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Obama's cousin-in-law Rabbi Capers Funnye battles to open the gates of Judaism
By Julie Gruenbaum Fax, November 28, 2008, The Jewish Journal

Rabbi Capers C. Funnye Jr. is a kippah-wearing black rabbi who leads a multiethnic congregation in Chicago.

But if you happen to run into him, don't let your curiosity come across the wrong way.

Speaking last week in Los Angeles to an interdenominational group of rabbis who perform conversions, Funnye (pronounced fuh-NAY) described one of many unsettling encounters he's had in his 30-plus years as a Jew.

While visiting Florida about 10 years ago, Funnye attended morning prayers, donning his prayer shawl and tefillin. At the end of prayers, a man approached him.

"Are you Jewish?"

Funnye, with good-natured sarcasm, responded:

"Jewish? Nooooo. I was just walking by, and I saw this stuff just sitting there outside, and I wanted to see how it worked."

Funnye, 56, has dedicated his life to chiseling away at the conventional, but increasingly inaccurate, conception of who is a Jew. Whether by reaching out to Chicago's rabbis to allow him to serve on the board of rabbis or traveling to Nigeria to help the Ibo tribes explore their Jewish reawakening, Funnye is laying the groundwork for a time when the wider Jewish community can without questioning accommodate Jews of all ethnicities.

"I have to have one pair of glasses for all Jews and not see that because Jews are of a different ethnicity, that makes a difference in my approach to them," Funnye said. "I am working for the day that Jews are simply Jews."

That message resonated with the 35 rabbis gathered at Valley Beth Shalom in Encino for a daylong seminar of the Sandra Caplan Community Bet Din of Southern California, sponsored jointly with the Board of Rabbis of Southern California.

The Sandra Caplan Bet Din is a cooperative effort by Conservative, Reconstructionist and Reform rabbis to make the conversion process unified, warm and spiritually and psychologically meaningful.

Since it opened in 2002, the bet din has converted 122 people.

Funnye embodies in one person's journey all that these rabbis are working toward and struggling with: the need to break down false barriers in how "Jew" is defined; the challenge to wholeheartedly integrate those who convert; and the questions of self-definition that inevitably come up for born Jews, who are so often less knowledgeable and spiritually committed than apparent "foreigners" who choose to be Jewish.

"How we relate to the Jew-by-choice, the unchurched, the seekers, tells me more about myself than anything else," said Rabbi Harold Schulweis, rabbi at Valley Beth Shalom, who followed Funnye's keynote with a response. "When I look into the eyes of a Jew-by-choice, I see myself reflected."

In the past several decades, the topic of conversion has pitted liberal rabbis against their Orthodox counterparts, who don't recognize non-Orthodox conversions as legitimate. The issue is especially heated in Israel, where the Orthodox rabbinate holds legal status in civil affairs, such as marriage, divorce and burial.

But the rabbis at the seminar also expressed frustration at their own liberal members who refer to peers as "converts," even years after they've become Jewish.

Funnye himself converted three times. The first two times were with communities of black Jews -- also called Israelites or Black Hebrews.

Funnye's spiritual search began when his African Methodist Episcopalian minister advised him to think about going into the service of God. Christian tenets -- and especially the demands on its leaders -- didn't sit well with him. He explored Islam and evangelical Christianity while a student at Howard University, then a few years later, while working at Arthur Anderson consulting, he ran into a group of African Americans who wore kippahs. He began studying with them and attending their Chicago synagogue and converted to Judaism with that congregation in 1972, immersing in a pool.

It was a few years later that he attended a synagogue in Harlem, where he saw a fuller expression of Judaism and ritual, and the leader there encouraged him to become a religious leader for black Jews. In 1979 he re-immersed in a lake, since conversion requires immersion in a natural body of water or a mikvah, ritual bath. In 1985, after studying for four years, he was ordained by the New York-based Israelite Board of Rabbis. During that time, he also received his bachelor's and master's degrees from the Spertus Institute for Jewish Studies in Chicago.

And it was that year that he also decided he wanted a full, halachic conversion, one that would meet most mainstream Jewish legal standards. He put together a bet din of two Orthodox rabbis and two Conservative rabbis, including his mentor, Rabbi Morris Fishman. Funnye, his wife, Mary, and their four children -- who were already in Conservative day school at the time -- immersed in a mikvah.

Throughout his journey in the Jewish community, Funnye has recognized the need to make his community part of the fabric of the larger Jewish community.

Funnye is the rabbi of Temple Beth Shalom B'nai Zaken Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation, which serves a multiethnic population. Founded in 1918 and now with 220 members, the synagogue moved from Chicago's South Side to Marquette Park six years ago. Marquette Park is infamous as a center of activity for the American Nazi Party and site of a Martin Luther King Jr. march that ended after just a few blocks because bricks and bottles were being thrown.

Funnye has been at Beth Shalom since 1984, when he started as assistant rabbi. In 1991, he succeeded Rabbi Abihu Ben Reuben, who had led the congregation from 1947. While respecting Reuben's traditions and teachings, Funnye sought to give Judaism fuller expression in the services and rituals and to make the conversion process more oriented toward halachah, Jewish law.

