In college, I used to tutor inner city middle school students through an organization called Making Waves. Once during a staff training, I was placed in a group with two Latinx tutors and two black tutors; the other group consisted of five white tutors. When my group playfully accused the supervisors of dividing us up racially, the other group was quick to mention that I, too, was white. My fellow tutors leapt to my defense. “Whoa, whoa, Mr. Bernstein isn’t white!” “Yeah, he’s Jewish.”
Flash forward a decade, and I’m the campus rabbi at Northwestern University. During MegaShabbat, the largest Shabbat gathering of students all year, a first-year student eagerly rushed up to me with her friend, hoping I could settle a debate they’d been having: are Jews white?
First of all, let’s acknowledge that the question doesn’t quite make sense as asked, given that it ignores and erases multi-racial Jews, Mizrahi Jews, Ethiopian Jews, the B’nei Israel of India, and dozens of other ethnic groups within our own Jewish communities (this list is meant to be illustrative, not exhaustive).
Still, I understood her real question: are Ashkenazi Jews—rightly or not, the predominant image of Jews in the United States—considered white or not?
Well, I certainly don’t self-identify as white. Externally, though? I’d be lying if I didn’t admit I benefit from white privilege. Despite the yarmulke on my head, I pass through the streets of Chicago and New York and San Francisco, and nobody bats an eye at my presence or shifts uncomfortably when I walk by them. The outside world seems to view me as white.
Yet the larger question remains – what do we mean when we say “white?” Is white a skin pigmentation? An ethnicity? A corporate identity? In a country with mounting racial tension, I find myself having to confront this question repeatedly on campus, only to find each voice seems to define the terms in relation to their own life experience.
How can we possibly have a conversation when we can’t even agree on the terminology? And this isn’t the only racial conversation that collapses because of these disagreements. I’ve lost track of how many arguments regarding racism in the United States I’ve witnessed develop because one person defines racism as personal bias and the other as an institutional system of oppression. It sometimes feels as if reality itself exists only in relative terms.
Unsurprisingly, this relativistic take on reality is nothing new; it stretches back to the Torah itself. The double portion VaYakhel-Pekudei deals primarily with the construction of the tabernacle (mishkan) and the priestly vestments. In the course of describing the arrangements, the portion refers to all four cardinal directions (see Exodus 36:27, 38:9, 38:13 and 40:22).
“What do biblical conceptions of the cardinal directions possibly have to do with race and relativity?” you may find yourself asking. The Torah relies on relative, rather than absolute, signifiers for three of the four directions. The west is designated yamah – toward the sea. This refers to the Mediterranean Sea, which is a fine marker for “west” if you’re living in Israel. But it’s to the east if you reside in Spain; to the south for Bulgaria; and to the north for Egypt, as well as for the very parts of the wilderness in which the Israelites constructed the mishkan.
The biblical south is called negbah, or literally “toward the Negev.” The biblical north is tzafonah, which some scholars believe to be a reference to Mount Zaphon in Syria (now called Jebel Aqra). Both of these directions make sense for Israelites dwelling in Jerusalem; less so for anyone else.
Though it might seem silly to focus on the seemingly myopic nomenclature of cardinal directions, it has larger, metaphysical implications. Are our moral directions similarly so relative? Do they constantly shift and change according to our own standing? Can there ever be a “true north” to guide us morally?
There is at least one direction that has a more absolute reference point. The biblical east is often called kedem (literally, “before”), but VaYakhel-Pekudei uses the more precise kedmah mizrachah (toward the before, toward the shine) [Exodus 38:13]. Yes, the biblical “east” (mizrach) comes from the dawning sun. Though what lies “before” us may change in accordance with our own position, dawn and light (or perhaps enlightenment) remains constant.
If the east represents illumination, perhaps it should not surprise us that one of the other directions hints towards concealment. The word for north (tzafon) can be alternatively vocalized as tzafun – hidden.
If there is an absolute moral truth out there, it remains murkily concealed and hidden. I imagine we can find it only by shedding light on the limitations of our own relative conceptions of the world. But how might we succeed in somehow de-relativizing our lives, in removing ourselves from being the relative center of our compasses?
I imagine it starts by acknowledging that all of us are the products of our own, highly individualized experiences; even the most fundamental of our truths cannot be taken for granted as an absolute, not even the cardinal directions themselves. If we can start to question our positions when otherwise we would assume they’re unanimously shared, if we can allow the challenging and critical comments of others to prompt introspection rather than dismissing them as wildly off base…perhaps then we might gain a more universal perspective. Perhaps then we might edge ever so slightly closer to a more objective, absolute truth.
Brandon Bernstein is currently the campus rabbi at Northwestern Hillel, where he helps students to discover the intersection between what was and what is, between Jewish wisdom and contemporary knowledge.
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