Seasons in Sheol: A Black Woman’s Nightmare Journey Through Synagogue Culture

Season in Sheol serves as an important reminder that people can convince themselves of inner good while committing outer acts of malice. ~ Kush Miri

Interview by Maz to the Max with Kush Miri about her work experience at a synagogue.

From Ghetto to Ghetto: An African American Journey to Judaism by Dr. Ernest H. Adams

“…now I am part of a Tradition and People that leaves no doubt that I am truly accepted as an ordinary man, a black man, and yes, a Jewish man.“

The Ethiopian Jews of Israel: Personal Stories of Life in the Promised Land

The first book to recount in captivating photographs and candid interviews the profound challenges and inspiring accomplishments of Ethiopian Jews struggling to become Ethiopian Israelis.

My Sister, the Jew

Story of granddaughter of African-American sharecroppers, and a former Christian minister, now a Torah-observant Jew living in Jerusalem.

Migrant Soul: The Story of an American Ger by Avi Shafran

American Indian descendant and his assimilated family’s winding journey to Judaism

The Colors of Jews: Racial Politics and Radical Diasporism

“Every once in awhile a book comes along and smacks you in the face with its wisdom, intelligence, and compassionate politics. The Colors of Jews is such a book.” ––Chandra Talpade Mohanty

WEAVING A FAMILY: UNTANGLING RACE AND ADOPTION
by Barbara Katz Rothman
A path-breaking study by a noted sociologist of the immediate and continuing impact of race and adoption in our society. Katz Rothman draws on her own experience as a white mother of an adopted black child.

BEYOND THE WHITENESS OF WHITENESS: MEMOIR OF A WHITE MOTHER OF BLACK SONS
By Jane Lazarre
A Jewish woman married to an African American non-Jewish man, describes her experience of raising her sons and her encounter with the reality of racism in the U.S.

BLACK, JEWISH AND INTERRACIAL: IT’S NOT THE COLOR OF YOUR SKIN, BUT THE RACE OF YOUR KIN, AND OTHER MYTHS OF IDENTITY
By Katya Bibel Azoulay
Examines how adult children of interracial parents (Jewish and Black) think about personal identity. Blends historical, theoretical and personal perspectives to explore possibilities and meanings when Black and Jewish merge.

BLACK, WHITE AND JEWISH
By Rebecca Walker
A memoir written by the daughter of an African American mother and an Ashkenazi Jewish father who was born during the civil rights era of the 1960s.

BLACK, WHITE, OTHER: BIRACIAL AMERICANS TALK ABOUT RACE AND IDENTITY
By Lise Funderberg
Stories of biracial adults, written by a biracial Jewish woman (Ashkenazi Jewish and African American).

WAITING FOR LUCINDA: ONE FAMILY’S JOURNEY THROUGH INTERNATIONAL ADOPTION
By Amy Shore
Written with passion, honesty, humor, and love, Jewish author Amy Shore describes the ups and downs of adopting a child from Guatemala. From hope to heartache, anger and determination, the will to believe when all else fails, bureaucratic red tape, an interesting cast of international characters, and the agony of the wait – come along on this incredible, heartwarming journey to meet Lucinda.

BRIDGE ACROSS BROKEN TIME: CHINESE AND JEWISH CULTURAL MEMORY
By Vera Schwarcz
Explores the meanings of cultural memory within the two longest surviving civilizations on earth.

CHICKEN SOUP WITH CHOPSTICKS
By Jack Botwinik
Depicts the theological challenges a Jew is confronted with in dating a Chinese woman, and how this experience leads them both to become Torah-observant.

THE COLOR OF WATER: A BLACK MAN’S TRIBUTE TO HIS WHITE MOTHER
By James McBride
The story of James McBride’s mother, a Polish Jew and daughter of a rabbi, who moved to New York city, and met and married a black man (McBride’s father). The book is a testament to one woman’s true heart, solid values, and indomitable will.

DIM SUM, BAGELS, AND GRITS: A SOURCEBOOK FOR MULTICULTURAL FAMILIES
By Myra Alperson
A resource guide for interracial families of all kinds, written by a single Jewish mother whose adopted daughter was born in China.

