You Don’t Look Jewish
We won’t achieve true justice for anyone until Jews are included in social justice
Long before I learned the art of calm and grace, I lost my cool when my blonde, Aryan-looking German law school classmate Mark from small-town Ohio met me and immediately remarked you don’t look Jewish.
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” I snapped back. “Do Swedish Jews look Jewish? Do Ethiopian Jews look Jewish? What about Moroccan Jews?” I continued in disgust.
Not my finest hour.
The odd thing is, I probably do look somewhat European Jewish, although recent DNA results shared my Algerian, Moroccan, Syrian and Iraqi parts.
Reminds me of that joke when someone asks a Jewish man if he knows another Jewish guy in town.
“Why? Do all Jews have to know each other,” the insulted Jewish man responded.
“Sorry, I just thought… “
“Actually, we’re cousins.”
Mark’s comment was in 1992, but things haven’t changed much since then, at least when it comes to how people think of Jews.
The thing is, Jews aren’t a race. They are an ethnoreligious group whose members come in all shapes, colors, and sizes.
When the Jewish nation was formed some 3,000 years ago, many different people…
