the ethnic kentuckian

On the First Night of Hanukkah...

2011-12-20T14:26:00.000-08:00

Every year at about this time, with the onset of the Christmas season, the news media makes overtures to the Jewish community, presenting images of Jewish families celebrating the festival of lights, Hanukkah. The Jews, so it seems, are coping well with the dominance of Christmas, despite the fact that it dwarfs their celebration. But are appearances reality?

Santa Claus was probably the first Christian symbol to penetrate my psyche and tell me I stood outside of the cultural norm. From an early age I knew all about Santa. I understood that he was the embodiment of good and that if you crossed this old man, you wouldn't profit. So, from the beginning, I tried to understand why Santa didn't stop at my house on Christmas. "Was I bad, undeserving of toys?" "We are Jewish. We don't believe in Santa," I was told.

But Santa was everywhere, how could I not believe? Steadfast in my belief, I pondered logistical considerations. If Santa was flying around up there, how did he know not to stop at our house? Dazzled by the holiday spirit, I supposed that Santa and his reindeer knew to leap past our house because bright Christmas lights appeared miraculously on our rooftop on Christmas Eve, spelling in gigantic letters, "JEWS."

Later, when I was certain Santa was a fabrication, I felt superior to my Christian friends, because long before they had a clue, I knew there wasn't a Santa. I managed to cope with Santa Claus. As I grew older, however, I found other aspects of Christmas just plain isolating. The Christmas gaiety at the malls, the music and decorations (not to mention Santa Claus beckoning us to come sit on his lap), all this didn't speak to me. And my parents didn't help matters as they took a defensive and meta-narrative approach to the whole thing with their constant holiday critique judging decorations, for instance, on their tackiness factor.

In looking back I think there was both envy and disdain for Christmas. It was not easy being outside the norm, not embracing the biggest holiday of the year and how much easier it would have been to be like others around us. But, at the same time, there was a sense of superiority and feeling that we held a depth of understanding that evaded others.

As fate would have it the family I am raising, like so many other Jewish families, has increasingly incorporated this gaiety (in particular the multitude of lights and even silver foil) into our Hanukkah celebration and we have found ways to keep ourselves occupied on Christmas Day like fleeing to Chinese restaurants with other non Christians. Last Christmas Day I'm proud to say that I savored my Chinese food with both Muslims and Jews at the table. We all came to the dinner, served by Chinese, knowing what it is like to be a religious minority and appreciating the insight and knowledge that accompanies our positioning.

The holiday season is a propitious time to attempt to understand the position of others who do not celebrate Christmas or have little means to enjoy the material goods that surround the holiday.

(excerpted from Ace Magazine, December 1994)

Teresa Isaac: Kentucky's Own Ben Kingsley

2011-12-04T10:33:00.000-08:00

What does Teresa Isaac, Lexington, Kentucky's former mayor, have in common with the actor Ben Kingsley? She, like Ben Kingsley, is a modern ethnic/racial being who confuses others. One moment Ben Kingsley is taken to be a Nazi living in South America and the next is convincingly Jewish, while it seems that he is actually Indian, Jewish, and English. His racial/ethnic makeup transcends easy and simple demarcations.

When most Kentuckians think about Teresa Isaac, they don't think of her as someone immersed in her enterprising Lebanese family. They instead think about her being mayor of Lexington, KY and about whether they approved of the job she did. She appears, at first glance, like most politicians, to singularly represent herself. Upon closer look, though, it's clear that her political life is rooted both in her family and family business and in her Arab American identity--an identity that crosses boundaries and emanates from her cultural heritage and darker looks that could be associated with any number of ethnic groups.

Teresa owns and negotiates her Arab American identity locally, nationally and internationally. She is manifestly political and does not recoil from controversy, running for office and publicly attempting to bridge the gap between Arab Christians and Muslims. She even finds herself negotiating the wants and desires of Jews since she is sometimes misidentified as Jewish or Muslim. In fact, Teresa can count Jews among her loyal political supporters even if her political foes try to pit Jews against her. Well, when I ran for mayor the first time, fliers got put on the cars at the Synagogue and Temple that said I was a terrorist, and so the Arab American community was going to do a press conference and say that it wasn't true. Then actually the Jewish community did a press conference and said it wasn't true, so it was very nice.

