On the last night of Moving Traditions’ most recent Kumi Justice Retreat, I sat with the teen participants in the hotel lobby in Washington, D.C., and debriefed the weekend together.
Although there were plenty of chairs in the corner of the hotel lobby where we sat, the teens chose to sit shoulder-to-shoulder on the carpet, so they could be closer together and pass around the melting ice-cream they had begged us to buy from the nearby Walgreens just before it closed. While some were laughing over pictures of our trip, others were deep in conversation about the museums we’d seen that day, like the Capitol Jewish Museum, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, and National Museum of African American History and Culture.
Watching this multiracial, pluralistic Jewish community brought me so much pride and contentment, but I couldn’t stop thinking about how badly I wished I had experienced something like this as a teenager.
Checking One of My Identities at the Door
Growing up as a Jewish teen of color in the 2010s, I often felt like I had to check one of my identities at the door. Most of the time, I felt just visible enough to warrant questioning in Jewish spaces, but never fully seen or celebrated for all parts of my identity at once.
One time at my Jewish high school, a popular student I had hardly ever spoken to walked straight up to me and asked, “What are you?” Although I had gotten this question dozens of times before, I was just excited that he noticed that part of me. People asking me “What are you?” was really the only opportunity I had to talk about my racial identities, which I loved doing. When I enthusiastically told him that I was Japanese American and Ashkenazi Jewish, he joked, “So you’re a double JAP?”
I remember my stomach dropping. We had literally just returned from a trip to Poland together to learn about the Holocaust, where we had spent days talking about the violence of dehumanizing language and the ways hatred quickly escalates when people are reduced to stereotypes. How could someone understand the power of slurs to wound Jewish people, while simultaneously weaponizing one against me? And how come my Jewish friends, who all witnessed this conversation and had just vowed to stop Jewish hate, said nothing in my defense?
I felt betrayed as a Jew by my Jewish community. It was as though our commitment to fighting hatred toward Jews only applied when the threat came from outside the community, not when prejudice existed within it.
How could someone understand the power of slurs to wound Jewish people while simultaneously weaponizing one against me?
Combating Antisemitism in Isolation
Too frequently, conversations about combating antisemitism happen in isolation, detached from broader conversations about racism, xenophobia and other forms of hatred. But oppression does not exist in neat categories. The slur “JAP” in this situation carried multiple layers at once: misogyny, antisemitism, racism. My experience as a Jew of Color shaped the way I encountered antisemitism, just as my Jewishness shaped the way I experienced racism.
Today, as antisemitism rises alongside growing hatred toward many marginalized communities, there are urgent conversations about how to prepare young people for the antisemitism they may encounter on college campuses. While these conversations matter deeply, we cannot meaningfully address antisemitism without also teaching young people to recognize how different systems of oppression intersect and reinforce one another. We cannot ask Jewish teens to fight hate, while only teaching them to recognize hatred and bigotry when it targets people exactly like themselves.
Kumi Justice Retreats
That is why I feel so honored to help lead Kumi Justice Retreats, a retreat-based experience for high-schoolers to learn how to interrupt antisemitism and racism, and how to create welcoming spaces within their broader communities.
At Kumi Justice Retreats, students wrestle with difficult questions together. They talk vulnerably about racism within Jewish spaces and antisemitism outside them. They have honest conversations with peers whose Jewish experiences vary drastically from their own. They learn that fighting injustice requires recognizing our interconnectedness.
It was as though our commitment to fighting hatred towards Jews only applied when the threat came from outside the community, not when prejudice existed within it.
For many Jews of Color, these conversations are especially powerful because antisemitism often arrives tangled together with racism. There is a unique kind of exhaustion that comes from constantly being asked to explain or defend your Jewishness in Jewish spaces while simultaneously navigating antisemitism in non-Jewish ones. Kumi gives teens language for their experiences, along with a community who understands what they’re going through. As a multiracial Jewish community of belonging, Kumi is a space for teens to encounter the diversity of Jewish people and create relationships across various races, backgrounds and Jewish experiences. Our teens often remark that they’ve never had such open and real conversations about their identities and Jewish experiences before, and that these honest conversations have led to broader realizations about who they are.
That night in the hotel lobby, the ice-cream eventually melted completely, but no one seemed ready to leave. The teens stayed huddled together on the carpet, still talking and listening to one another with a special kind of openness.
I keep returning to that image: Teens choosing to sit on the carpet, even when chairs are available, and the ease of their closeness.
As a teenager, I searched for spaces where I would not have to fragment myself in order to belong. Watching these young people build community across difference, challenge each other with care and hold the complexity of one another’s identities reminded me of the beauty of this kind of Jewish space, and of the many Jewish organizations and leaders who work tirelessly to make these spaces possible. Although Kumi does not erase the pain of antisemitism and racism — and the Jewish community has a long way to go to ensure all Jews can show up fully as themselves — I feel hopeful that Kumi is a crucial step toward making the Jewish world a more just and welcoming space.