At Funnye's congregation, Shabbat is an all-day event. Congregants come Friday night and then return Saturday for morning prayers, mostly in Hebrew, a reading of the entire Torah portion and an interactive sermon. A gospel-style choir brings congregants to their feet, and after a Kiddush lunch, about 70 percent of attendees stay for afternoon services and informal Torah study, followed by Havdalah.

Most of his congregants keep kosher, avoiding shellfish and pork, and buying kosher meat. Most of his members can't afford the high tuition of the day school but attend the congregation's Hebrew school.

Two of Funnye's sisters have also converted to Judaism, and his late mother regularly made sure her minister invited her son-the-rabbi to speak at church. Even his in-laws, religious evangelicals, are open to what they see as a way to draw closer to God. His two married children have both married Jews-by-choice. He and his wife have one granddaughter and six grandsons.

"I've told my children, 'If you don't marry someone who is Jewish, it is my prayer that they become Jewish. It doesn't matter to me what they look like. What matters to me is that they are Jewish, and their children are going to be Jewish, and that you instill in them and imbue in them the principals and values I have tried to instill and imbue in you,'" Funnye said, adding, "baruch Hashem (thank God) they've been listening to their old man."

He has many congregants who, like his family, have three generations or more at Beth Shalom. He also sees many spiritual seekers, among them white Jews. He is in the process of converting an extended Mexican family of anusim, Spanish Jews forced to convert to Christianity 500 years ago. The family was attracted to the synagogue because the worship space hidden in their family's Mexico City basement was also called Beth Shalom.

He teaches many seeking conversion and brings them before a bet din of Conservative rabbis -- one of the changes he made in an effort to up the quality of Jewish observance in his congregation. Potential converts must study for at least a year and attend services regularly.

"I often like to tell new people that when you start studying Judaism, every time you get a new book, every time you learn something new, it should feel like dipping a spoon into a bucket of fresh well water. If you ever had well water, it stimulates the whole being -- this is what Judaism does when we learn. It stimulates the being," Funnye said. "It's never stopped doing that for me. The more I learn, the richer it tastes; the better it tastes."

Funnye is vice president of the International Israelite Board of Rabbis, a group of 20 rabbis who serve five congregations in New York, one in Philadelphia, one in Chicago and one in Barbados.

Many black Jews believe that the original Israelites were African -- they came out of Egypt in North Africa -- and they consider themselves not converts, but reverts, going back to their true origins.

There is tremendous diversity among groups calling themselves Black Hebrew, Israelites or Black Jews. While some black Jewish congregations hew to Jewish theology and practice, others retain a messianic angle, including Jesus in their theology. Some have Jewish aspects but are mingled with many other traditions.

Funnye's adoption of halachic standards for his congregation stems in part from his desire to connect his flock with the mainstream Jewish community, something he has worked on for years.

After getting his degrees at Spertus, he worked as a business manager there until 1991. He not only got to meet Jewish luminaries, such as Elie Wiesel, but built relationships with many rabbis and professors.

He has touched many parts of the African American and Chicago Jewish communities: He has taught at congregational schools, he lectures widely, has consulted with the Spertus Museum of Judaica and the Du Sable Museum of African American History and has served on the boards of Chicago's Jewish Council on Urban Affairs, Akiba Schechter Jewish Day School and the Chicago Board of Rabbis.

Funnye's near-unanimous acceptance onto the board in 1997 held historical significance. His predecessors in New York, who had attempted to join their board of rabbis in the 1940s and '50s, did not even get dignified with a rejection -- they were simply ignored.

He also reaches out to the larger African American community through coalitions with neighborhood churches and has hosted joint programs with Muslim groups, as well.

Now, Funnye is extending that acceptance across the Atlantic to Africa.

Funnye is the associate director and Chicago regional director of BeChol Lashon, Hebrew for "in every language," an initiative of the San Francisco-based Institute for Jewish and Community Research (IJCR), where he is a senior researcher. The program reaches out to Jews of color from all over the world, from the anusim communities of Latin America to African tribes rediscovering Jewish roots, like the Abuyudaya of Uganda. Funnye is coordinator for IJCR's Pan-African Jewish Alliance, which seeks to connect African American Jews with Jews in Africa. Funnye has been to Africa six times and works primarily with the Ibo of Nigeria.

Ongoing research by the Pan-African Jewish Alliance has found that there may be as many as 30,000 Nigerians reclaiming Jewish roots. An Ibo oral tradition holds that their ancestors were Hebrews who migrated from Israel to Africa 1,500 years ago. While many have no trace of Jewish heritage, others have held on to traditions. The Ibo circumcise their boys on the eighth day and gather their elders by sounding teruah and shevarim notes on the ram's horn. Their priests wear a white garment with blue stripes, fringed all around. As the Ibo begin to explore their Jewish roots and try to connect to the worldwide Jewish community, Funnye's congregation is raising funds to build a sister synagogue in Nigeria, and he is working to get the Ibo the educational materials and leadership they need.

"Africa is ripe with hundreds, even thousands of people who claim a link to Judaism, and they're asking the question, 'Where is the gate that leads to Jewish peoplehood?'"

Funnye wants the answer to that question to resonate a little more loudly and clearly.

He understands that most American Jews still aren't used to Jews of color, but he is convinced that as more people around the world discover and explore either their ancient Jewish roots or their dormant Jewish spirit, the wider Jewish community will begin to take seriously the words of Isaiah: "My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations."

