The holiday of Shavuot is about to be upon us this coming Friday (yes it really is that soon), but for a moment, I’d like to revisit the (twice) recently-passed holiday of Passover. Not to talk about the Seder or social distancing, but particularly about the most difficult part: the cleaning.
At the end of turning over kitchens and the sometimes intense amount of cleaning that goes into the endeavor—sometimes spread out over the course of weeks—it all culminates with the nighttime ritual of the Search for Chametz. In traditional Judaism, at the end of that ceremony the Aramaic prayer of “Kol Chamira” is recited, the text in English being:
“All leaven or anything leavened which is in my possession, which I have neither seen nor removed, and about which I am unaware, shall be considered nullified and ownerless as the dust of the earth.”
Now what’s interesting to note are the rules around cleaning for chametz, and what does or doesn’t count as actually being chametz:
1-Technically, one is really only required to clean or check anywhere there’s reason to suspect that there may be chametz.
2-The only chametz you’re required to check for is anything edible and larger than the size of an olive.
3-If you know you haven’t taken chametz into a particular area over the course of a year, then you don’t have to clean it.
So, essentially, “Kol Chamira” is saying “I looked in all the places I expected to find chametz and found it. I didn’t look in the places I didn’t expect to find chametz, so I didn’t find any. The pieces that were too small don’t really matter. And whether I found it all or not, it’s all taken care of.”
But the ideology behind the notoriously grueling cleaning methods among many Orthodox households is because, theoretically, your house can be technically kosher for Passover, but still contain tons of chametz. There might be several areas with tiny breadcrumbs too small to individually equal the size of an olive. You might have not brought food into a room for a year, but someone else might have. Or maybe you did and simply don’t remember for a variety of reasons—you were distracted, on a phone call, sleepy, drunk, etc. And if you have children it is exponentially more impossible to determine the multitude of vectors of possible chametz contact. Crumbs on a toy, a spoon of food that dropped and bounced, a midnight snack in their secret nook or cranny, random ambient food perpetually stuck to their clothing as they shuffle from room to room in the house.
However, at the end of the day, your house is kosher for Passover because you did the spaces and areas that were “important” and “required,” and even if you didn’t, “Kol Chamira” comes along and nullifies it all anyway. But the Orthodox methodology is to do and explore and search in every possible space and only after having done everything realistically possible to remove your chametz, do you nullify what you still haven’t managed to find or clean.
Now that’s all well and good when it comes to cleaning chametz for Passover. But people aren’t chametz. One can’t just look for people where they’re expecting to find them, not look where they don’t expect to find them, refuse to look because they feel the numbers are negligible, or decide that whatever conclusion they come to after doing the “required” work will be sufficient enough to “take care” of all of them.
On May 17th this past weekend, eJewish Philantropy, a web-based publication serving Jewish non-profits and donors, published an essay by demographers of American Jewish life, Ira M. Sheskin and Arnold Dashefsky, “How Many Jews of Color Are There?” which was later republished in The Forward.
Controversially, the article cut the population of American Jews of Color—quoted by the Jews of Color Field Building Initiative as being between 12-15%—down to half that number: 6%.
It caused an understandable stir of outrage and hurt amongst the Jew of Color community, and an affirmation of the assertion that the American Jewish community has been consistently undercounting the Jew of Color population. Also, it raised the question of what exactly were the intentions of this article? Was it attempting to name that Jews of Color were not prominent enough to address our needs? That the initiatives that have been put forth are not nearly as necessary or require the resources and funds that are expended on them?
Either way, it felt like a slap in the face for a community that often is not involved in Jewish institutional or religious life—or leave Jewish life behind entirely—due to being marginalized and/or discriminated against, to be told in so many words that “statistically” and “according to the data,” we matter even less than we currently are. The concerns of Jews of Color and inclusion is not proportionate to our percentages. Will we finally “matter” once we hit the 12-15% margin we’re apparently overinflating?
