Black, Jewish, and Beautiful

Black, Jewish, and Beautiful brings together powerful perspectives and showcases the vastly divergent ways people come to inhabit a shared Blewish, or Black-Jewish, identity. These voices show that Black Jewishness is just one dimension of their multifaceted lives, as they explore how they feel, think, and make sense of who they are.

Anthony Mordechai Tzvi Russell, Sara Feldman, and Brett Ashley Kaplan bring together an array of oral histories of Black Jews by birth, others who converted, and those who were raised one way only to discover later that their identity was not what they had thought. The result is a collection of myriad identities, told through rocky, sometimes-frayed structures. Contributors are open and frank in discussing the good, the bad, the beautiful, the heart wrenching, and the ugly in their experiences.

As the first anthology of Black Jewish voices to juxtapose multiple genres—interviews, essays, reflections, and more—Black, Jewish, and Beautiful is an essential read.