Capstones
Graduation Date
Fall 12-13-2024
Grading Professor
Naomi Gordon-Loebl
Subject Concentration
International
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Abstract
At the Conservative synagogue where I attended Saturday school for part of my childhood in the 90s I recall the teachers’ reimagination of the popular Michael Jackson song “We Are the World,” taught to the seven and eight year-olds who were made to sing it in chorus at some holiday celebration that year.
“We are the Jews,” we bleated out, in concert, “We are the Chosen.”
From my place among them I remember the unsettled feeling I had, to consider my non-Jewish friends at school, teachers and babysitters who knew not of tefillin, my maternal grandparents in the pews of their Presbyterian church in the northern Midwest. If the Jews were the Chosen, what were they? Chopped liver?
Nobody is just one thing. In this essay - part personal narrative, part political and literary analysis, part social commentary - Alexander Bernhardt Bloom explores the subject of Jewish identity before the backdrop of bigger conversations about multiculturalism and identity politics.
The Jews are a diverse bunch he argues, like all other groups, and a look at his own story and a those of a handful of others here is meant to illuminate the truth evident in this: Peoples are not monoliths; none of us is simply the sum of the demographic boxes we check. In our times it seems a necessary reminder, that our depth is richness and that the complicatedness of us all is what does actually make us great.
Recommended Citation
Bloom, Alexander B., "Eleven are the Stars of Joseph’s Dream; His Coat, Many Colors" (2024). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gj_etds/748
Included in
American Studies Commons, Jewish Studies Commons, Nonfiction Commons, Religion Commons, Social Justice Commons