HALF A HEART
By Rosellen Brown
A novel about a white Jewish woman who looses custody of her biracial baby. A reunion occurs when the daughter reaches adulthood.

IN EVERY TONGUE: THE RACIAL & ETHNIC DIVERSITY OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE
By Diane Tobin, Gary Tobin, Scott Rubin
In Every Tongue is a groundbreaking look at the changing faces of the Jewish people and implications for the world Jewish community.

JEWS IN OLD CHINA: STUDIES BY CHINESE SCHOLARS
Translated, compiled, and edited by Sidney Shapiro
Shapiro and his colleagues detail their analysis to reveal that Jews were not only present in Kaifeng, known as Bianjing in the Song Dynasty, but that they lived in large numbers in other Chinese cities as well.

LOVESONG: BECOMING A JEW
By Julius Lester
This autobiographical chronicle of Julius Lester’s Jewish journey is a meaningful addition to the body of scholarship on conversion. It also offers opportunity for reflections on Black/Jewish relations in the U.S.

MANDARINS, JEWS, AND MISSIONARIES: THE JEWISH EXPERIENCE IN THE CHINESE EMPIRE
By Michael Pollack
“‘Mandarins, Jews, and Missionaries’ reads, in many ways, like an adventure story, crisscrossing geographic locations and transcending ages. It is altogether engrossing. Pollack has sniffed out every available clue on the Chinese Jews: his research is solid and well documented. Both in terms of relating the history of the Chinese Jews and tracing their impact on the Western mind, there is no better work available.” – Anson Laytner, “Judaism”

MOTHERS TALK ABOUT REARING BIRACIAL CHILDREN
by Marion Kilson and Florence Ladd

OREO
by Fran Ross
This uproariously funny satire about relations between African Americans and Jews is as fresh and outrageous today as when it was first published in 1974.Born to a Jewish father and black mother who divorce before she is two, Oreo grows up in Philadelphia with her maternal grandparents while her mother tours with a theatrical troupe.

SECRET THOUGHTS OF AN ADOPTIVE MOTHER
By Jana Wolff
A White Jewish adoptive mother describes the experience of adopting a child of color.

SHADES OF COMMUNITY AND CONFLICT: BIRACIAL ADULTS OF AFRICAN-AMERICAN AND JEWISH-AMERICAN HERITAGES
By Josylyn C. Segal
This study of eighteen adults of African-American and Jewish-American heritage explores how biracial subjects of two minority parents negotiates mixed race heritage and identity in a society that maintains a hostile attitude toward interracial unions.
http://www.dissertation.com/book.php?method=ISBN&book=1581120249

THE FLYING CAMEL: ESSAYS ON IDENTITY BY WOMEN OF NORTH AFRICAN AND MIDDLE EASTERN JEWISH HERITAGE
Edited by Loolwa Khazzoom
Newly released personal and political essays by over a dozen Jewish women, edited by an American woman of Iraqi Jewish descent.

THE JEWS OF AFRICA AND ASIA
By Tudor Parfitt
Contemporary anti-Semitism and other pressures; with an appendix on combating anti-Semitism by Milton Ellerin. Helps to understand the commonalities between the oppression of African Jews and the oppression of Asian Jews. Also provides statistics from 1980’s on numbers of Jews in shrinking North African and other communities.

THE JEWS OF CHINA, VOLUME ONE: HISTORICAL AND COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVES
Edited and with an Introduction by Jonathan Goldstein
An interdisciplinary effort by Chinese, Japanese, Middle Eastern, and Western sinologists and Judaic studies specialists, this book scrutinizes patterns of migration, acculturation, assimilation, and economic activity of successive waves of Jewish arrivals in China from approximately 1100 to 1949.

JEWISH ISSUES IN MULTICULTURALISM: A HAND BOOK FOR EDUCATORS AND CLINICIANS
By Peter Peter Langman

UNDER ONE CANOPY: READINGS ON JEWISH DIVERSITY
Edited by Karen Primack
Featuring the works of over fifty poets, essayists, storytellers, and songwriters. A tribute to Jewish diversity by Sephardi, Ashkenazi, Mizrahi, African and Asian writers.