Let's be clear: Teresa is not your normal Arab American politician. She manages Jews and Arabs alike, including Christian and Muslim Arabs, unlike most Christian Arab Americans, politicians included, who distance themselves from Muslims. I might add that she is an Arab American who identifies with Kentucky and the mountains of eastern Kentucky. Her identity can even confuse other Arabs. When Teresa monitored the first Palestinian elections in 1996, she puzzled the residents of Palestine. The people in Palestine they were looking at me and they were like "you look just like us, but what is that accent?" I'm like "it's from Kentucky," and they would be like what on earth is an Arab doing in Kentucky, and they would just be mystified that an Arab from Kentucky had come to monitor the first Palestinian elections. I just always told them that it [eastern KY] reminded my grandparents of the mountains of Lebanon that could be the only reason that they would be there. No one's ever told me that, but I thought it has to be what it is. It has to remind them of home a little bit.

Teresa works from the belief that Arab American Christians with eastern Kentucky roots can be unique peacemakers. The State Department agrees, sending her around the world to difficult lands to represent the United States. I have trained police chiefs and elected officials for the State Department in Chile, Argentina, South Africa, Namibia, Pakistan and Uganda. Opportunities have come to Teresa because she embraces being a Catholic Arab American from the mountains of eastern Kentucky, and she knows her lucky fate. Who would have thought a girl from Harlan would go to Uganda?

No doubt, her racial/ethnic looks have puzzled others. Indeed, it is the very elusive quality of her appearance that appeals to the State Department. I think that's why the State Department uses me because I can blend in. When I'm in Chile and Argentina, they think I'm like them. When I'm in Pakistan, I can dress up like them and go out and nobody can really tell, so I think I can blend. Her chameleon looks have brought her advantage and even strengthen her connection to Kentucky as her global travels make her feel, not more worldly or sophisticated than other Kentuckians, but instead further attached to them. When overseas, far from Kentucky, she uncovers Kentucky connections.

Who would think that someone in Versailles would have relatives in Doha, and that I would find them? It was the same thing in Uganda. There was a young man in Lexington who's a hip hop artist. He's from Uganda, and his mom is one of the most renowned HIV/AIDS doctors over there. I met her. We had dinner in Kampala, and it was because her son is here. So when I was in Pakistan that was how I got to go that house outside of Islamabad. The State Department was cracking up, "How do you always find a Kentucky connection no matter what country you're in?"

An Arab American former mayor of a midsized American city who travels the world representing the US while clinging to her Appalachian roots defies, no doubt, simple racial/ethnic categorizing.

Ode to Aunt Marilyn

2011-11-15T17:45:00.000-08:00

I gaze at the above photo with melancholy, because the people pictured are my family members, and not one of them is still living. I never knew "Mama Rose," my grandmother, standing in the middle couched by my parents to the left, and my aunt and uncle to the right of her. But we heard about Mama Rose long after her passing in 1964. The picture was taken at a celebratory time either on the occassion of my parent's or my aunt and uncle's wedding in the late 1950s. Of course, a subtext exists to the photo. Everyone may appear content, but Mama Rose was not thrilled at the prospect of her eldest son, Franklin, marrying a nonJew, Marilyn, despite the fact that Marilyn went through a rigorous conversion. Mama Rose's wishes or displeasures seem distant and remote today especially after the last of these five, Marilyn, passed away just about a month ago. Yet, I know that Mama Rose's desires reverberated long after her death and seeped into the biographical journey of others, in particular, into my Aunt Marilyn's.

It was common knowledge that Aunt Marilyn couldn't marry my uncle without forsaking her Christian roots as specified by Mama Rose, and her lack of family facilitated letting go of past associations. Uncle Franklin spoke of the situtation this way. Marilyn was an orphan. And quite honestly the fact that she was an orphan was probably one of the reasons why I was able to marry her. There were no home objections, and she was able to convert totally without any baggage hanging behind her.

In the years since my own mother's death in 2004, I feel that I moved from a child's reading of my Aunt to an adult conceptualization. I came to realize the boundaries that she crossed in a time and place when boundaries were rigid and rigidly enforced. In 1950s Lexington, Kentucky she walked away from the Christian world she had always known and entered the conservative and close knit Jewish one. I can only imagine that both communities were baffled and maybe at times unwelcoming. To be sure, Lexington's 1950s conservative Jewish community was reeling from the Holocaust and World War II and embracing nonJews to their ranks was not a priority, to say the least. Aunt Marilyn didn't talk much about her early days in the Jewish community, only in passing did she mention that some of the old country women chose not to acknowledge her presence. I can only imagine the reception she received from some Christians. I've only recently learned that distant family members severed ties with her when she married my uncle.

