1 minute read
Jael Ellman………………………………………….14
Jael Ellman
she/her
“My mom's half Iranian, so I'm only a quarter Iranian, but it really shows up. Like, a lot of people don't look at me as white. Which is so interesting to me, because growing up we’d go to our Iranian relative's house for things like Passover and Rosh Hashanah and I always felt like we were sort of like the white family on the outside.
But, when I'm in other settings, it's like, oh, I'm the ethnic Jew, I guess. Like, when I came to Tulane, everyone asked, ‘Where are you from?’ And, I was like, ‘Oh, Los Angeles,’ and they're like ‘No, where are you really from?’ I could just see their wheels turning and them just being like, I can't put you in any box. That’s changed my perception of myself, because growing up in Los Angeles with my mom as my rabbi, I never really thought to put my Jewish identity and my Persian ethnicity together.
But, I’m realizing that the intersections between religious and ethnic identities create new and unique cultural experiences. Like we're not in shetl anymore, so we should expand our ideas of what a Jewish person
looks like, acts like, who they talk to, who they don't, where they
work. And, that speaks to the part I love so much about Judaism – there's no single box. Like, if you eat bacon, there's thousands of Jews who will eat bacon with you, if you want to pray three times a day, or five times a day, or make aliyah, there are thousands of people like you.
