Identity crisis

I am a member of an invisible minority. That is, I’m not part of an identifiable group. When I look through the census documents that identify visible minorities, I don’t see myself. This may seem like a non-issue, but to me, it’s an ongoing identity crisis.

I come from parents with very different backgrounds. They’re both Jewish, and both not, too. From years of persecution, hiding in plain sight and covertly passing on traditions, Judaism has become as much an inherited culture as it is a religion.

Judaism is not an ethnicity. Jews are as disparate a group of people as Christians. Those who practice the faith or claim the culture come from all sorts of backgrounds. Jews can be south and east Asian, Slavic, European and African. And, in a twist that seems very obvious but surprises most Canadians I meet, Jews can be Arabic.

Obvious because Judaism, like Christianity and Islam, originated in the Middle East. Obvious too, because historically, many Jews around the world are displaced members of tribes from what is today one of the most contentious parts of the world. The Middle East.

My parents may both be Jewish, but their family trees are as different as cedars and maples.

My mother’s family is from Eastern Europe. They settled in Montreal, like many Canadian Jews do. But they arrived much later, after the holocaust. Their roots are not deep. They are not as well established. My mother, like me, is a first generation Canadian.

My father’s family is from Iran, ethnically Kurdish. Brown-skinned people, with different languages than their neighbours. They fled to Israel to escape violence against Kurds, which continues today, and violence against Jews. My father, like me, is a first-generation Israeli.

I was a small child when we came to Canada, with roots from either family tree loosed from the eroding soil of lost language, war and fear. I had no connection with my new home. Ties to my old home lost through mostly forgotten differences, and eventually through distance and death.

These things happened when I was so young, and in such slow motion, that there was never crisis in it. But one thing has remained with me: I have always struggled to understand who I am through the lens of my history. On one side, the Holocaust. On the other, a culture shrouded in the mystery of a lost language, but with its own history of persecution and murder.

But both Jewish.

Last week, a restaurant in Netanya, north of Tel Aviv, received international attention and praise amidst renewed violence between Israelis and Palestinians (two national identities, neither religious nor ethnic) for offering discounts on their hummus to Arabs and Jews who would break pita together. A well-meaning gesture for peace.

The thing is, it was Arab Jews who brought the culture of hummus and pita to Israel—a group of people who still suffer persecution there. I wonder how they feel about this offer?

mihal@mihalzada.com