H eadlines
Color Continued from Page 1
a study on Jewish demographics
was in 2009, when the results
revealed approximately 5% of the
Jewish community identified as
Jews of color.

Jewish Federation Director
of Strategy and Impact Kelly
Romirowsky said the recent
community portrait was more
comprehensive and used questions
and methodology similar to the
American Community Survey
conducted by the United States
Census Bureau. It is the first study
of a Jewish community in the
United States to use address-based
sampling rather than landlines.

The study found households
that include a Jew of color
are significantly more likely
to be making under $50,000
per year than households that
consist only of white, non-His-
panic Jews (54% versus 21%).

Households that include a Jew
of color are nearly four times
as likely to be living in poverty
(46% versus 12%).

Twenty-nine percent
of households with a Jew of
color are receiving some form
of public benefits, including
Supplemental Security Income
Program or Supplemental
Nutrition Assistance Program,
versus 13% of households that
do not include a Jew of color.

20 OCTOBER 29, 2020
Data shows a large percentage of Jews of color are unaffiliated.

Households with a Jew of
color are also more than four
times as likely to be at risk
for food insecurity (41% versus
9%) and twice as likely to be
without health insurance than
households without a Jew of
color (16% versus 8%).

The study addressed Jewish
identity and engagement and
found that Jews of color are
significantly less likely to identify
as Jewish by religion (41% versus
69%). However, they are nearly
twice as likely to identify as
Jewish by culture, ethnicity or
heritage (56% versus 27%).

Results showed that Jews of
color also tend to engage with
Judaism and Jewish commu-
nity differently than white,
non-Hispanic Jews.

“What we found is that there
are some engagements that house-
holds with Jews of color are more
likely to participate in than white
non-Hispanic households. So
they’re more likely to participate
in non traditional activity, like a
Shabbat hike or Jewish meditation,
and they’re more likely to partici-
pate in prayer or attend a class or
lecture, but they’re less likely than
white non Hispanic households to
participate in ritual-like activity,”
said Lindsay Weicher, manager of
data analytics at Jewish Federation.

“Ritual-like” activities included
lighting Chanukah candles or
attending a High Holidays service.

Jews of color were just as
likely to participate in synagogue
programming as white, non-His-
panic Jews, but were less likely
to do so as members. Fifty-six
percent of households with a Jew
of color are not connected to a
synagogue. Jared Jackson, executive
director of Jews in ALL Hues,
an education and advocacy
organization that supports multi-
ple-heritage Jews and Jews of
color, said racism is often a barrier
to synagogue engagement for Jews
of color. They may face impli-
cations that they are somehow
not “real” Jews because they are
not of white Ashkenazi heritage.

Another common issue is feeling
pressured to choose between their
Jewish and racial identities in
certain political contexts.

“It shouldn’t be a cost of
being a part of a community
to take racism from people,”
JEWISH EXPONENT
Fifty-four percent of households with Jews of color made under $50,000
per year.
Courtesy of Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia
he said, especially in a space
where people are seeking spiri-
tual fulfillment.

In terms of affiliation, Jews of
color were most likely to identify
as unaffiliated (51%) or Orthodox
(22%). Jackson said this data
aligned with his own observations.

“I would say probably a good
fifth of the Jews of color that I
know are Orthodox in some
way, shape or form,” he said.

“A lot of them lean towards
Sephardim because there are
certain Sephardi communi-
ties that are more accepting of
Jewish people of color.”
He also said there are many
Jews of color who are not affiliated
with any movement whatsoever,
or who say they are Reform, if
asked, to avoid scrutiny.

The study also showed that
households with Jews of color tend
to prefer to use Jewish agencies
for social services across all areas,
including food, housing, senior
care and child care, compared to
white non-Hispanic Jews.

Romirowsky said Jewish
Federation plans to use the
study’s findings to inform
grant writing, investments and
proposals for creating inclusive
community programming and
social services.

“We would like for our
community agencies to make sure
that any services they provide,
whether it be social services or
Jewish engagement or education,
are inclusive, and, if need be, that
they are doing specific outreach
in some cases to Jews of color
communities,” she said.

She said the findings could be
used to create culturally sensi-
tive outreach — publicizing a
program through channels other
than synagogues, for example.

Her department plans to
continue to conduct smaller
follow-up studies and focus
groups in areas that they believe
need further explanations. They
plan to commission more studies
depending on what they can
accomplish with in-house staff.

“The plan is not to wait 10
years for another big study,
because the world is changing
too fast now,” she said.

Jackson said the results,
particularly those revealing
income inequality and need for
social services, showed the huge
amount of work that needs to be
done to provide better economic
and engagement opportunities
for Jews of color.

“Having a multiracial
community is not a given. It
has to be earned at every turn,”
he said. “We need to invest in a
multiracial future and a multi-
racial present that integrates
and honors people.”
“We’re growing as a multi-
racial religious and cultural
community, and that’s a
beautiful thing,” he added. l
spanzer@jewishexponent.com; 215-832-0729
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM



H eadlines
Haul Continued from Page 1
hospitalized twice, with
pneumonia that got worse and
worse, and COVID-19, evident
from the shattered glass look
of her lungs on a CT scan. It
was all a blur — Cooper doesn’t
remember much of her hospital
stay. Though she started to feel
closer to normal by May — her
ability to taste has returned
to normal — the onset of
the virus was followed by
months of drawn-out, debili-
tating medical and emotional
complications. She’s devel-
oped an auto-immune disease
(which may not be connected
to COVID, but is nevertheless
challenging); she hasn’t seen
her children or grandchildren
in months; she feels angst and
guilt related to her survival,
coupled with newfound pains
in her joints and fatigue that’s
never abated.

