Aliza Hausman is a first-generation Dominican-American Latina Orthodox Jewish convert or “Jewminicana” who discovered she was born Jewish of Sephardic Jewish Turkish ancestry post-conversion. She is also a writer, blogger, educator & speaker. This blog chronicles her thoughts on being Hispanic & Jewish, focusing on identity, Judaism, Jews of colors, Latinos, diversity, race, ethnicity, conversion to Judaism, culture, multiculturalism, illness, disability, books, films, news & more….
The Jewish new year is upon us again! Boy, in some ways that went by really fast and in other ways...painfully slow. I can't believe Rosh Hashanah is back though already and I'm hoping, as always, that next year will be better than the last.
Still need to get in the spirit? Please check out all the cool links to Rosh Hashanah videos that Redefining Rebbetzin put together, including the new Maccabeats video with lovely scenes from Washington Heights and Riverdale! I still have a lot more shopping and cooking to do so I wanted to link back to the great blog, Redefining Rebbetzin, which was recently featured in the Forward!
Beverly Hills High School, one of the best public high schools in LA, has a large Jewish student population.
If you talk to laypeople in the Orthodox community about the conversion crisis, you'll note very quickly that most of them are living under a rock and don't even know what you're talking about even in prominent Jewish circles and events. Unless they are rabbis and rabbi's wives or know converts personally or are married to converts or are converts themselves, they probably have no idea how much conversion has changed since 2005 and all the damage it has wrought.
And even if they do, often these people, if they are not PERSONALLY---as in the actual parties involved, like the converts themselves--in conversion just DON'T GET IT. Take this piece for example.
The title of this article in the Responsa section of Jewish Ideas caught my eye for good reason. Very few people call it what it is: A CONVERSION CRISIS.
But after reading through the piece, what bothered me most is that only the first and last paragraphs of the piece actually deal with the converts in question and reality on the ground. And even the last paragraph doesn't deal with what the convert should do or why this is happening, it even completely disregards why a family who previously had Modern Orthodox affiliation would switch to Haredi affiliation and go to a beis din to go as far as to be told that they should remove their children from an MO school to a Haredi school. It only deals with this in one sentence: "If particular individuals choose to follow their rulings, that is their business."
No, it's everyone's business that haredi rabbis are convincing converts coming into Judaism with little knowledge or even converts with vast knowledge that their Orthodoxy is the only Orthodoxy and therefore, their conversions are the only ones that will be accepted in Israel. Something that is patently untrue.
I have friends who have had wonderful, lovely conversions in yeshivish and haredi communities. But I've also had other friends who have suffered in yeshivish and haredi communities and conversions but felt that if they didn't stick it out in those communities with those conversions, despite their Modern Orthodox leanings, that their conversions would be questioned in Israel.
I was converted Modern Orthodox and my conversion is CURRENTLY (I think everyone should start using the word currently nowadays) accepted in Israel but a haredi conversion school in Jerusalem tried to convince me that I needed to change rabbis last minute right before I would be converted by my Modern Orthodox rabbi because they wanted me to start the process all over again with a haredi rabbi. They tried to convince me that was the only way to get a valid conversion and despite how happy I was with my conversion, my community, they were able to sway me and fill me with confusion. So, I can only imagine how converts who are not happy with their conversions and communities are easily swayed. Unlike these haredi rabbis trying to convince converts that it is their way or the non-Jewish highway, my rabbi refused to way in on where I should go to convert but that he would certainly convert me if that was my decision. Yeah, he's an upstanding guy who refused to speak lashon hara about anyone, including people who were trying to brainwash me into believing something ("only haredi conversions are accepted") that is untrue.
I WISH the responsa had dealt just a little bit with the pressure and the brainwashing that is going on in the Orthodox community and the way that converts are being taken advantage of by rabbis. If I had been the unhappy Modern Orthodox school, I would have said as much to the family. "You are being brainwashed. Convert through this beis din only if you are unhappy with your current community or schools."
