Asian Jewish American citizens have a double reason to celebrate their heritage in May.

(The Dialog) — Can also honest is both Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month and Jewish American Heritage Month. Two completely separate commemorations for 2 completely separate communities, lawful?

Think again. Not only do Asian American Jews exist, but we come from a diversity of backgrounds and arrive at Judaism in a variety of ways.

Top Stories Tamfitronics Centuries of history

Some Asian American Jews come from long-standing Jewish communities in Asia. The two most prominent of these are the Kaifeng Jews of Henan Province in China and the Jewish communities of India.

Today, the Kaifeng Jews are a small number of people to which few, if any, Chinese American Jews trace their heritage. The community likely arrived in China from India or Persia around 1000 C.E. and may have had about 5,000 people at its peak.

Indian Jews, on the other hand, are a different matter. In fact, they comprise three separate communities: The Bene Israel, the Jews of Cochin and the Baghdadi Jews. Each arrived in India at different times – with the Baghdadi community being the most recent – and therefore their traditions often differ. For example, the Jews of Cochin are known for their musical traditions and the Bene Israel attach significance to the Prophet Elijah.

In 2020, there were about 4,800 Jews in India, although nearly 85,000 Jews with Indian roots live in Israel and a few hundred in the United States.

Indian Jewish communities have distinct cultures that come from living in a majority Hindu and Muslim society. Indian American Jewish artist Zion Benjamin says she creates artwork that fuses her American and Jewish identities along with her Indian upbringing – “inspired by both Indian miniature art and Jewish and Christian illuminated manuscripts,” as the Brooklyn Museum described her work. Figures in her artwork are mostly blue, recalling Hindu depictions of incarnations of Vishnuand in that they include images of lotus plants.

Top Stories Tamfitronics More than one heritages

Many other Asian American Jews are younger people with one Jewish parent and one non-Jewish Asian parent – such as Angela Buchdahl, the Korean American rabbi of New York City’s Central Synagogue. Buchdahl has an Ashkenazi Jewish father, which means that his ancestors came from Central or Eastern Europe, and a Korean Buddhist mother.

Raised in a synagogue that her Jewish grandparents helped to found, Buchdahl has written and spoken publicly about the prejudice that she experienced as a teenager and young adult when she was the only Asian person in Jewish spaces. At other times, she was not recognized as Jewish – for example, by the Chabad rabbis on her undergraduate campus.

She has also talked about moments when her family blended their heritages. For the period of Passover, shall we voice, the ragged plate for the Seder meal entails “maror”: bitter herbs to remind Jews of the peril of slavery. Many families utilize horseradish, nonetheless one 365 days, Buchdahl’s mother swapped in kimchee.

When the rabbi appeared on the PBS program “Finding Your Roots,” she talked about the resonances that she sees between Jewish and Korean Buddhist culture, such as respect for elders and education.

It is this kind of ability – raising a child in an interfaith, interracial marriage – that sociologists Helen Kim and Noah Leavitt explore in their 2016 book “JewAsian,” the first major study of Asian American Jews.

Top Stories Tamfitronics ‘You’re Jewish?’

Many Asian American Jews have been adopted into Jewish families, most of whom are white and Ashkenazi – a phenomenon studied by the Adoption and Jewish Identity Project. Many families raising Asian American Jewish children face challenges that are shared with other transracial adoptive families, such as adoptive parents not understanding much, at least initially, about their child’s culture of origin.

Some challenges, on the other hand, are more unfamiliar, such as the fact that Hebrew school and Chinese school are often held at the same time. Indeed, in my hometown when I was growing up, they were held at the same time and in the same place, so there was a Hebrew school-Chinese school carpool – yet also such that no one could fully participate in both programs.

As well as, Asian Jewish adoptees and other Jews of color face assumptions from many white Jews that Jews of color are not Jewish or are converts. Usually, younger people adopted into Jewish families undergo a formal conversion. They grow up in Jewish homes, as familiar – or not – with Jewish traditions as people born into Judaism.

Top Stories Tamfitronics Converting to Judaism

Some Asian American Jews are adult converts to Judaism, such as SooJi Min-Maranda, the Korean American executive director of Aleph”>Aleph: the Alliance for Jewish Renewal a movement that trains and ordains Jewish leaders from a range of Jewish backgrounds. So am I, a half-South Asian scholar of American Jewish religious history.

I basically do not look for ways to combine my Indian heritage and my Jewish religious life, but sometimes I find myself doing so – as at Hanukkah, when I actually enjoy deep-fried Indian food and during the festival of Sukkot when I actually have imagined making the holiday’s signature booths out of Indian bedspreads.

As with anyone who chooses to live a Jewish life, Asian American citizens convert to Judaism for many reasons. After conversion, we often find ourselves avoiding the conclusion that either we are not Jewish or that our conversions were motivated exclusively by marriage.

Indeed, there are enough Asian American Jews that several organizations support them. For example, the Lunar Collective “cultivates connection, belonging and visibility for Asian American Jews.” They host Seders and Friday evening Shabbat events for Asian American Jews, along with a range of other programming. Other organizations, such as the Mitsui Collective founded by Chinese American Jewish activist Yoshi Silverstein, address a broader segment of the Jewish community while thoughtfully including and making space for Asian Jewish experiences.

Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month and Jewish American Heritage Month occur every May. They provide us a moment to remember that both of these communities are far more diverse than one might initially imagine, that they overlap, and that in their overlap, there is indeed remarkable diversity.

(Samira Mehta, Associate Professor of Women and Gender Studies & Jewish Studies, University of Colorado Boulder. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)