Embracing My Asian Jewish Heritage
In honor of Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month, we are sharing stories from Jewish students who are celebrating both their Jewish and their Asian identities.
For Asian American Jewish students like Naomi Stephenson, a junior at Brandeis University, honoring both sides of that heritage is an important part of her life — not only because they’re both deeply important, but because they’re deeply interconnected.
“I can’t bisect myself and have one version of myself walk around and be Asian and the other half of myself walk around and be Jewish,” Naomi said. “I’m both.”
Growing up in Belmont, Massachusetts, Naomi was raised by her Ashkenazi Jewish father and her Thai mother, who converted to Judaism before Naomi was born. Her family attended Shabbat services and were active members of their synagogue, and also took annual trips to Thailand, where they would stay for a few weeks at a time.
While she was always aware of her biracial identity, sometimes others didn’t treat her Asian and Jewish heritage as connected.
“For a long time, the environment around me taught me to treat my Thainess and my Jewishness as separate sides of me,” she said, recalling a family tree activity from Hebrew school about Jewish ancestry, in which she was essentially told that the Thai half of her family “wasn’t really relevant.”
Naomi connected strongly with her Jewish identity, enjoying her bat mitzvah experiences and helping out with her synagogue as a teen leader. She chose Brandeis University for her college education, where she studies international relations, history, and French, in part because she wanted to attend a school with a strong Jewish community. She knew she wanted to get involved right away, so she started going to Hillel in her first year.
Hillel became a regular part of Naomi’s life at Brandeis. But she didn’t start to really bring her Jewish and Asian identities together until she connected with the Lunar Collective, an organization that cultivates connection, belonging, and visibility for Asian American Jews.
“They became the outlet for that side of my Jewish community,” Naomi said. “That was when I really started to claim being an Asian Jew. I didn’t realize how deeply you could feel seen, and feel in community, and feel like your whole self is being celebrated.”
Through her involvement with Lunar, Naomi hosted an Asian Jewish Seder in collaboration with Brandeis Hillel last year, and ran another one this past spring. “Lunar has their own haggadah that centers the Asian Jewish experience, which was really special,” she said. “There was something very holy about the fact that I could bring together people who are Asian Jews, people who had Asian Jewish partners, people within this Asian Jewish community who might not have interacted with each other before.”
Naomi is now part of the Lunar Leading Light Fellowship, a program for emerging young adult leaders of Asian Jewish heritage. Fellows work together to build Asian Jewish communities in their own cities, through planning and facilitating local events.
“It’s been very empowering to realize that I don’t need to separate the two parts of myself,” she said. “All of that Jewish life I’ve engaged with — Hebrew school, my bat mitzvah, leading davening, leading in Hillel — I did all of that while being Asian.”
Naomi’s experience represents a growing shift in Jewish movements in communities to recognize the diversity of Jewish cultures, experiences, and identities.
“I feel like our voices are being heard a lot more,” Naomi reflected. “The Jewish community is growing more and more diverse, and that’s something that’s wonderful and so important and beautiful. Being at Brandeis and Hillel have taught me that there are ways of being Jewish that I never imagined or encountered before going to Brandeis, and those ways of being Jewish are just going to keep expanding.”