.

European Jews have not always qualified as “white” in America. The whitening of Jews coincided

with an economic need for skilled labor in order to adjust to the growing post-war economy.

During the first half of the twentieth century Jews were barred from public spaces and considered

subhuman by the mainstream voices of society. “Cleanliness is an unknown quantity to these

people. They cannot be lifted up to a higher plane because they do not want to be” read one line

of a New York Times article about Jews titled “East Side Street Vendors”.

The swimming pool was a space of assimilation in the United States. Jews, among others, were

not allowed to swim with gentiles because they were thought to be unclean. For Jewish Americans

it was a reassertion of familiar anti-Semitic prescriptions that were familiar to them from other

lands. The regulation on swimming pools changed later to specify that one must “look” like a

gentile in order to swim in the pool. The message is clear: denounce your identity and be welcome,

or refuse to assimilate and forever be excluded from society.

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Fire אש

In Judaism (as well as other faiths) there is an idea of the eternal flame which

symbolizes God’s eternal presence. I like to imagine that it represents the flame

that keeps the Jewish people together and thriving even in difficult times.

Ever since the presidential election this November, unpacking my newsfeed has

been an emotional endeavor. Young Jews from every corner of my past flocked to

social media to write out their fear and anguish and anger. Writing—in the form of

op-eds, statuses, and blog posts—became a platform for cathartic dialogue within

the community and beyond.

I have documented this narrative through screenshots collected from my Facebook

newsfeed. The fire igniting within the Jewish community to stand up and reject

bigotry has also raised questions for me around identity, whiteness, and belonging.

Though I am far from an understanding of the solution or answer, I have come to

value the act of writing as central in dismantling oppressive systems without

alienating the people who are a part of them.

The eternal flame still burns in the movement to #FireBannon and in the struggle

towards peoplehood that is played out both online and off every day.

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Why aren’t I out on the streets protesting?

Can I still make a difference if I am not

actively demonstrating solidarity and

allyship with marginalized people?

How can I feel oppressed, when I have

white privilege?

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Why are white Jewish leaders silent in the

face of real danger?

Why does it matter so much to me?

If I cannot reject my whiteness, how do I

make space for my Jewish identity in

social justice spaces?

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Why do I want to turn away and hide

at the time when I most need my voice

heard?

Is fighting for justice a Jewish value?

If yes, justice for whom and at what cost?

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Is my fear warranted?

Why does it take the threat of anti-

Semitism to get Jewish folks to care

about bigotry and prejudice?

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Earth אדמה

My grandmother buried everything in the ground when she chose to be American. She buried it

with her parents in Gallipoli, Turkey where you might also be able to find her natural dark hair,

her mother tongue of Ladino, the scarf that used to cover her head, and the poverty that kept her

isolated in the ways of the old country.

My Nona is from the Bronx and later Coney Island. She remembers the blocks that were filled

exclusively with Turkish Jews fleeing their homes. First the men came and then they sent for

their mothers and wives. The neighborhood was alive with the sound of Ladino and the smells of

chickpea and olive oil and lamb. They spent all of their holidays together and helped one another

start businesses. As the family legend goes, my grandfather saved up enough money to buy a

sewing machine and little by little built up his business. A few years after my father was born,

the youngest son, my Nona and Saba had enough money to move to Mount Vernon and then

New Rochelle.

Through benefits of the GI bill, benefits that were largely denied to black veterans, my

grandfather was able to move his family to the suburbs. In New Rochelle, my Nona had to learn

how to make meatloaf and macaroni and cheese. She buried her celeriac soup recipe deep in the

back of her mind and learned how to enjoy the salty taste of lox. Lox and herring and kugel, the

foods of the Jews at the New Rochelle synagogue who had come from Poland and Germany

years before.

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She built a community of friends who were her age and helped to redefine what it meant to be a

Jewish woman and mother, independent of the old homogenous Turkish neighborhoods of New

York City. The middle class life afforded to white army veterans became more than a ticket out

of poverty; it was an escape route from the discrimination that my family had faced while living

in a Jewish neighborhood.

My grandmother buried everything that made her Sephardic in the rubble of a New York City

tenement when she chose to become American. She was given the choice to assimilate and create

a life for her family or remain the sub-human classification of “Jew” which would keep her sons

from attending private lessons and university.

My Nona chose middle class assimilation over working class annihilation. She carries that fear

of annihilation with her to this day and has passed it down to my father and to me. Now she has

amnesia and sometimes when I call her on the phone she speaks to me in Ladino or Arabic and I

listen, paralyzed on the other end of the line, unable to understand a single word.

I have grown up thinking of myself as white with very little ambiguity around the matter. My

Nona’s dream of being both white and Jewish is no longer a possibility, it is the rule, and it is

there that the crossroads of my identity meet. What is my relationship to white identity when I

also feel that I have been robbed by white supremacy?

Now the work begins of unearthing the parts of myself that my Nona was forced to bury years

ago. Those are the parts that I want to celebrate.

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Works Cited

Biss, Eula. Notes from No Man's Land: American Essays, 2009. Print.

Brodkin, Karen. How Jews Became White Folks: And What That Says About Race in America.

New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2010. Print.

Tucker, Franklin. "Centennial Pool Party: Underwood Pool Turns 100." Belmont, MA Patch.

N.p., 18 June 2012. Web. 13 Dec. 2016.

Schoener, Allon. 1967. Portal to America: The Lower East Side 1970-1925. New York: Holt,

Rinehart, and Winston.