Though, of course, I realize that this still doesn't solve the problem of all converts with converting children being forced to sign up for 12 years of Orthodox day school when the leniency used to be ANY Jewish school, including community schools, etc. Keep in mind that not everyone is lucky enough to live in a large Jewish community or is able to afford the rates of the Orthodox day schools in those communities. Not everyone is lucky enough to live in a community where the Orthodox day school is always the best choice educationally for their child, even if it is hashkafically.
I'd love for my kids to go to the Orthodox day school of their dreams...if I can afford it and if as a teacher, I deem that the school is a good school. I've heard horror stories of Orthodox day schools that are basically zoos where the kids run amok and make my former gang members look like the spawn of Mr. and Ms. Manners. If that was my only choice for schooling, especially at thousands of dollars a pop, I'd have the right to go anywhere else...but only because I converted when I was single before the "new laws."
Forget if my kid has learning or physical disabilities that any of local Orthodox schools can't handle, if I converted with kids during the new system, I'd have to consult the converting beis din--not just my husband--whether or not I have the right to pull my kid from the Orthodox school into the BEST school wherever it falls on the Jewish spectrum. Because I would have already signed a contract saying I couldn't taken them anywhere but an Orthodox school.
This doesn't bug some converts who haven't considered the possibility of placing their kids in anything other than Orthodox schools. But what if you were born Jewish and adopted a non-Jewish child you chose to convert? Would/could you pull ALL your Jewish kids by birth from all the different Jewish schools--perhaps not all Orthodox because you're living in a large Jewish metropolis with lots of options and lots of good Jewish schools across the spectrum--and switch them to the Orthodox schools as the baby will someday attend? Yes. Especially, if you wanted your child to be converted by a beis din you were told was the only one that could provide a conversion that was accepted in Israel and you lived somewhere where you couldn't go elsewhere for a conversion because even in a large Jewish metropolis, your hands are now tied. And a beis din makes decisions you never imagined they would for your life, the lives of your future and current children and your bank account. So, yeah, this bugs others but they have NO CHOICE.
Meanwhile, others run from Orthodoxy or have no choice but to go elsewhere because they do not want a bunch of strangers making these types of decisions for them. Then Orthodoxy attacks these converts who go to other Jewish movements as not truly being faithful Jews or even Jewish. Oy, the mess we've created. It's not just converts that these new laws are effecting since obviously, Orthodox folks who want to adopt cannot choose from a wide pool of Jewish children to adopt. I know many Orthodox families with parents who were both Jewish who have been put through the ringer because of these laws even though they were completely observant, as I said, Orthodox Jews!!! There stories, I realize, need to be told so that more born Jews become allies of converts in the current conversion crisis.
I don't have kids and I was single when I converted but down the line, will I be retroactively asked to put my kids in certain schools because one parent is a convert like in this family. It's just so, so, so sad. I know Orthodox Jews who went to public schools because that was all there was in the small communities they lived in. I know Orthodox Jews who went to non-Orthodox Jewish schools because that was all there was in their communities OR because those schools were the best for them. And even more so, in the wake of the economic crisis, I know people who have been forced to pull their children from Orthodox day schools, which can cost as much as $40,000 a year per child and even with tuition breaks can cause families to live paycheck to paycheck.
So, why aren't converts and Orthodox couples who cannot have children or more children and choose to adopt not afforded the same rights as all born Jews to choose where their children would best be educated?
And now (because I'm so Jewish) I will turn into a matzoh ball!
Okay, HOW did I miss this video of MaNishtana that pulls in interviews and pieces from his most infamous and awesome videos?
