When Jews Were Black

After the first few days of black lives matter protests, I began to explore the Jewish relationship to blackness. I came to realize that the plight of African Americans remains my responsibility as long as blackness stays rooted in Jewish identity and tradition. If that sounds extreme, then I urge you to keep reading this brief exposition of the topic.

In Torah this week, we have an example of “blackness” as inferiority. Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman he had married: “He married a Cushite woman!” Numbers 12:2. You may recall that Tzipporah, Moses’ wife, was a Midianite. The Cushites were North Africans with dark skin. In the context of these murmurings, Miriam and Aaron were likely insulting Tzipporah by calling her black. God immediately punished Miriam with a skin disease, affirming Miriam’s offense.

Later texts denigrate the descendants of Noah’s son Ham as dark skinned. After Noah’s sea voyage, he planted a vineyard, made wine, and got clothes-shedding drunk. Ham called attention to Noah’s inebriation while his brothers cloaked and guided their father home. In rabbinic literature, Ham’s descendants were thought to bear the mark of Ham’s shame through their blackness.

Throughout Hebrew literature of the rabbinic period, the image of black or dark became associated with malevolence and danger. An example is found in Genesis Rabbah, a midrashic text from the period of 300 – 500 C.E., which addressed the story of Abraham and Sarah travelling to Egypt after first experiencing famine in Canaan. “We passed through Aram-Naharaim and Aram-Nahor, and we did not find a woman as beautiful as you [Sarah]. Now . .  . we are entering a place of the ugly and the black [i.e., Egypt]” [Gen. 12:13] (Gen. Rabbah loc. cit.).

In part due to our own Jewish scriptures, the concept of “blackness” as inferior suffused theories of race. What we understand as racist, finds a foothold in Jewish texts, where dark skin, as a physiological sign, represented inferiority. The subservience of the black race became a foundational story of Western Civilization. Later, proponents of Black African slavery could look to Jewish writings for a reasoned justification of slavery. For example, some Christian religious leaders speaking as apologists for slavery used the story of Ham to justify servitude.

The irony of these Jewish views of blackness is how Jews were thought to be dark skinned, both literally and figuratively, by oppressive Christian leaders from the Middle Ages until the 20th Century. As Jews immigrated to the United States to escape poverty and oppression in Europe, they remained excluded and derided similar to black Americans. Only in recent decades did Jews become “white” Americans, in wealth and status. The occasional act of anti-semitic violence reminds us of the fear of being “black.”

Reverend Anthony A. Johnson, writing for the Jerusalem Post on June 2, 2020, explained: “My black is beautiful. And your black is beautiful. Stop trying to pass as white (to those who are white passing) and let yourself experience the “inconvenience” of being people of color (which is what you are) even if you’re a fair-skinned Ashkenazi Jew.” 

To address Jewish American responsibility for the imperiled status of African Americans, we must do more than empathize. We must see ourselves as black. We undergo this very exercise every Passover when we are told to see ourselves as if we too were freed from slavery. We must again identify as and with the oppressed, the victim, and the enslaved to help our country heal and achieve justice for all. We must uproot injustice and restore the dignity of every living being created in God’s image.

Rabbi Evan J. Krame