"I believe those biblical prophecies are going to have more people reaching out and searching and going on spiritual journeys, and, ultimately, Judaism is going to be a place they want to examine and investigate. I only hope and pray that the gates to our synagogues are open and welcoming."

At the seminar in Encino last week, Valley Beth Shalom's Schulweis cautioned that to move forward, rabbis must acknowledge the sometimes dominant strain in Jewish tradition that holds a deep suspicion of conversion.

But, he said, Jewish texts and history have an equally strong tradition of welcoming the proselyte, and it is that tradition the seminar explored and pushed forward.

The rabbis shared best practices, studied relevant texts and explored innovative ways of making all aspects of conversion deeply spiritual and uplifting, not just for the people converting but for everyone around them.

The Sandra Caplan Bet Din's meshing of divergent streams of Judaism -- a collaboration that took several years to negotiate -- augers well for the more expansive bridges Funnye and the Los Angeles rabbis are trying to build.

"The remarkable thing about Los Angeles is we have colleagues who like each other, respect each other and are willing to talk to each other," said Rabbi Stewart Vogel, president of the Board of Rabbis of Southern California, an interdenominational umbrella group. "When you can engage in dialogue, anything can happen. We can get past stereotypes and prejudices, and we can work together to create the Jewish community we want."

Jewish Agency Adopts Conversion Resolutions
By JTA Staff, November 16, 2008, JTA

The Jewish Agency Assembly adopted resolutions calling on the Israeli government to establish an independent authority on Jewish conversions and special courts of Jewish law to "allow the conversion process to move forward."

The twin resolutions were adopted by the world body Sunday after heated debate and a crossfire of amendments and counter-amendments. The issue has long aroused the ire of Diaspora Jews, who have long been upset at the refusal of Israel’s Orthodox religious authorities to recognize conversions performed by rabbis in the Diaspora.

The assembly defeated a stronger resolution, submitted by delegates from Los Angeles, that would have called on the Israeli government to "recognize and accept as Jews" all those converted under the supervision of rabbis from the four major Jewish religious movements, as well as those from "other religious streams of Judaism."

Professor Ya’acov Ne’eman, who has been appointed by successive Israeli governments to resolve the controversial issue, had threatened to quit if the stronger resolution was adopted.

One of the adopted resolutions cited "a deep crisis within the conversion process" brought on by the arrival in Israel of some 300,000 new immigrants not considered Jewish by the Orthodox religious establishment. It calls on the government to establish Jewish religious courts that "will base themselves on appropriate moderate and tolerant prior halachic decisions to allow the conversion process to move forward."

Noting that Israel’s Supreme Court already has recognized "conversions by the different streams of Judaism for civil matters," the other resolution calls on the government to "establish immediately an independent conversion authority to resolve and deal with the conversion issue

IDENTITY

The Conversion Conundrum
By Michael Kaminer, November/December 2008, Jewish Living Magazine

On a sunny Friday last may—Holocaust Memorial Day, as it turned out—thousands of Orthodox men and women woke up to learn they were no longer Jewish. All of them had converted with the help of a prominent Israeli rabbi named Chaim Druckman. All of them were living Jewish lives in Israel. But a ruling from the High Rabbinical Court—in which a Druckman convert was deemed insufficiently observant to stay Jewish—wiped out all of his conversions with the stroke of a pen.

Insiders familiar with Israel’s hardball religious politics recognized the decision as an ultraright power play. But the damage was done. Converts, many of them new immigrants, panicked about their legal status in Israel, where Jewishness determines everything from birth to burial. Confused calls flooded hotlines and aid groups. Here in North America, the ruling had a very different effect. For one thing, the action enraged many converts, who typically take a polite stance around rabbinical politics. “It hurts,” says Sarah Schiffer, a 57-year-old Florida engineering associate who converted in 1971. “After years of struggle, to think your identity and that of your children could be overturned because of some rabbinical disagreement! This is not how Judaism is supposed to treat the stranger.”

The decision also angered some rabbis, who saw it as out of step with the letter and spirit of Jewish law. “Terrible behavior,” says Rabbi Judith Hauptman, who teaches Conservative rabbis-in-training about conversion at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, in New York City. “[The Rabbinical Court] wants to engage in infighting and cut each other off. The Talmud would call this sinat hinam—baseless hatred. They need to remember the Temple was destroyed because of how Jews were treating each other, not how others were treating us.”

Perhaps most notably, the ruling has emboldened conversion activists, a loose league of lay leaders, rabbis, and academics lobbying to change what they consider an outdated, insular, and counterproductive process. “Proper conversion is about empowering people, not hocus-pocus,” says Rabbi Celso Cukierkorn, a Miami-based proponent of accessible conversions who helped pioneer an online conversion process. “If you convert, will you encounter people who behave moronically toward converts? Certainly. But you’re not there to change them. It’s to change yourself.”

If it sounds as though a ruling nearly half a world away hit uncomfortably close to home, it may be that American Jews are still trying to sort out some very complicated baggage surrounding converts. Orthodox adherents refuse to recognize conversions by other denominations.

The Conservative movement is just coming to grips with intermarriage and recognizing non-Jewish spouses. Reform Judaism welcomes the curious through outreach programs, but its work has raised questions about conversion standards.

“My very traditional friends keep asking me when I’m really going to convert,” says Chicago public relations executive Leah Jones, 31, whose blog, “Accidentally Jewish,” chronicles her days and nights as a single Reform Jew. “They think an Orthodox conversion would make me legitimate. I used to get angry about it. But you pick your battles.”

