Scene 10: identity

• identity illuminated on screen

• “blackbird” instrumental plays thru scene

• spot light on actors - full cast. dark after scene

ACTOR 1:

Until 2020, I honestly didn’t identify as white. 

Yes, it was the box I checked for race, but this is only because post World War II it has been inappropriate to formally acknowledge Jewish as a race. I didn’t feel white and was treated by the world accordingly. 

I was a Jewish American, not a regular American. I was part of the tiny minority presumably responsible for the death of Christ; my skin color was irrelevant. I wasn’t Christian. I was an outsider. 

ACTOR 2:

The disparity between skin color and class was (and still is) a chasm of phenomenal magnitude, and being Jewish just added another layer of complication to the mix. We were white-ish, so we did not face the same subjugation as BIPOC folks, but we were still segregated. 

White folks didn’t want to live alongside “our kind.” I grew up in a neighborhood that was ninety-three percent Jewish and probably ninety-seven percent “white.” 

ACTOR 3:

My family was part of the uprising of Jewish affluence in Cleveland Ohio and we lived in one of the smaller homes in the older section of town. Yes, separate but equal applied to Jews too. 

Until the Fair Housing Act of 1968 we couldn’t live on the street behind us, it was restricted. No Jewish people. No Black people. I’m sure others were barred too. Basically, you could only live there if you were white and Christian.

ACTOR 4:

For our part, we created our own communities, social clubs, and schools. There was inverse segregation in this impulse, too. 

My dad had fought in World War II, an experience which became tied to our task to “never forget.” 

We were to marry Jewish, support Jewish causes, keep Jewish customs alive. The idea was to protect our own ... because no one else would. 

ACTOR 5: 

From a young age, I also found myself trying to come to terms with my parents’ prejudices. The very people who instilled in me their support for the progresses of the Civil Rights Movement would just as quickly deem another inferior for actions, behaviors, and situations they knew nothing about. 

I believe it was self-protection that kept my folks from realizing that the prejudices they maintained mirrored the prejudices projected against us.

As our white skin and ability to assimilate took hold, somehow we became one tier above Black folks. This is where our shared history of oppression in America divided. 

As a child, we were not rich, but we did have maids. Yes, black women. It was the norm. A hideous truth, but the truth none-the-less. The rear view is excruciating, but so it was. 

At the time it seemed to me that our families truly cared for one another. We likely did. I witnessed my parents do many kind things for many people, especially those with less than us.

It was complicated, and we still faced persecution too.

What I can say is that both my parents’ bigotry and their desire for justice were woven into the fabric of our Jewish identities.  

ACTOR 6:

To this day, every time the headlines read antisemitism is on the rise, fear pulses through my body. My community stands on high alert. And by community, I mean Jews locally and globally. We look for the signs; are we here again? 

A shooting in a synagogue in France affects us the same as if it happened down the street. Holocaust-related imagery seeps into our collective memory. We hold each other, literally and figuratively. We utter, and this is why we can never forget. 

And it happens in small ways too. For example, my kids’ educational environment was predominantly white Christian. While the school attempted diversity, the playground could sometimes be rough. Boys will be boys and some ridiculous game of 8th grade tag revolved around kill the Jew. It was squashed, but it happened. 

ACTOR 7:  

I share all this information to explain why recognizing that I was white confounded me. I never felt white, because I wasn’t the right kind of white. 

And then the events of 2020 made the benefits of my whiteish privilege resoundingly clear. I was crushed by the implications of harm I may have caused, albeit from naivete.

ACTOR 8: 

It was my son who really schooled me on my privilege. From high school on he would try to explain that I had to broaden my lens past antisemitism and realize how many barriers my skin color walked me through. 

Still, I didn’t totally get Black Lives Matter until the death of Breonna Taylor. 

This was my city! My heart simply shattered, and in my grief I sat my ass down and listened to what my Black peers were saying. Until this moment I truly was unaware that Black folks were treated differently by the police than white folks. 

ACTOR 9:

I didn’t know that one of my daughter’s friends wore his identification badge at all times on campus to ensure the police knew he was a med school student at the University of  Louisville and not a threat. The breadth of what I didn’t know was massive.

ACTOR 10: 

Yes, I knew what it felt like to be the other in America, but at the same time, my white skin had protected me from the worst of our history in this country. I felt blind. I felt uneducated. I felt embarrassed. I felt devastated. How had I missed what was going on?

Things were not fine; things were awful. 

I had to evolve, but would quickly learn I couldn’t shift one part without shifting all of me. My evolution had to be intersectional, and it continued to come in small waves, as each piece of me was splayed on the table for my investigation.