continued on page 20

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