Reeling from a perfect storm of assimilation, intermarriage, and apathy, even the most protectionist Jewish leaders are recognizing the need to welcome committed prospects who happen to have been born into different faiths. But a legacy of persecution has endowed us with a lasting, if subconscious, fear of outsiders. Caught in this web of ambivalence are converts themselves. Many are already coping with unsupportive families, skeptical friends, and painful self-doubt; while they often receive a warm embrace from the synagogues or temples where they study, many Jews by birth don’t exactly roll out a welcome mat.
“Some American Jews like to think the Ashkenazi culture they inherited is the most authentic form of Judaism,” says Laura Wiessen, a New York–based filmmaker whose current documentary project, More Beloved by G-d, profiles converts. “Even if Jews aren’t interested in religion, they cling to the fact that they’re culturally Jewish to look down on converts.”

Diane Tobin, who converted through a Conservative beit din (rabbinical court) in 1982, agrees. “We as a people have an internalized oppression we need to overcome,” says Tobin, the founder of Be’chol Lashon (In Every Tongue), a San Francisco–based organization that advocates for racial and ethnic inclusiveness in Jewish life. “We fear the stranger. We’re suspicious. Others have rejected us, so we want to reject. We turn away the convert three times before conversion. It’s unnecessary.”

The mitzvah to welcome the stranger appears more than 30 times in the Torah. “You shall love the convert” (Deuteronomy 10:19); “You must understand the feelings of the convert” (Exodus 23:9). “Our religion is about Abraham, a guy who sat in a tent open on four sides, welcomed everyone, and washed their feet,” says Rabbi Cukierkorn. “The only thing he wanted was for people to thank God for the meal they were receiving.” The discussions and rules around conversion began to emerge many centuries ago.

These discussions culminated in Shulchan Aruch, the sixteenth- century codification of Jewish law, which describes three requirements for valid conversions: Converts must accept the Torah and observe all of its 613 mitzvot; perform a mandatory dip in a mikvah, the ritual bath; and male converts must get circumcised or have a ritual drawing of blood called hatafat dam. Once converts meet those three requirements, they appear before a beit din, a religious court traditionally composed of three men.
It will come as no surprise to anyone familiar with rabbinical discourse that sages today are no closer to consensus on conversion standards than they were on the day the rules were written. Does “accepting the Torah” mean memorizing all 613 mitzvot? What if the beit din includes a woman? How do you judge a convert’s intentions to lead a committed Jewish life?

“The Talmud says ‘a handful’ or ‘a number’ of mitzvot is okay,” says Rabbi Hauptman of the JTS. “At the threshold, you don’t demand full observance of converts. You don’t require them to observe the rules for kashruth fully. Some interpretations place much greater demands on converts. Orthodox rabbis might disagree, but I think that’s a misconception.”

Jewish leaders are also starting to question a centuries-old taboo against proselytizing, long considered a foundation of our faith. “It’s part of the folk culture of Judaism that emerged from a fear of being in a vulnerable position in a foreign culture,” says Rabbi Kerry Olitzky, executive director of the Jewish Outreach Institute in New York City, which offers courses, mentor programs, and workshops for Jews by choice and unaffiliated Jews. Indeed, historians note a long Jewish tradition of proselytizing, which only ended in the fifth century under threat from Christian and Muslim rulers.

The prohibition on outreach is outmoded, Rabbi Hauptman agrees. “The challenge facing us now isn’t proselytizing,” she says. “It’s getting non-Jewish spouses sufficiently interested in Judaism, or getting women who aren’t converting to at least raise Jewish kids.”

Among denominations, the Reform  movement has been most aggressive about embracing converts. As early as 1978, the renowned Rabbi Alexander Schindler proposed an outreach initiative for interested non-Jews and spouses in intermarried couples. In an historic 1993 speech, he launched a $5 million initiative to engage with “those of our neighbors who belong to no church” and “welcome the stranger who choose to live in our midst.”

“Conversion isn’t some odd decision made by very few,” says Kathy Kahn, Director of Outreach and Membership for the Union for Reform Judaism. “It’s a profound life-cycle event that should be celebrated and normalized.”

Conservatives, too, are now taking a “much more welcoming attitude toward people interested in conversion,” says Rabbi Hauptman. “Some shuls wouldn’t put an item in the bulletin if a member’s new grandson was born to a non-Jewish parent. All of that is changing.”

Attempting to standardize conversion requirements, Reform and Conservative leaders in Los Angeles teamed up to form an alternative “community” beit din that crosses party lines. “The compromise for Reform members was conversions done more traditionally. And for Conservatives, the compromise means being more accepting of how people choose to live a Jewish life,” says Rabbi Neal Weinberg, director of the Miller Introduction to Judaism Program at the American Jewish University in Los Angeles. 

The Rabbinical Council of America, a leading organization for Orthodox rabbis, launched its own effort to standardize conversions in 2006. But its program was positioned as a response to an out-of-control system in which rabbis were making up rules and ineligible converts were slipping in.