Of course, my Aunt's movement into the Jewish community is, at this point, history. Her devotion to Judaism was undeniable and complete, and being the public and dynamic person that she was, she moved between communities with flare and finesse. My Aunt didn't bill herself as a boundary crosser even though she was. Indeed, I know that it was hard for her to speak about her journey into Judaism even though not that long ago she was part of a panel discussion of women who had converted to Judaism. She was by far the oldest of the bunch. In this era of self disclosure, maybe others didn't realize it, but this was possibly the only time I heard my Aunt publicly describe her conversion process. 1950s women didn't dwell on the past or incessantly self disclose. Yet, despite her relative silence (at least with me) about her movement from one community to another, I take from her life story and biography the incredible courage it took to cross boundaries when few around her were doing the same. Thank you, Aunt Marilyn.

Rose and Rose

2011-09-09T09:05:00.000-07:00

Rose Rowady never knew my grandmother, Rose Moosnick, but they should have met because their biographies looked a lot alike. My grandmother, Mama Rose, like Rose Rowady, came to small town Kentucky from elsewhere--in Mama Rose's case, from New York City.

Mama Rose followed her Lithuanian husband, a peddler and shopkeeper, to Kentucky because he had a brother in the area and his entrepreneurial instincts told him to leave New York. Born and bred in New York, I can only imagine that small town Kentucky in the 1920s was a shock to my grandmother. A famous family story goes something like that when my grandparents, uncle, and father arrived in Nicholasville in the summer of 1924 the KKK was rallying--not because Jews were coming to town, but in one of their routine gatherings. According to my uncle, Mama Rose did not verbalize anxiety at the prospect of being in the midst of uncertain environs, but rather her fear was present even in its silence.

It's funny because the KKK came up when I spoke with Rose Rowady's son, Mike. His mother's eyes and observations have stayed with him even in his later years. He recalled his mother's keen ability to recognize people's shoes in KKK parades thereby unmasking their identities.

An Arab woman and a Jewish one, both in small Kentucky communities, from before WWII until long after it, managed their lives and those of their families in a similar way--by being bold.

Mama Rose died two weeks after my birth but I grew up in the shadow of her memory--and different versions of her ways. Simply, my father loved his mother and reminisced about her regularly. She was a pro at the sewing machine and in the kitchen. She had the foresight to buy antique long before their value was widely recognized, according to my father. While my father sang Mama Rose's praise, my mother was in another room of the house offering her own take on Mama Rose. She was too much was my mother's refrain. I only know that at my father's death old neighbors from Versailles, KY came to offer condolences and told of their first encounter with Mama Rose. According to the neighbors, they arrived in Versailles in the 1940s, and like my family, were Jewish. Mama Rose came to their door and simply said, we have good relations with the goyem (non-Jews) here, don't ruin it and left without another word.

Mama Rose

Rose Rowady, meanwhile, in Winchester, KY also had tenacity, according to her son. When her husband was unable to get the money due them at the county clerk, Rose sat in the office for hours until she was noticed and came home with the money in her purse. Rose R. did not take no for an answer especially when it came to her children. When her daughter was told that the University of Kentucky didn't have a spot for her, Rose R. went to meet the Dean of the college and left the meeting with her daughter enrolled.

Rose and Rose, an Arab woman and a Jewish one, in separate towns, focused on the success of their children using similar means, bold ways and domestic talents.

Crocheted Goods and Spider Webs

2011-09-06T11:18:00.000-07:00

Photographer, Sarah Jane Sanders www.sanolaphotography.com, captured the beauty and grace of Rose Rowady's handiwork above. I never met Rose Rowady. She died in the late 1970s, but I've learned about her from her son, Mike Rowady--a longtime resident of Winchester, Kentucky. Rose hailed from a community tucked away in the mountains of Lebanon, not far from Palestine where fresh goods and produce defined lives, long before consumer culture had taken hold. Rose left Lebanon behind in the early 1900s, following brothers and sisters who had already sought new lives in America. Accompanying a brother who peddled fine linens (linens, by that way, that Rose often made) and rugs throughout PA, NC, Rose found herself in Kentucky as her brother sought to impress wealthy horse farm owners with their goods. Rose was married off to a Lebanese man, who had also landed in Kentucky, Alex Rowady. In small town Kentucky, Rose had seven children and managed to get all seven through college despite the fact that she struggled with poverty and the premature death of her husband--not to mention that she did so with foreign looks and ways.

Her ninety something year old son, Mike, recalls his mother consciously and unconsciously in his daily habits that makes use of the crocheted bed spread that Rose hand crafted.

An academic recently asked me what metaphor would I use to describe my work on Arab and Jewish women in Kentucky. At first I couldn't answer her. I fumbled with maybe a quilt--an overused metaphor especially when it comes to Kentucky, in my estimation. Later, it dawned on me that a spider web was the appropriate metaphor. Arabs and Jews have created identities in overlooked places in America and have done so weaving relationships with other ethnic minorities, but our experiences and interlocking relations go unnoticed unless held in a certain light.