O pinion
I Feel Empowered as an Asian-American Jew — But it Sure
Took a While to Get There
BY JENNI RUDOLPH
I FIRST NOTICED I was
different at my Jewish preschool.

I came home with a little bag
of crayons and a big question:
“Why am I ‘tan’ if all the other
kids are ‘apricot’?”
I don’t remember how my
mom explained my ethnicity,
which today I describe as
mixed Chinese and Russian
Ashkenazi Jewish, but I
remember being unsatisfied
with her response. Nonetheless,
I felt at home at my preschool,
so being a different “color”
wasn’t an issue — that is, until I
aged out and enrolled in public
elementary school.

I grew up in Huntington
Beach, best known as
California’s hot spot for surfing
and neo-Nazis. The weather is
perpetually 73 degrees, our last
mayor pro tem sold QAnon
merch and, for some inexpli-
cable reason, there just aren’t
a ton of Jews here. Switching
to public school, I finally met
a few other Asian kids, except
now I was one of the only
Jewish ones, and the culture
shock was real. I brought
matzah for show and tell and
was shocked that no one had
even heard of Passover.

“Wait, so not everyone is
Jewish? Also, who is this Santa
guy you speak of?”
My classmates invited me
to church, trying to convert
me. After singing exclusively
Christmas songs in every local
“holiday” concert, I recovered
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM by writing my own Chanukah
songs (plus some nonreligious
Christmas songs, as every
Jewish songwriter needs in their
catalog). I took on these battles
proudly, as I loved to remind
people that I was Jewish.

Meanwhile, “Asian” was
a label that I never chose for
myself, yet my face gave it
away. My earliest associations
with the word “Asian” were
microaggressions, so I grew to
despise the word and every-
thing it represented. Surprise
surprise, growing up Asian
American in an image-ob-
sessed, Hollywood-adjacent
culture with zero role models
of color was the perfect storm
for a sneaky scoundrel called
internalized racism.

My immigrant ancestors
assimilated for their own
survival, rejecting everything
that made them “different”
to prove their loyalty as
Americans. Carrying on that
tradition, my mom never
learned Cantonese, and I never
learned how to use chopsticks.

“Don’t wear yellow, you’re
too dark,” my mom would tell
me, projecting onto me what
she’d been told as a kid. So I
tried scrubbing away my tan in
the bathtub, as my white class-
mates were spraying on theirs.

While my friends were
soaking up the golden-hour
aesthetic and rocking cat-eye
winged eyeliner, I was slapping
blue filters on my photos to
look less “yellow” and googling
tutorials on “how to fix my
hooded eyes.” All my insecu-
rities were amplified by
comments from my classmates,
like the sixth-grader who
advised me to bleach my hair
and get plastic surgery.

Internalized racism
completely distorted my
self-image. I saw myself as a
hideous Asian caricature, a
jumbled collage of stereotypes
and failed expectations. My
Asian face didn’t feel like mine.

I resented my own mother
for making me Asian. I sought
the approval of my white peers,
believing that every white
person was inherently superior
to me and that I was half-su-
perior to my monoracial Asian
friends. White supremacy
really had me convinced that
my Asianness was a problem
for which I needed to apologize.

So instead, I leaned into my
Jewishness. Except, without
a solid Jewish community,
finding my Jewishness was
like navigating an abandoned
highway at night with no GPS,
where my only road signs were
stereotypes, vague Holocaust
references and occasional
words of wisdom from my
Jewish grandma.

Whenever anyone called
me “Asian,” I’d counter that I
was Jewish. As a secular, Asian-
presenting, patrilineal Jew, it felt
like a lie. I slept in thick plastic
curlers every night, waking up
to lumpy, lopsided curls that
only held for a few hours in my
Asian hair. While my friends
were reading “Harry Potter”
and “Magic Tree House,” I was
maxing out my library card on
Holocaust books, which made
for some dazzling playground
icebreakers such as, “Who
is your favorite Holocaust
survivor?” and “Where in your
house would you hide from
the Nazis?”
I can’t rationalize why
immersing myself in histor-
ical Jewish trauma felt easier
than embracing my modern
Asian-American Jewish
reality. I reasoned I was simply
learning my people’s history.

Ironically I was weaponizing
my Jewishness as a stepping-
stone to whiteness. I thought
if I redesigned myself to be as
Jewish as possible, people could
forget I was Asian. So every
night I’d put in the curlers and
search my reflection for any
JEWISH EXPONENT
physical proof that I was Jewish.

Puberty finally granted me my
wish: Practically overnight, my
stick-straight Asian hair had a
major Ashkenazi awakening.

If genetics worked like a
Build-a-Hair workshop, I’d
combine the texture of smooth,
silky stereotypical Chinese hair
with the volume of big stereotyp-
ical Jewish curls and defy all laws
of hair physics. Instead, I ended
up with a frizzy, inconsistently
wavy, unmanageable mess.

“Have you heard of condi-
tioner?” my Asian friends would
ask. Or my favorite, “Just brush
it!” Suddenly my Jewishness was
another problem to detangle.

It was a vicious cycle:
dissecting every inch of my
body, comparing myself to
two sets of unattainable beauty
standards and constantly
finding a new insecurity. “Do I
have a Jewish nose?” I’d ponder,
obsessing over my side profile.

(I do, in fact, have a Jewish nose
because I’m Jewish, and I have a
nose.) “Ugh, my eyelashes are so
short and Asian!” The shameful
tug of war between my two
identities seemed never-ending.

One day, all these messy,
nuanced feelings spilled out
onto a page in my songwriting
journal. Digging through these
complexities with humor and
a profound level of honesty, I
wrote “Water & Oil,” a song
more genuinely Jewish than
any of the Chanukah songs I’d
written as a kid. Twenty-five
mixed collaborators helped me
bring the song to life, along with
a music video shot by fellow
Asian Jew Jared Chiang-Zeizel.

The music video was a
cathartic opportunity to wear
everything I had denied myself
— monochrome head-to-toe
yellow, winged eyeliner and my
hair in its full frizzy glory. We
satirized all my insecurities —
the blue filters, my vendetta
against my hairbrush and my
failure to use chopsticks. It was
angsty, it was campy and it
made me feel whole.

Today, I feel beautiful and
empowered in my Asian-
American Jewish identity. My
Jewish identity means so much
more to me than simply my
“whiteness,” and I will never
let white supremacy define my
identity again. Growing into
my mixed identity is a lifelong
roller coaster of learning and
unlearning, but I’m into it.

And hey, that’s pretty damn
Jewish. l
Jenni Rudolph is a songwriter and
musician from Southern California
and the Creative Director of
LUNAR: The Jewish-Asian Film
Project. KVETCH ’N’ KVELL
Just Timing
THE FIRST TWO WORDS of this past Shabbat’s Torah reading
(“The Parameters of Justice,” Aug. 12) were shoftim v’shot’rim,
judges and police officers, who were to be appointed after the
Israelites entered Canaan. The judges and officers were expected
not to taint justice or accept bribes, but to be impartial. Above
everything was the pursuit of justice.

How ironic that Philadelphia District Attorney Krasner chose
the day before this Torah reading to indict three law enforcement
officials for their failure to adhere to these 3,300-year-old rules. l
Paul L. Newman | Merion Station
AUGUST 19, 2021
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