Converting to Judaism

Libyan Jewish women drinking tea in traditional clothes. Photo by Orr Shalom.

🌿 spend as much in direct and indirect sunlight as you can

🌿 stay near your window and keep it open as much as possible, breath in the air from outside

🌿 watch nature documentaries and movies that show a lot of nature. If you have Netflix I strongly recommend Arietty (and all other studio ghibli movies)

🌿 drink a lot, always. Try some loose tea if you can - not only will the warmth be good for your mental health, the leaves will give your monkey brain a stronger sense of accomplishment

🌿 look at your houseplants, as weird as that sounds, and eat fresh

🌿 paint or stitch animals, flowers, beaches, whatever you need!

🌿 look around online for natural sounds! Birds singing, waves, leaves rustling

🌿 read physical books, believe me

🌿 change your scenery. Hang pictures of nature, paint or print them out, or hang some leaves 

🌿 meditate on nature and visualze the heck out of it. Try imagining moss growing on your walls and a stream running from your door to the window 

🌿 take a shower imagingin rain or a bath  imagining being in the ocean 

Underwood Archives/The New York Times

From 1920 to 1934, New York’s large Jewish community experienced a sharp uptick in the number of observant Jews and rabbis.

I recently decided to start writing full-time, a decision that’s been both enormously liberating and incredibly isolating. But there are some real perks to not having to be in an office all day, and one of them is getting to sit on the couch and read a good book smack dab in the middle of the afternoon.

As a black Jewish writer, I obviously want to read books written by and highlighting the stories of Jews of color. That’s easier said than done, though. It’s not that these stories don’t exist — Jewish literature is an amazing, rich genre of diasporic Jewish stories. However, the narratives of Jews of color are often left out of the Jewish literary canon, and we suffer for it.

With that in mind, I decided to make a list of books you should be reading — all written by Jews of color or featuring Jews of color. Some of the stories here aren’t explicitly Jewish, but there may be a good reason for that. When asked if he would ever write a Jewish character, mystery novelist Walter Mosley replied, “Not if he wasn’t black … Hardly anybody in America has written about black male heroes. There are black male protagonists and black male supporting characters, but nobody else writes about black male heroes.”

Jewish writers of color may shy away from writing explicitly Jewish stories for a number of reasons, like fearing that the demand for these narratives simply isn’t there. Or maybe, like Mosley, they feel more compelled to highlight the stories of groups who have been historically erased from popular narratives. Whatever the reason, though, and whatever the content of their work, these writers remain unequivocally and deeply Jewish.