Reflections on The Color of Love: A Story of a Mixed-Race Jewish Girl
The Color of Love: A Story of a Mixed-Race Jewish Girl is a beautiful memoir by Marra B. Gad, a Black Jewish woman from Chicago who was adopted by a white Ashkenazi family in the 1970s.
The Color of Love reads like a delicious confessional between your close Jewish women friends, while spotlighting problematic racial attitudes in the American Jewish community. The writer’s perspective, reflecting youthful innocence and “good Jewish girl” sensibilities (she’s also the oldest sister) provide a microscopic view of intra-Jewish racism; we recognize so much of what she experiences—and
are even more appalled when those experiences include discrimination. With all the pain they reveal, Gad’s carefully chosen words are soothing and delightful to read, especially during this over-stimulating time of political upheaval.
Gad is the first child to her adoring adoptive parents; her Jewish birth mother held the secret that her birth father was Black. Gad writes that, a tiny bundle of joy, her blackness was a
benign physical reality, inconsequential compared to the love she was swaddled in. But it’s 1970s Chicago, and readers know the attitudes of the wider environment are waiting for their opportunity to break in.
Those attitudes comprise what Gad has coined “the cult of sameness.” For instance, she writes that was told on several occasions that she, both Black and Jewish, could not exist. This cult takes the form of a rabbi who suggested she identify as “just Jewish” in a counterfeit offer of inclusion. It’s an ardent Jewish suitor who ultimately won’t take her home to meet his parents. It’s a Jewish professional community full of “good liberals” who intentionally ice her out of opportunities after she earned her Master’s in Jewish Studies. The cult of sameness provides a false sense of comfort at the steep price of someone
else’s pain.
Breaking the cult of sameness requires confronting a primal, troubling, aspect of human nature, Gad writes. “The notion that different can be dangerous is very real. We need to acknowledge that bias is something that every human being holds. We can’t break it until we admit that.” But on the other hand, personal connections break down biases: “It’s hard to look someone in the eye when they are telling you what is true and say ‘I hate you anyway.’”
There is another intersection at which Gad sits. She says, “I am one hundred percent an ambassador of each to the other tribe. I play that role every day that I get up.” In 2020 when George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, was brutally murdered by a police officer, Gad was outspoken on the significance
of the tragedy. When Kanye West made antisemitic statements, she denounced him unequivocally and questioned those who were silent. While many socially aware Jewish institutions are looking for opportunities to connect to the larger Black community, Gad has some advice for them: first, address their own Black Jewish community members. “It all starts with being willing to have the conversations. Asking Jewish families of color how they want to be supported is the first step,” she says. Even on evenings when she was the guest speaker, Gad has been given the third degree upon arrival at a new synagogue. She will not enter a new synagogue unaccompanied and has even called synagogues to tell them that she, a Black woman, was coming. “Even in an era of increasing hate crime, synagogue
security must not involve racial profiling,” she says.
A book that delves into the sore subject of racism within the Jewish community shouldn’t be this enjoyable. What makes The Color of Love such a good read is love. Love is Gad’s natural default
setting. After the wounds of painful events have left their scars, she’s ready to reconnect, take on her duty to her family and offer her love. Being committed to love means time, money, energy and
patience for loved ones who were also loving and—more nobly—for those who weren’t. Like a steady beating heart, the pulse of love is there throughout the book; a quiet strength, constant and loyal.