This past Monday, I sat down with Dr. Sheskin for an exclusive one-on-one interview, to get more of his insights into his methodology and, quite frankly, to ask “What was the point of presenting this article?”
A point that struck me was Dr. Sheskin’s insistence on relying upon the data presented by previous studies such as the 1990 National Survey of Religious Identification (NSRI), the 2000–2001 National Jewish Population Survey (NJPS), and the 2013 Pew Survey. At one point he refers to the Pew Survey as being the “best data we have on the American Jewish community.” Which is kind of the point and problem, no? If the “best data” is so woefully flawed—let alone the fact that it is nearly a decade old at this point—how can any provenance be attached to it? If it has been consistently stated that Jewish surveys have undercounted Jews of Color, how then are those same inherently flawed studies being used as cornerstones of comparison as to any kind of “accurate” number?
Of course, this would be self-incriminating to Sheskin himself contributing to the problem of undercounting, as he has been the primary investigator on 33 such studies, since the year 2000—including two mentioned above—and 20 of his studies did not ask about race or ethnicity.
In “hard numbers” that means a primary investigator on major Jewish population studies did not include questions of race and ethnicity in over 60% of the studies under their purview.
When addressed about this, Sheskin claimed that those questions were “rightfully” not asked because they would yield results “at most” of 1%. But again, people aren’t breadcrumbs. And if you collect enough breadcrumbs, you eventually reach the volume of an olive. When I pointed out that if the question isn’t asked at all then there’s no way to tell whether the percentage is “negligible,” Sheskin admitted that I was right. Yet one still has to marvel at purporting to have a definitive answer based on inconsistent data centered around the absence of a question that one has—personally—failed to systemically ask. Furthermore, it is equally astounding to dismiss the lived-in experiences and explanations of Jews of Color, as well as the results of a survey specifically constructed to estimate the American Jewish population of Color, while citing studies which had no such focus, and simultaneously appealing to the authority of one’s experience in Jewish population studies—which are the same studies which are the example of the problem.
Another problematic contention was the complete lack of awareness of cultural blindness on Dr. Sheskin’s part.
As Tema Smith commented, “growing diversity is not necessarily translating to proportional participation in mainstream Jewish communal organizations.” Yet Sheskin was insistent that those who don’t necessarily participate—in those instances when racial and ethnic question were actually present—would still be identifiable based on the questions asked. Aside from the fact that said questions have never been consistently worded or formulated, this has no bearing on those who would avoid such efforts entirely. For years I myself, while still strongly identifying as an Orthodox Jew of Color, would purposely avoid events geared towards “Jewish diversity” out of cynicism that viewed them as “tag and bag” events designed to tabulate whether or not Jews of Color were a large enough population to warrant being concerned about—something which is ironically playing out here.
A main crux of Sheskin’s reasoning towards presenting these reduced figures is a desire to supply accurate numbers for organizations to assess the designation of resources. This is curious, as anyone involved in resource planning for an under-represented group knows to overprovide for said group. One doesn’t calculate that for ten vegans one only needs to provide enough vegan food for ten. In fact, planning in overabundance only increases the participation of the under-represented group, as those who do attend inform the rest of their community, who in turn begin to show up more.
Additionally, what would be the harm of overrepresenting the allocation of resources? A disproportionate amount of programs dedicated to uplifting the diversity of the American Jewish landscape? A surplus of American Jews being exposed to non-white non-Ashkenazi expressions of Judaism? A dangerously well-rounded and knowledgeable Jewish population body? This is almost akin to a majority white school needing to count precisely how many African-American students are in their student body, and using that data to decide whether or not they should give cultural lessons during African-American History month or teach about the leaders of the Civil Rights movement.
The video interview includes far more than can be said here to any productive end, but at the end of the day, the most distressing aspect of this entire ordeal is Dr. Sheskin’s self-identification as “flaming liberal.” It in fact recalls to mind the evergreen words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in his “Letter From A Birmingham Jail”:
“I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate…Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”
Jews of Color are not breadcrumbs. We exist. We matter. We count. And we won’t be nullified.
SOURCES
