In The Colors of Jews: Racial Politics and Radical Diasporism, Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz addresses the question of who or what is the Jewish people. An activist, feminist scholar, and poet, she boldly challenges and seeks to overturn pervasive yet relatively new assumptions, such as the notion that all authentic Jews are from Eastern Europe, that all Jews are born Jewish, and that all Jews are white. Her main intentions are to strengthen the identity and practice of Jewish antiracism, including economic justice, to make Jews from diverse backgrounds understand that they need each other because of their differences, and to help Jews of all persuasions know that multiculturality is an enormous asset in the struggle against racism and antisemitism and in building social justice coalitions.
The book is organized into six parts. In the first part, “Are Jews White?” from her vantage point as a secularist and cultural Jew, the author questions the historical racial assumptions about Jews by examining the ideology of whiteness and how it implicates Jews. She looks at the marginalization of Jews of color and discusses where Jews fit within the black–white binary that typifies the way that most white Americans think about race.
In the most poignant section of the book, the second part, “Black/Jewish Imaginary and Real,” she examines the “special relationship” between African Americans and Jews. Here she addresses the assumption that most African Americans are antisemitic, and she provides background on the Ocean Hill-Brownsville and Crown Heights conflicts, Jewish participation in the African American civil rights movement, nationalism and feminism, and the possibilities for black–Jewish coalitions. Excerpts from her interviews with African American Jews, such as author Rebecca Walker, Rabbi Capers Funnye, and others, reveal the pain, humiliation, and rejection from the Ashkenazic standard that Jews of color have experienced, such that one African American Jew wonders whether she “is even possible.” The author attributes much of what stands between Jews of color and white Jews to a masculine gender dynamic that inspires conflict. This part of the book is extremely compelling because her analysis lays bare the nationalist arguments and mythology that have provided the backdrop for much of the current dissension and disaffection between African Americans and Jews.
Kaye/Kantrowitz argues that the only hope for the challenging conflict between Jews and African Americans is in opening the discussion to include women. The author maintains that “turning up the volume on Jewish women's voices” would be useful in shifting the priorities, agenda, and weight of the Jewish community to challenge black–Jewish opposition. She asserts that the agendas of Jewish women of all races in the United States and the African American community correspond on many critical issues, including affirmative action, reproductive rights, public entitlements, housing, education, employment, health care, and violence against women and children. She admonishes Jewish women of all races and African American women not to stand apart from these struggles because “women as women are in struggles connected to the struggles of other women. Women recognize their common oppression by gender” (64).
In the third part of the book, “Who Is This Stranger?” Kaye/Kantrowitz maintains that “the Jewish people” comprises many peoples, most of whom are Jews of color. The author cites Lewis Gordon, director of the Center of Afro-Jewish Studies at Temple University, who explains this phenomenon by noting that it is a myth that people migrate and their descendants remain the same. For example, Gordon mentions the Abayudaya of Uganda and the Lemba Jewish community of Southern Africa. Kaye/Kantrowitz discusses the histories of Mizrahi Jews from the Middle East and North Africa, Sephardim from the Iberian Peninsula, and Ashkenazim from Western and Eastern Europe; she maintains that these represent centuries-old diasporas whose descendants live all over the globe. She writes that because of migration, “these terms may suggest but cannot predict color or appearance” (69). Kaye/Kantrowitz posits that Jews who are cultural and ethnic minorities in the Ashkenazic-dominant context or who span more than one culture can help the Jewish world enter “a multicultural arena girded appropriately for the struggle against racism and anti-semitism” (91). She contends that “the only thing that can prevent the loss and distortion that is racism is respect for the full range of Jewish experience” (97). Her main point is that the number of Jews of color is large enough that Jewish whiteness should never be assumed. She explains the “sparsity of color in the organized Jewish community” (102) as partially attributable to racism and cites the case of Beta Israel's experience in Israel. Decisions that the Ethiopian Jews were not “authentic” and that white Russian émigrés were, even if they were not Jewish and could not prove Jewish ancestry, were a slap in the face to Jews of color worldwide. The author attributes this rejection to the problem white Jews have: if Jews are white, then are nonwhites really Jews?
Parts 4 (“Praying with Our Legs”) and Part 5 (“Judaism is the Color of this Room”) present Jewish activists—both whites and those of color—who are working to dismantle racism. The author stresses that while she is not arguing that Jews are the chosen people in antiracist struggles, or that all Jews must participate in explicitly Jewish contexts, what is essential is “the desire to dismantle whiteness as we know it, and the courage to move forward to create the world we live in” (192).
Finally, in Part 6, Kaye/Kantrowitz advocates changes in the leadership of Jewish communities as well as in larger societies. These changes will come only after the excluded are included and the marginalized are centered—that is, with democracy. Kaye/Kantrowitz maintains that this is the way “we strengthen our best Jewish selves” (192).
The Colors of Jews is a lucid, well-documented analysis of the racial, ethnic, and cultural distinctions that separate Jews of the twenty-first century. The author proposes an entirely new understanding of “the Jewish people.” By encouraging Jews who are not Ashkenazic to tell their stories and share their wisdom, as well as helping nonactivists to understand that the chasm that divides us cannot be permanent if Jews are to survive as a people, Kaye/Kantrowitz makes a powerful argument for inclusion. Her interviews with activists show that inclusion is a realistic goal for those who have watched the numbers of white Jews decline and become a cause of great concern. As all of the people she interviews reveal, there is more that unites Jews of all colors than divides them.