Some of the most surprising allies in the push to narrow access to conversions are converts themselves. “I think it’s pretty obvious that the Reform movement is recruiting, along with some Conservatives. It doesn’t fit with one of my favorite aspects of Judaism,” says Avi Montigny, 36, the Catholic born convert behind JewsByChoice.org, a Web site that aims to connect converts across denominations. “I don’t think Judaism’s for everyone, and I love the fact that it’s not evangelical,” he says. “Judaism does not need more uncommitted Jews. We need quality, not volume.”

For Malynnda Littky, a 34-year-old African American who was raised by a Jehovah’s Witness but now lives as an Orthodox Jew in Israel, the High Court’s ruling makes sense. “From what I’ve read about these specific conversions, the standards were pretty minimal,” she says. “The rabbi was using some minority opinions accepting mitzvot. I do feel sorry for the converts and children, though, especially if they didn’t realize the conversions weren’t fully accepted.”

Ultimately, as it turns out, the ruling may lack teeth: At press time, multiple legal challenges had sent it to Israel’s Supreme Court. And while the decision wreaked havoc among the people it affected in Israel, it may eventually lead to more inclusive conversions—and broader definitions of who can become a Jew—perhaps even back across the Atlantic.

“We should be welcoming to people who want to become Jewish,” says Rabbi Weinberg. “We’ve never heard about converts trying to undermine the Jewish people. They enhance us.”

An African Homecoming
By Ruth Eglash, October 16, 2008, Jersualem Post

For Carolivia Herron, an African American Jewish convert and a retired Harvard University professor of Comparative Literature and African American Studies, documenting Ethiopian Jewry's oral history is a significant part of her personal journey home to the Jewish people and Israel.

"I have no biological connection to them [Ethiopian Jews], but my heart is with them," confides Herron, an author of numerous works of fiction and non-fiction who spent the past two weeks here documenting personal stories of Ethiopian Jews for a new book. "For many years I wanted to be Jewish. I had this very strong yearning and I can really relate to their struggle to get here. Ethiopian Jews embody my entire love and desire to be part of the Jewish people."

While her ancestry does not lie directly with these African Jews - Herron can trace her roots back to Sephardim who fled Europe following the Spanish inquisition in 1492 and ended up intermarrying with Gullah Africans off the coast of Georgia and South Carolina - she still feels compelled to use her expertise in the study and documentation of oral history to put into modern words and print the Ethiopian Jewish journey to the Promised Land.

Herron's storytelling finds its vehicle in the form of veteran community leader Yeshayahu Chane, 56, one of a handful of Ethiopian Jews who arrived in Israel before the Chief Rabbinate recognized the Beta Yisrael Ethiopians as Jewish.

Chane, who arrived here in 1973 and was forced to take on foreign worker status before being allowed to make aliya, met Herron by chance in the summer of 2007 when she was visiting with a delegation from her Washington, DC-based Tifereth Yisrael Congregation.

"There was nothing abstract about it," says Herron, who moved back to her native Washington in 2000, as she recalls the visit to Chane's Lod synagogue. "As soon as we met each other, I felt as though I had arrived home."

The connection was also immediate for other members of Tifereth Yisrael, and when Chane later asked if they would be interested in publishing his memoirs about Ethiopia and his early experiences in Israel in English, Herron was the logical choice for the job.

The purpose of her current visit is to capture on video as many of Chane's memories as possible, as well as those of other elderly Ethiopian Jews in Lod, so that she can later compile and publish the book.

"Yeshayahu's original manuscript had been translated first from Amharic to Hebrew and then from Hebrew to English, but I felt it was too many steps away from the real thing and I wanted to get closer, much closer, to his story," explains Herron. "His story is incredible, but he does not go into enough details. I want to create a novel-like book that will allow people worldwide to feel connected to his story."

"It is important to make a story specific and not too universal," continues Herron, who during her tenure at Harvard University founded the "Epicenter for the Study of Epic and Oral Poetry" to research cultures that lack clearly documented histories. Her work with Ethiopian Jews in Israel is an extension of her work with the Epicenter, she says.

Herron, whose own journey back to Judaism is no less fascinating than those of the people she studies, is an expert in taking verbal memories and weaving them into a story that will have wider appeal.

In perhaps her most prized piece of literature, Herron has taken her own family's story and created Always an Olivia, a children's book retelling the journey some Sephardic Jews took from Europe to America, including her own ancestors.

"There were three things that every generation kept [that signifies their link to Judaism]," says Herron, who joined her original name, Carol Olivia, to form Carolivia. "Every generation had a boy name Oscar, a play on the Hebrew name Asher; a girl called Shulamit or Olivia, meaning peace, and continued to light candles every Friday night."

"When I was nine years old and my great-grandmother was 103, she told me the story of ancestors and my Jewish roots," says Herron, recalling that following her official conversion to Judaism in March 1993, "the first time I lit the Shabbat candles and said the prayers my father suddenly remembered his own grandmother lighting the candles on Friday night and reciting the same prayers."

"I always had this feeling that I wanted to be Jewish," she says. "I remember one of the first images I saw of Ethiopian Jews was of a young girl sitting on an airplane on her way to Israel. I really had a deep understanding for her and felt that same yearning to be in Jerusalem."

Now, with strong ties forming between herself and Ethiopian Jews in Israel, Herron says she plans to continue researching, writing and documenting the history of other Jews of color.

"I know that the white Jewish community does not understand why someone who is black would also choose to be Jewish," finishes Herron. "Isn't our life hard enough already? But the homecoming of Ethiopian Jews and their entire community's love for Judaism and Israel is a phenomenon that I can completely relate to."