The funny thing about moving to New York Los Angeles (Sorry, folks, that was just a homesick typo, I've never MOVED TO New York 'cuz hey, I was born there!) is having to search for other Jews of color all over again. Thanks to this blog and the small but proud little pocket we are within the Jewish community, it's fairly easy. So, this year, I'm going to make sure I find more Jews of color in this there here parts. I've got Mexican, Filipino, Persian, black and biracial covered. I saw an Asian Jew at shul but didn't get to connect. I've met tons of Iraqi Jews and all sorts of Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews.
But there's only ONE MaNishtana and if you're on this side of the Coast, you're missing out on one of the coolest people, Jews, Jews of color, bloggers, vloggers (video bloggers) and founder of the only Jew of color dating service type-people, Shais T. Rison. His family's been Jewish since the 1800s and he's Momma's black and his Dad is, too. Just in case you were wondering...'cause you know you where! I think he coined the phrase "JOC" (pronounced jock) or Jew of color and if he didn't, at least, he made it cool.
Follow him on Facebook and Twitter and find some reason to get him out here to Los Angeles that involves him speaking to, like, everyone at every shul in the tri-state, no, that's New York, tri-um, stuff area!!! Santa Monica is not a state, right? That's like a county, huh? Culver City? Also a county? Like Brookyn is a borough. I've only been here a year, be nice.
"It's always a battle of proofing yourself to be enough of either one. And at any given time, you're listening to a camp that's saying you're not one of us, you're one of them. Or you're not one of them, you're one of us.
You can be both. Equally both. Equally proud of both. And not selling out either one." MaNishtana
I must confess, it wasn't until fairly recently that I heard the term M.O.T., as in member of the tribe. But then the person who asked if the guy I was telling him about was an MOT, probably had never heard of JOCs, as in Jews of color. I'll never know. I didn't ask when he looked at me like I was nuts for not knowing what an MOT was.
Yes, I am a member of the tribe but I have to repeat it, explain it and defend it every day and will probably have to until people stop telling me I don't look Jewish. Even if quite a lot of people in Israel look like, well, me. Even if before I'd ever converted, I'd experienced anti-Semitism because people thought I was, indeed, Jewish. So, more than most, I probably have to say "Yes, I am Jewish. Really, really, really." And if my kids look more like me than him, they'll probably have to do it, too. After all, Jews of color like MaNishtana have already been explaining their Judaism for five generations or so. That's more generations than when my family purportedly lost Judaism with my great-great grandmother who was a Sephardic Jewess from Turkey.
The Spertus Institute put together an interesting video called "The Tribe" about being members of a tribe, specifically this Jewish tribe that many of us are a part of or want to be a part of or aren't sure we're apart of or don't want people to know we are a part of depending on the situation and circumstance.
I have mixed feelings about the video but I think that's what the video is going for. I'll save my coments for after you watch.
Depending on where you're at as a member of the tribe, I think you respond differently. I personally wasn't a great fan of all the Ashkenazi stereotypes. They never used the term Ashkenazi or even recognized that Jews look really differently...some even look like good ole Barbie. At least, they didn't use that hateful word commonly used for non-Jewish women with blond hair and blue eyes. Heck, I know many JEWISH women with blond hair and blue eyes and fairly uninteresting noses who've been called it. So, yeah, the video lost me a little when they said "Barbie doesn't look Jewish" even if I understood the point they were trying to make.
The subtribe thing felt a little ridiculous. At that point, I expected them to talk about non-Eastern European Jews. Yes, like the ones that live in America and are ALSO American Jews but who don't have Eastern European or Yiddish roots. But it delved into other things like unaffiliated and Jew-ish and all the other ways Jews cleverly self-identify. This kind of whacky self-identification tends to upset those other Jewish who just want everyone to be "just Jewish." The same people who wish I'd stop calling myself Jewminicana. Me? I'm just glad people are identifying proudly as Jewish.
