Growing up, I would occasionally hear people say that so-and-so “looked” Jewish, and I never really understood how somebody could look like they were Jewish, because to me, Judaism was a religion, and I couldn’t just look at someone and be like “oh they’re protestant” or “oh she’s buddhist” . After moving to Queens, I began to recognize how some people could be assumed to be Jewish and I finally understood more of the cultural aspect and how being Jewish can sometimes be reflected in one’s appearance. The beginning of this chapter confirmed some of the ways in which I learned that people “look” Jewish, such as conservative dress for women or yarmulkes for men, but I really don’t think that all the assumptions are all that accurate. How can you assume that a “white” person with a certain type of nose who just happens to be dressed conservatively that day is Jewish? In fact, even within the chapter, it stated that different Lubavitch Jews of different areas dress differently according to where they live. It is not accurate to assume just because a certain person dresses one way that they are automatically Jewish.
I think the most interesting part of this reading, to me, was the section about the black jews. As we have discussed in class, “blacks”, and “whites” are considered “races” and in the chapter it states that “in the mid-eighteenth to mid-twentieth centrues Jewishness-like Blackness or Whiteness-ws thought to lie in “the natural meaning of the flesh””. I guess for me, this raised the question of where a Black Jew would fit in in this system of races that we have set up. The chapter states that “the Black Jews in Crown Heights are caught in a perceived contradiction between race and religion”. The color of their skin overshines their religion and they are often overlooked as being Jewish (another example as to why we can’t just assume that someone is Jewish based upon appearance). I think that it is upsetting that the Black Jews are not accepted by the other Jews in Crown Heights. They share the same religion yet they are not acknowledged because it is startling to the others that they are not “white”.