COMMUNITIES AROUND THE WORLD

Reaching out Jews, Bahrain Posits Model for Regional Cooperation
By JTA staff, November 18, 2008, JTA

Bahrain, the little Gulf nation where pluralism has been the exception to the regional hegemonic rule, is learning that the best way for democracy to survive is to replicate it.

Without explicitly saying so, Bahrain is softly encouraging the U.S.-led push for democratization in the Middle East as the means toward stabilization. Its rulers have made their treatment of the tiny Jewish community in Bahrain a showcase of how to achieve peaceful pluralism.

King Hamad bin Issa al-Khalifa met last week in New York with about 50 Bahraini Jews who had immigrated to the United States, and did something almost unheard of in the Arab world: he invited them home.

The offer extended to younger generations and included specifics, including allocation of land for homes.

In a region where efforts to export ideology have often exploded into conflict, Bahraini officials are careful to say that they are pleased only to serve as an example, not as a beachhead.

"What we do in Bahrain is for sure for Bahrain, it's not to be exported," Hamad said in an interview with Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA).

Yet it is clear that the nation, host to the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet and a major non-NATO ally of the United States, regards the George W. Bush administration's efforts in keeping with its own reforms. Bahrain officials subtly hint that the U.S. push for democracy in the region is playing catch-up to a country that launched a transition to constitutional monarchy in 1999.

"Our reforms were before Sept. 11," Khalid bin Ahmed al-Khalifa, the Bahraini foreign minister, said in an interview, referring to the terrorist attacks on the United States in 2001. "The American democratic program for the Middle East came after Sept. 11. They thought that extremism is linked to lack of freedom and democracy. Well fine, we agree with that."

Taking the lead in reaching out to Israel and to Jews internationally is part of that equation. Hamad stressed that such outreach was made in the context of the Saudi-led Arab initiative, which posits comprehensive peace in exchange for a return to the borders prior to the 1967 Six-Day War.

"It has been declared that we have this Arab initiative which would really normalize the relationship with Israel as soon as this conflict is over," he told JTA. "And you know very well Bahrain would have loved to have this conflict gone away from the scene a long time ago, we would love to see that day."

Still, Bahrain is more out-front than its neighbors. The nation ended its participation in the Arab League boycott of Israel last year, something Khalifa is still called to defend before the Bahraini parliament.

"This boycott office is really contrary to our philosophy."

Khalifa recently proposed a regional grouping that would include Iran and Israel even before agreements are in place as a means to reaching accommodation. Such a grouping would start by dealing with the removal of weapons of mass destruction, sharing diminishing water supplies and cooperating on environmental controls.

Practical considerations underpin Bahrain's outreach: the kingdom's oil wealth is expected to dry up within the next two decades, and the nation needs new strategies to thrive in the region. Quitting the Arab boycott was a condition of a free-trade pact with the United States. A peaceful neighborhood would help move development along, Khalifa said.

"In Bahrain we are caught between many places and hard places," he said, riffling on the old line about a rock and a hard place. A causeway separates Bahrain from one major theocracy, Saudi Arabia; a gulf separates it from another, Iran. Hamad puts his actions where his words are: he appointed a Jewish woman, Houda Nonoo, as ambassador to the United States, and named another, Rose Sager, as U.S. trade representative.

At the meeting in New York, the affection of his Jewish subjects seemed unforced. Many were eager to hear details of his repealing of a law that had stripped expatriate Bahrainis of their citizenship.

"Even the ones whose passports are expired are still Bahrainis," the king said.

Rabbi Levi Shemtov, who runs the Chabad office in Washington, helped set up the meeting and blessed the king. The rabbi described the week's Torah portion, and its tale of smaller kingdoms resisting aggressive, larger neighbors, and the king vigorously nodded.

"If someone who can be effective wants to discuss the present need to confront our common dangers within the parameters of proper recognition of the Jewish people," the rabbi said, "then even if the context doesn't yet exist, we have to seek it."

Libyan Jews Demand Compensation
By David Regev, October 17, 2008, ynet

Are Jews who immigrated to Israel from Libya about to receive a large sum of money from Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi?

The World Organization of Libyan Jews plans to ask Gaddafi for some of the funds his country is slated to receive from Italy in compensation for the period when Libya was under Italian rule. The Italian government recently announced that it would pay Libya $5 billion to compensate for the occupation period.

Meir Kahakon, chairman of the World Organization of Libyan Jews, recently sent a letter to Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, stating that "we believe Italy owes the Jews of Libya compensation for the suffering and pain engraved into our flesh to this day.

"Libya's Jews suffered to the same extent from the damages of colonialism and from loss of humanism upon their transfer to labor camps and concentration camps during World War II," he claimed in the letter. Kahakon also sent a letter to Gaddafi, demanding that the moment he receives compensation from the Italian government part of will be transferred to Libyan Jews in Israel.

Black Jew Calls for Black Synagogue in France
By JTA Staff, November 10, 2008, JTA

A black French Jew is making his case for the creation of the first black synagogue in France.

At one of the four-day events commemorating the 20th anniversary of the first Conservative Jewish synagogue in France, Adath Shalom, Guershon Nduwa explained to a packed room on Sunday why he thought France needs its first black synagogue.