I REALY did enjoy the little line graph with atheist to observant and the particularly apt line that further explained the differences even within Orthodoxy. That was impressive considering so many non-observant Jews I know think of Orthodoxy as a lump of one group of people but they're plenty of Orthodox people who think other Orthodox people aren't REALLY Orthodox. It's not all Bartenura wine and Z'miros and shomer negiah-observing hugs in the Orthodox crowd. We're as confused and exclusive and inclusive as the other Jewish subtribes mentioned.
Wait, before I go happy go lucky on the parts I like, let's double back. Um, since when does G-d speak in a Yiddish accent? Wouldn't it have been more inclusive to just show the burning bush clip or do that big deep Morgan Freeman voice. I grew up with a blond blue-eyed Barbie-looking Jesus but man, I think G-d definitely speaks with a Morgan Freeman voice when he needs to lay down the laws like in this week's parsha. Morgan Freeman or Samuel L. Jackson (who played "G-d" by reading the Holy Bible audio version). After all, who doesn't love Morgan Freeman-G-d-in-a-white-suit? You can love him, be scared witless of him and totally believe him as COMMANDING.
Then there was the bit in the video about how this generation experiences anti-Semitism. Sure, it was a broad statement and everybody hates those but I've been talking to a lot of Jews about why they have a hard time making the leap from experiencing anti-Semitism to understanding and empathizing with people, including Jews of color, who experience racism. And as the video points out well, it's because this generation hasn't experienced overt ant-Semitism, some haven't experienced anti-Semitism at all and for them it's just a part of their Bubbe or Safta's history. That's why they don't get it when they hear about racism. After all, if anti-Semitism is dead in American, isn't racism? Obama IS president. Sigh. That thinking always gets to me.
The thing is that when white and even not-so-white Jews pretend racism doesn't exist and continue to perpetuate it, everyone experiencing racism (all the other minorities) get REALLY ticked off because why should they care about Jews and anti-Semitism if Jews don't get them and racism. Non-Jews and even Jews of color assume that white Jews will "get" racism because they survived the Holocaust and after that, how could you ostracize anyone for being the other? Or as a young black convert put it: "How can they have lived through so much hate, through the Holocaust, and STILL be racist?"
And finally, one part I loved about the video was the guy who responds to the question "Are you Jewish?" with "Who wants to know? Are you Jewish?" It's the perfect line for a Jew of color or anyone whose Judaism is about to be question to respond with but it can also throwback to the fact that, yes, even in America that has been so kind--but not always--to the Jews, there is still anti-Semitism. It's not always safe to announec "I'm JEWISH!" even though plenty of us walk around with kippot and tzizit and our hair covered (or $900 sheitels so non-Jews at work won't think our hair is covered and treat us like religious fanatics) or the classic Magen David pendant around our neck.
Trust me, when you're a Jew of color, you get it from everywhere. Jews are racist to you and non-Jews are anti-Semitic to you. You belong everywhere and nowhere. So you know that racism and anti-Semitism are alive and well.
And last, but not least, my favorite thing about the video.... Come on, can't you guess? You faithful blog readers would know!!!! It's the classic Def Jam, signature "Hebrew Mamita" piece with voiceover by the Hebrew Mamita herself, Syrian Jewess Vanessa Hidary:
"Biggin' Up all people who are a little miffed cause someone tells you, you don't look like or act like your people. Impossible. Cause you ARE your people. You Just tell them they don't LOOK. PERIOD!!!"
I remember when I used to stay with my girlfriends for Shabbos in Washington Heights. There was a point, right before candle lighting on Friday night, when all the girls would squeeze in together between the wall and the big claw-foot tub to put on their makeup in front of the medicine cabinet mirror. They used outrageous amounts of makeup, they said, because they planned on sleeping in it and would still be made-up the next day.
I didn't get it. Not because I wasn't Jewish but because I've never really had to wear very much makeup. I go days, if not weeks without out. I often only wear it to events or because sometimes, I like to think it makes me look older and people will take me more seriously if I wear it. Yeah, I know, don't you feel so sorry for me? Anyway, I think it makes me look at least over 18 though the taxi driver who took me to the doctor yesterday asked me if I was legal age anyway. AND I was wearing please-make-me-look-tanner bronzer plus some reddish lipstick. (Note: I had to specify "legal age" because in LA, if you're Hispanic everyone thinks you're probably illegal. Nice.)