And her experience — that
of the COVID long hauler,
as those who have endured
similar trials have come to call
themselves — is hardly unique.

“It’s quite a scary time,”
Cooper said. “Our world is
scary right now.”
Long haulers, according to
Harvard Health’s Coronavirus
Resource Center, are those who
contracted COVID-19 and have
not fully recovered weeks or
even months after their initial
symptoms. Some long haulers
began with mild or moderate
symptoms; others may have
first showed symptoms toward
the beginning of the pandemic,
but never received lab confir-
mation of COVID-19 due to the
initial scarcity of tests. Much
like the symptoms of COVID-
19, those of “post-COVID-19
syndrome,” as it has been
termed, vary widely, encom-
passing fatigue, shortness of
breath, continued loss of taste
and smell and much more.

A survey of the increas-
ingly large Facebook groups,
WhatsApp group chats and
Slack channels dedicated to
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM Lori Cooper in Morocco in March.

When she returned to the U.S., she
was diagnosed with COVID-19.

Photo by Rabbi Neil Cooper
Dr. Fredric Jaffe
Courtesy of the Lewis Katz School of
Medicine at Temple University
Congregants welcome home David Forsted after a lengthy hospital stay
caused by COVID-19.
Photo by Julie LaFair Miller Photography
It’s a novel virus. So we don’t have a year [of] data. We don’t have two
years, we don’t have five years, we don’t have 10 years, as we do other
diseases.” DR. FREDRIC JAFFE
support between long haulers
reveals the widespread anxiety
and fear around the long-tail
effects of coronavirus; tens of
thousands of long haulers share
aches and pains, odd tastes and
new sensations, asking if anyone
else has heard anything new on
the news or from their doctor.

Rabbanit Dasi Fruchter,
leader of the South Philadelphia
Shtiebel, has found more comfort
than she expected from such
groups. Since Fruchter, her
mother and her father were all
diagnosed with COVID-19 in
March, their bodies have tangled
with the virus in different ways.

Her father, asymptomatic; her
mother, hospitalized; Fruchter,
to this day, smelling and tasting
rancidity for nearly eight months,
along with fatigue, nausea and
headaches. That’s not to mention
the confusion and grief that she’s
learned to dwell with.

Though not a heavy social
media user, Fruchter began to
join some of the larger long
hauler groups, trying to get a
sense of what was happening
to her.

“We are each other’s doctor.

It’s very strange,” she said. “But
since there’s no real data out
there yet about what exactly
to do, it’s like the way that
I think about a beit midrash
sometimes. It’s communally
sourced knowledge.”
Dr. Fredric Jaffe, a pulmo-
nologist at Temple University
Hospital, explained that
doctors simply don’t know
enough about COVID-19 yet
to be able to understand what’s
happening to long haulers like
Cooper and Fruchter.

“It’s a novel virus. So we
don’t have a year [of] data. We
don’t have two years, we don’t
have five years, we don’t have 10
years, as we do other diseases,”
he said. “So the symptoms that
we’re seeing, like fatigue and
continued shortness of breath, or
headaches — name a symptom
and somebody probably reported
it. Did it activate these things?
Or is it part of the disease? We
don’t know just yet.”
Only with time, Jaffe said,
will the long term effects of
COVID-19 (on long haulers
and non-long haulers alike) be
more fully comprehended.

But even the short-term
observations are concerning;
Dr. Sadia Benzaquen, a
pulmonologist in the Einstein
Healthcare Network, said that
he’s seen a high incidence of
JEWISH EXPONENT
in the best physical shape of
his life prior to the pandemic,
remembers almost nothing of
what happened between that
day and late August. He was
sedated, he was intubated and
he was on a ventilator. Today,
Forsted needs to sit on a bench
in the shower and can only
move about with the assistance
of a walker. His right wrist
appears to have lost most of its
function, and he was forced to
learn how to brush his teeth
and comb his hair with the left.

“They don’t talk very much
about people like me,” Forsted
said. l
severe lung scarring among
COVID-19 patients in the ICU.

When David Forsted, a
retired doctor himself, tells the
story of his battle with COVID-
19, he does so with slow, labored
sentences. Forsted and his wife
were on the same synagogue
trip to Morocco as Lori Cooper.

“My birthday is March 24.

I woke up on March 25, and I
couldn’t breathe,” Forsted said. jbernstein@jewishexponent.com;
Forsted, 74, who said he was 215-832-0740
claims-paying ability of the issuing insurance company. Fixed annuities may have a higher initial interest rate which is guaranteed for a limited
For purchase payments of $25,000-$99,999 3 year rate is 1.65%
Samson Wealth Management Group is a separate entity from WFAFN.

OCTOBER 29, 2020
21