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Op-Ed
In April of 2006, President George W. Bush declared that May would be designated as Jewish American Heritage Month: the result of efforts by Floridian Jewish advocacy groups, and the resolutions of Florida Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter, to dedicate a month to celebrating the over three-hundred and fifty years of rich Jewish American history.
On May 1st of this year, President Joe Biden gave a statement acknowledging the month, and honoring two prominent Jewish political figures: Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff and Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, who is the highest-ranking Jewish American elected official in the history of the United States.
Too often, the achievements, history, and joy of Jewish people are overshadowed by the tragedies that they have faced. Some of the only exposure that public school students are given to Jewish history are black and white photos of lifeless Holocaust victims, reducing Jewish people to suffering and ignoring their contributions to American society. While Holocaust education is important - with less than fifty percent of people under the age of thirty-five knowing about its atrocities - when nothing else about the Jewish experience is taught, the idea that Jews are outsiders who don’t have meaningful places in society is reinforced. For the seventy-four percent of people who have never met a Jewish person, further learning is vital to the perception of Jewish communities. The commemoration of Jewish American Heritage Month combats the exclusion of Jewish education beyond Jewish trauma by devoting space to the vibrant stories of Jews throughout history whose contributions bettered American society.
Poet and essayist Emma Lazarus is most well known for the lines “Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…” from her poem The New Colossus, inscribed on a bronze plaque inside the Statue of Liberty. This poem, as well as her other work, was motivated by her experience as a Jewish American woman during the second half of the nineteenth century.
Hearing of Russian pogroms, following the 1881 assassination of Czar Alexander II, and rising antisemitism in other countries that was pushing Jewish immigrants to flee to the United States, Lazarus to become increasingly involved in her local Jewish community and global Jewish causes. She worked to create the New York Hebrew Technical Institute to help give Jewish immigrants vocational training as well as agricultural spaces. Her collection of poems, Songs of a Semite and regular pieces in the American Hebrew criticized non-Jews and Jews alike who were indifferent to the struggles of Jewish immigrants to the United States and the history of the Jewish people. Her work is regarded as some of the first prominent Jewish American literature, and she is considered “the most distinguished literary figure produced by American Jewry” by the Jewish Encyclopedia.
Lazarus was extremely loyal to her Jewish identity and her American one, and worked tirelessly to better the lives of Eastern European immigrants who arrived in the United States; she examined the Bible, the Hebrew language, Judaism, and Jewish history, and used what she learned to advocate for the welfare of Jewish immigrants and the future of the Jewish people.
Gay rights activist and political figure Harvey Milk carried Jewish values he absorbed during his upbringing for his entire life. Although he renounced organized religion because of its perceived contradiction to the pursuit of LGBTQ+ rights, he upheld many Jewish ideas and customs throughout his career as a political advocate.
Milk’s friends have recounted his participation in yearly Passover seders, incorporating Yiddish and Jewish humor into conversations, and cooking Jewish meals. When he spoke endorsing gay rights after his 1977 election to California’s Board of Supervisors, becoming the state’s first openly gay official, he touched on the Holocaust and how dangerous ignoring injustice can be: a sentiment that echos that of many other Jewish figures including Romanian Holocaust survivor, writer, and activist Elie Wiesel.
Milk implemented Jewish values and experiences in his work for gay rights; his close friend Sharyn Saslafsky believed that he loved Jewish values such as Tikkun Olam - the idea that the world is fundamentally broken and we have the ability and responsibility to repair it - and exemplified this in his work for social justice. “I think Harvey was very proud of being both Jewish and gay,” Salafsky said. “The basis of who Harvey was personally and politically was really very Jewish in the sense of being active and making a difference, taking responsibility, empowering people.”
Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s work as a lawyer and an associate justice of the Supreme Court is essential to women’s rights as they are today, and her Jewish upbringing was vital to the development of her tough mentality and approach to her career.
“I have memories as a child, even before the war, of being in a car with my parents and passing a place in [Pennsylvania], a resort with a sign out in front that read: ‘No dogs or Jews allowed,’ she said during a Senate hearing. “One couldn’t help but be sensitive to discrimination living as a Jew in America at the time of World War II.”
Ginsburg’s passionate dissents and effectively strategized victories established her as an architect of the fight against gender inequality. She displayed both incredible physical and mental strength; living through five matches with cancer and the death of her husband, and continuing to show up to court through it all. Her co-founding of the Women’s Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union and eventual work as their general counsel led to her arguing six cases for the project, and winning five.
She surrounded herself with symbols of her Jewish heritage; in her judicial chambers, she kept a mezuzah given to her by the Shulamith School for Girls in Brooklyn, and the Hebrew words “tzedek, tzedek, tirdof”, or “justice, justice you shall pursue”, put up on three walls. In 2004, Ginsburg asserted that her Jewish heritage and career as a judge “fit together symmetrically.”
Singer, actress, and filmmaker Barbra Streisand starred in many productions as characters who were unapologetically Jewish, including her portrayal of actress, comedienne, and singer Fanny Brice in the 1968 Broadway musical Funny Girl. Streisand’s career is marked with criticism of her Jewish features, particularly her nose; she was encouraged to get her nose “fixed” at the age of eighteen but refused. Reviews following her shows insisted that her success was a fluke, considering her “Jewish appearance.” Despite this, Streisand was extremely proud of her profile.
“When I was young, everyone would say, ‘You gonna have your nose done?’ It was like a fad, all the Jewish girls having their noses done, she said in a 1977 interview. “The first thing someone would have done would be to cut my bump off. But I love my bump, I wouldn't cut my bump off.”
Production posters and other photos of Streisand frequently showcased her side profile, increasing the perception of Semitic features as beautiful and desirable, and establishing her as a role model for young Jewish people who were insecure about them. The unabashedly Jewish characters that Streisand gave life to, as well as her integration of Jewishness into her non-Jewish personas, made way for other Jewish Americans to embrace their culture and features.
Actor and rapper Daveed Diggs, who played Marquis de Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson in Lin Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton, is another Jewish American whose work gives young Jewish children representation. His 2020 song Puppy for Hanukkah features children of color mouthing the lyrics, spinning dreidels, lighting candles on the menorah, and opening gifts - an effort to represent young Jews of color, as the current characterization of quintessential Jewish children and their families is whitewashed.
“These are just kids trying to get a puppy,” Diggs said in an interview with NPR. “I barely remember when Hanukkah is coming around - or any of the holidays, for that matter. But that's part of being Jewish, too. And to be able to express things like that and be of color and still be able to be recognized as being Jewish - that's sort of the whole package to me.”
Diggs grew up with a Black, non-Jewish father and a white, Jewish mother. These two parts of his identity didn’t ever feel mutually exclusive to Diggs, and he had many friends with mixed ethnic backgrounds who he could relate to, so he wasn’t isolated in his connection with the heritage of both of his parents. Puppy for Hanukkah and its rendering of Jewish children of color makes it possible for more children like them to feel like they have a place in the Jewish community.
Jewish heritage is strength. Jewish heritage is determination. Jewish heritage is the demand to be seen in a world that has tried to erase us time and time again. Perseverance is our birthright and our responsibility. These Jewish American figures show this and make it possible for Jewish youth to continue to be visible and empowered in their identities as they continue to forge community and space for themselves.
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