Anyway! So, after contemplating that despite my youthful skin, I get blemishes if I forget to remove any makeup before going to bed, I wonder what people who REALLY need and want to put on makeup do on Shabbos without breaking out into junior high school size zits. I can't even imagine my own mother, much less other people's, without makeup. As little kids, my sister and I used to lie on our stomachs on my mother's bed and watch the big production that went into my mother putting on makeup...right down to the mixing of the foundation to match the incredibly unique shade of her skin.
My mother would not have survived Shabbos without makeup. And for that matter, neither would most of my friends. Especially, the one who says whenever she sees my blemish-free skin everday it makes her want to slap me. Jealous, much? If it helps, I got a zit this month. Or a mosquito bite, is it? Right between the eyebrows, too.
So, I finally broke down and asked a rabbi, feeling particular self-conscious and narcisstic. This is why there is now a Yoetzet Halacha in LA. I mean, do I really want to ask my rabbi about makeup? Does he want me to ask him? NO. Please, let me ask a woman who might understand what I'm talking about, you know? Anyway, one rabbi finally muttered something about SHABBOS MAKEUP but he was about the third rabbi who refused to explain it to me. "TOO COMPLICATED." All I got was: "POWDERS." And..."FORGET ABOUT IT." So, I figured that was it. For everything you'd normally use, you'd use powdered stuff, right? Oh, no, dear. Is ANYTHING ever that simple?
After watching this video below, "Look Beautiful and Follow Halacha" I decided that I hope to make it to old age without needing or wanting to put on makeup on Shabbos because I don't think I could do it without breaking it. Sheesh, too complicated is right!
(Alright, I'm sure like anything else Jewish law/halacha-related Shabbos makeup takes practice so somewhere down the line I'll be squeezing between the tub and the wall and trying to follow this video like my life...or really Shabbos...depends on it.
I'm slightly obsessed with it even though when someone gave me a gold "Aliza" pendant, I sort of freaked and had a flashback to my ghetto childhood. All the "cool" girls who used to rag on me wore their shiny little MEAN GIRL names around their neck.
Thanks to fan Rachel Lavin aka @fideoqueen for suggesting the perfect 5th anniversary present. Now I just have to get Rabbi Hausman on board. You can check out more of her work here: http://lajoyeraguera.posterous.com/
If you haven't already, please mosey on over to Rabbi Hausman's blog. Last week, his weekly dvar torah on Parshat Re'eh was in the Jewish Journal to much well-deserved praise and fanfare. It was called "Seeing with the Sixth Sense," not the Bruce Willis movie but the "sacred sense" or the "sense of the holy."
Like my blog, you can also subscribe to his. And the writing's better over there. I mean different. No, we're not competitive at all. :)
You can also follow us on Facebook. These days I'm on Twitter and Facebook more than I am over here. 140 characters is a bit easier right now.
If you ALSO follow Rabbi Hausman, then you're following the whole family. That sort of sounds like you're stalking us. Hmm. DON'T STALK US. Just sayin'. Though I will try to be better about posting when and where you can see us at upcoming speaking engagements in the Los Angeles area.
When we have kids, they will surely start their own little Hausman blogs and Facebook fan pages, which I will watch like a hawk until my cop aunt makes me take them down. I just hope this doesn't turn into a creepy a reality TV show--I mean, we ARE in LA--because I hate reality TV.
No, I won't judge you if you don't judge me on what we're watching OR not watching on TV. I'm more of a Fringe, Bones, Pretty Little Liars kinda girl.
Have a wonderful Shabbos! From the woman who was supposed to be at the Glatt Shop an hour ago. Whoops.
