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18 | FEBRUARY 20 • 2020
The McMillans, along with
their dauther, Aliza Bracha
Klein, had a Reform conversion
about 13 years ago.
Klein of Oak Park took her
conversion further, subsequently
undergoing an Orthodox one.
Unlike Rickman, who
describes occasional curious
glances at his synagogue, Klein,
34, says her skin color drew
more attention at her shul
than she’
d like. Now she rarely
attends Shabbat services.
“I can’
t pray if I’
m getting
stared at the entire time. I’
m
still trying to find a shul where
I feel like I fit,” says Klein, add-
ing that out-of-town visitors,
unaccustomed to seeing a black
congregant at shul, made her
feel uncomfortable.
Going out for a Shabbat
meal at various homes in the
community is when she feels
most on edge. Often, she says,
someone at the table makes
an inappropriate joke or says
something negative about black
people.
“I’
ve had someone say,
‘
Well, if you get upset about
things like that, why did you
convert?’
” Klein says. “That
is wrong and should not be
anyone’
s business. I converted
because I felt that Judaism was
right and was the path that was
meant for me to take. It’
s not
anyone’
s business about what
my connection to Judaism is.”
Klein, a social worker with
the Oak Park School District,
says that when she was in the
Reform movement, people
would occasionally mistake her
and her family for members of
the custodial staff or a caregiver
to another congregant.
A black Jewish family from
Novi shares a similar expe-
rience. Daniel Y. Hodges
and his family belong to
Congregation B’
nai Moshe in
West Bloomfield, where Daniel
sings in the High Holiday
choir. Once, he says, someone
attending a bar mitzvah at his
synagogue mistook his step-
daughter Chanteal for a kitch-
en employee.
“People sometimes make
decisions with their eyes with-
out having all the information,
and that’
s a normal human
trait,” Hodges recalls telling
Chanteal. “But sometimes
people have to understand that
things are bigger than what
they see or what they’
ve experi-
enced in their past.”
When Chanteal was 8,
Hodges self-published a chil-
dren’
s book for her called
Shabbat Sparkles (available on
Amazon), intended to help her
“realize that not only is her
Judaism a treasure, but that
she’
s a treasure to the Jewish
world.”
Today, Hodges says that
Chanteal, 22, does not identify
as Jewish. She had a difficult
time connecting with Judaism,
both because her biological
father and his wife are not
Jewish, and because of some
of the negative experiences she
had growing up while trying to
be accepted as a Jew.
Hodges’
son Jacob’
s expe-
rience in Judaism has been
more welcoming, although not
without similar encounters.
When Jacob, now a freshman
at Walled Lake Western High
School, was very young, a little
girl told him he couldn’
t be
Jewish because he was black.
“I don’
t think it even pen-
etrated his thought process,”
Hodges says. “Jacob’
s identity
is so set in being Jewish that he
helps me with my identity.”
When asked how his peers
react to his Judaism today,
Jacob says: “Yeah, they’
re sur-
prised. But then they’
re like, ‘
I
don’
t care.’
”
THE CONVERSION QUESTION
A typical response to learning
that someone is black and
Jewish is to ask if that person
converted. It’
s a question white
converts rarely hear.
“People need to understand
there are many Jews of color
who did not have a conver-
sion,” Klein says.
According to Jewish law, ask-
ing about someone’
s conversion
is prohibited.
“
Although halachically you’
re
not supposed to question any-
one’
s past, I’
m very open about
mine,” says Ashira Solomon,
a 31-year-old Southfield resi-
dent and preschool teacher at
Farber Hebrew Day School in
Southfield.
Solomon grew up in Oak
Park and had several Jewish
friends. When she was 13, she
told her parents she wanted
to be Jewish. She spent many
Jewish holidays at the home
of her best friend and, in her
circle of childhood friends,
Solomon was called “the
honorary Jew.” Little did she
know then about the Jewish
roots on her father’
s side. After
what Solomon describes as an
eye-opening conversation with
a rabbi, she did some research
and discovered those roots.
Rickman had a differ-
ent journey to the faith. He
says many of his beliefs and
customs were aligned with
Judaism, but he didn’
t know
Daniel Hodges says, “Jacob’
s identity is so set in
being Jewish that he helps me with my identity.”
Jews in the D
HUES from page 16
Ashira Solomon and her
daughter, Naomi