"Judaism isn’t about the color of your skin," Nduwa said in an interview with the JTA. "But we feel excluded in synagogues, because they ask us why we’re there and to show our identification card. If you’re blond with blue eyes, that doesn’t happen," he said. He believes his initiative will be met with positive results.

The minority French Masorti, or Conservative community, has been particularly welcoming to the black Jews, who number 250 in Paris. They are either converts or of Ethiopian, West Indian or Israeli origin, said Nduwa. Orthodox Judaism is more common among practicing French Jews.

Nduwa said his organization, Judeo-black Fraternity of France, is conducting a study on the still-unknown number of black Jews in the country.

The 20th anniversary of the first Masorti synagogue in France was a significant milestone, Nduwa said.

"It is an important movement, because French Judaism was dominated by the Orthodox movement, and France had trouble adopting the Masorti tradition at first," he said.

Today, there are conservative synagogues in Paris, one in Nice, one in Aix-en-Provence and one in Marseille. Adath Shalom numbers about 300 families.

ARTS AND CULTURE

A Melting Pot President
By David Biale, November 13, 2008, Forward.com

It was a century ago this year that Israel Zangwill’s iconic play “The Melting Pot” was first staged in New York. Hailed by President Theodore Roosevelt as the quintessential expression of the American spirit, the play celebrated America as the “crucible” that would melt away all Old World hatreds and rivalries.

As I contemplated the election of Barack Obama, I could not help thinking of Zangwill’s play. To be sure, Zangwill was at best ambiguous about whether the American melting pot might include African Americans. He includes “yellow and black” in the crucible, but he also raises doubts in an afterword as to whether blacks would be assimilated into America. Yet, at its core, the play certainly affirms the vision of America as open to all, a paradise of pluralism.

Since Jews are the protagonists of “The Melting Pot,” the play also serves as a springboard for thinking about what Obama’s election and Obama as symbol might mean for Jews today. Zangwill explicitly compares the suffering of Jews in the pogroms of Russia with the contemporaneous lynchings of African Americans in the South. The now-frayed black-Jewish alliance often rested on this comparison: Jews felt called upon to take up the cause of their African-American compatriots since Jews, too, had been slaves in the land of Egypt.

The collapse of this alliance — whose original dimensions have perhaps been exaggerated — with the rise of Black Power, social and economic tensions in the inner cities and clashes over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a story too long to be told here. But with Jews having voted for Obama more disproportionately — at 78% — than did any other ethnic or religious group save African Americans, perhaps the time is now ripe to re-weave the fabric of the old alliance.

Yet while Obama’s identity as a black American is significant, so is the fact that he is the product of an interracial union — or a “mutt,” as he jokingly put it at his first post-election press conference. Indeed, he has been remarkably forthright about his hybrid origins. In his Philadelphia speech on race, he discussed his own conflicted feelings as a black grandson hearing his beloved white grandmother voice racist opinions. But by evoking his mother’s Kansas roots, he was able to build a bridge to white voters.

Obama’s mixed background led him to deliberately choose an African-American identity. Since his father was Kenyan, his identification with African Americans, whose ancestors came to America as West African slaves, was as much an act of self-invention as it was a given. His choices reflect the malleability of identity in America.

Our president-elect’s hybrid identity raises questions that are familiar from the last hundred years of Jewish history, but puts them in a new light. Can one affirm a minority identity while belonging at the same time to the majority? Does intermarriage mean the melting away of old belongings or, instead, the possibility of choosing to belong to more than one home? The old Jewish debate between universalism and particularism may have found a new expression, not from a Jewish source, but from a black one.

Which brings us back to “The Melting Pot.” The plot of the play revolves around the romance of a young Russian Jew with the daughter of a Russian nobleman (a general who commanded the Russian troops during the Kishinev pogrom at that!). For Zangwill, himself intermarried, America promised to allow affairs of the heart across religious and ethnic boundaries. The essence of the melting pot was not just formal integration but genetic recombination.

On one level, such mixing of populations might seem to presage the end of cultural and religious identities: The crucible, says Zangwill, was swallowing up German and Frenchman, Jews and Russians, turning them into “the American.” But the play also hints that such identities might still be preserved, because in America identity itself is flexible. The hero of the play never gives up his Jewish identity; America becomes more Jewish as the Jews become American. Thus, the Jewish family’s Irish maid, who denounces their religious practices in antisemitic terms, ends up speaking Yiddish and celebrating Purim.

Jewish life is dramatically different in today’s America than it was when Zangwill wrote his play. Then, Jews were a compact ethnic group, living in their own neighborhoods and still the targets of intense discrimination. To imagine the melting pot then was prophetic — or foolhardy.

Obama’s electoral triumph testifies to present-day America’s remarkable tolerance of racial, ethnic and religious difference — a tolerance that stems, in no small part, from the increasing fluidity of these very categories. While a multicultural society of mixed and fluid identities certainly represents a challenge to traditional forms of Jewish self-definition, it also offers Jews tremendous opportunities.

Today, Jews are an integral part of the political and cultural elite; the top political adviser and future chief of staff to the nation’s first black president are both Jews. Can a Jewish president — or perhaps even a black-Jewish president — be far behind? If the Jewish wager on America was for a cosmopolitan, melting pot society, it is a bet that Jews have won.

