How so? I’m a Jew. My mother was a Jew, born and raised in Israel. My dad’s a Jew, a Holocaust survivor, born and raised in Budapest. I was born in Jerusalem, as was my brother but we grew up in the US. We’re still Jews but in the US, we are white and we had all of the privileges associated with being white. I’m also a photographer. I’ve photographed quite a few bar and bat mitzvahs and the parties for the kiddos after the ceremony. The guests are mostly white while the entertainment - DJs who get the kids up and dancing to pop and hip hop by Black artists are Black. This has always made me squeamish. I’ve always felt there was something off about this and I think this post finally makes me understand why: the ceremony - the reading of the Torah is a Jewish coming of age ritual. It’s all about Jewish culture, tradition, and identity. The party part feels like a public display of white American identity: the entertainers are Black, the servers are Hispanic - a silent army dressed in black, scurrying about setting and clearing plates, filling water glasses, bussing tables, nearly invisible.