Iranian-American Rapper Battles Stereotypes
By Iran-Times Staff, October 19, 2008, www.iran-times.com

Iranian-American emcee Yashar Zadeh, who goes by the rap name of Yak Ballz and his Israeli-American cohort, Rami Even-Esh, whose rap name is Kosha Dillz, are two rappers making a name for themselves through their conscious lyrics and their efforts at battling stereotypes.

"I recorded my first single, "Flossin,' when I was 16," Ballz, now 26, told The Boston Herald. "I grew up in Queens [New York] around a lot of emcees, so I was really in the mix even before I got my own opportunities. Fortunately, I finally got my chance to flex."

The two rappers were childhood friends. Though he was mostly raised in Queens, Ballz also spent time at his father's house in Edison, New Jersey, where Dillz lived around the corner.

"Yak was the emcee in the neighborhood," Dillz said. "Then I started rapping on the weekends when we would get together, whether it was just hanging out in the back of someone's whip or wherever."

Following Ballz's lead, Dillz started entering the Braggin' Rights emcee battles at the Nuyorican Poets Café in Manhattan. Ballz became the youngest rapper to reach the finals, and it was there that both aspiring emcees met producers including Mondee, who helped further their music careers.

"One time when I was 17 I went to see Yak at Braggin' Rights and there was extra space, so I just got up on stage," Dillz said. "I had something written already. Even back then we were battling with conscious lyrics, not talking about how fat the other person's mother was."

Despite their shared history and tours, Ballz's and Dillz's rap styles vary; while Dillz's rhymes push into religious and geo-political realms, Ballz keeps his music largely secular and abstract.

"I never really incorporated my ethnicity into my music," Ballz said. "It only came out that I was Persian later in my career. Most people thought that I was just a white kid from Queens. Actually, from what I understand, some people even thought that I was a black kid."

Dillz also reported misunderstandings about his Jewish background. Judaism, he told The Boston Herald, often is misrepresented in the rap scene. With his new CD—a duet project with freestyle guru C-Rayz Walz titled "Freestyle vs. Written"—Dillz said he hopes to teach the rap community that hip-hop transcends racial and religious boundaries and stereotypes.

"On my last tour, this dude in Georgia told me that he thought all Jews hate black people," Dillz said. "That was funny, especially since I was on tour with (Wu-Tang affiliate) Killah Priest [who is connected to the Black Hebrew Israelites and who raps about highly Afrocentric themes], and that I have an album coming out with C-Rayz Walz

SURVEYS: BECOME A PART OF THE RESEARCH

Asian-Jewish Survey

Be'chol Lashon is seeking participants for a study to be conducted in 2008-2009 by Helen Kim, PhD and Noah Leavitt. The research will be published in a book that will examine the racial, ethnic, and religious identities of Asian-Jewish couples, individuals, and families.

We are looking for a wide range of participants, including those who have children, and those who do not, those who are more religiously involved, and those who are less involved, and individuals from Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and other Asian backgrounds. We are also seeking participants who have converted to Judaism, and those who have not.

The research covers a wide range of subjects including childhood and adolescent experiences, family dynamics, religious and cultural practices, professional involvements, civic and community commitments. All information is completely confidential and anonymous.

To be part of the survey, click here.

For questions, please call our office, at 415-386-2604 or email.

BAY AREA EVENTS

Be'chol Lashon Chanukah Celebration
with Congregation Sherith Israel

Celebrate Jewish Diversity!
Free and open to the public

Sunday, December 21, 1-4pm
2266 California Street @ Webster
San Francisco

Schedule:
1-3pm: Activities, Food & Shuk
3-4pm: Candle Lighting, Singing with Lior Benhur, Israeli Dancning with Bihn Au and performance with Sul da Bahia Capoeira.

Workshops & Activities:
Help Save Lives in Africa by making a Tzedakah box for the Abayudaya Jews of Uganda
Gift making workshops with Mitzvah cards, jewelry, and wrapping paper
Chanukiah and beeswax candle making
Dreidel Decoration and Games
Chanukah Cookie Baking
Henna & Face Painting

PLUS!
Global Cuisine - Enjoy latkes, sufganiot, bunuelos, & agua fresca
Chanukah shuk - BUY Chanukah presents from local artists

For more information, click here.

Super 8: Hub Hanukkah Party
Sunday, December 21, 6pm
111 Minna Gallery, 111 Minna Street
San Francisco

Join The Hub, Reboot, Progressive Jewish Alliance (PJA) and American Jewish World Service/AVODAH as we celebrate the first night of Hanukkah with:
Live performances by JDub recording artists DeLeon and Sway Machinery
4th Annual PJA Festival of Rights: a menorah-lighting ceremony to champion the vital contributions of local social justice leaders.

Also! Latkes made by your favorite San Francisco restaurants. He'Brew Beer
Nostalgic candies with the owners of The Candy Store, DJ's and the Hanukkah survival kits for the first 150 people at the door.

Presented in partnership with Be'chol Lashon

For more information: click here.

LOS ANGELES EVENT

NEW YORK EVENT

THANK YOU

We welcome your participation in the Be’chol Lashon Newsletter!

Please send us information about events in your community or articles of interest that relate to Jewish diversity. E-mail newsletter submissions to Esther Fishman, Esther@JewishResearch.org. Submissions are subject to editing for content, clarity and style.

Special thanks to all the contributors who make the newsletter interesting and informative.

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