People are people are people?

And so we return to the theme of my blog, to the inspiration with which I began this journey of airing my dirty laundry on the internet.

I have spent the past week going to events in the young Jewish Argentine world. It's been amazing and enriching and immersive on multiple levels. I have been reunited with hummus and babaganoush (eggplant dip), pita bread and grilled vegetables, prayers in Hebrew and people who observe and appreciate shabbat. One of the young men in my program is working for Hillel International and helping to plan Jewish events for International students, so he is super tapped into the young Jewish scene here. He invited me to a sushi dinner shabbat on Friday night and to a shabbat lunch at a Jewish youth center, both of which I attended this past weekend. I met young Jewish Argentinians and spent the weekend mingling and practicing my Spanish with them. I am always a little hesistant when stepping into new Jewish spaces because I worry about how I will be perceived and received; I have tattoos (an absolute no-no for Orthodox Jews), I am not observant, I support the liberation and autonomy of Palestine, I come from an interfaith family and do not believe that interfaith marriage will kill off the Jewish people... the list goes on. Still, I felt relatively comfortable and very welcomed this weekend. I might even start going to art classes at the Jewish youth center where we had lunch on Saturday/Shabbat. (The center is GORGEOUS and probably the most attractive building I have been in yet in Buenos Aires. It has tons of windows, bouquets of flowers everywhere, skylights, comfortable chairs and couches, huge bookshelves, a rooftop with a view of Buenos Aires... a very calming, purifying, communal space that feels like what I believe a Jewish space should feel like.)

I love thinking back on my childhood and realizing how integral a part of my identity my Jewishness is. Although I was never particularly religious or observant, both Kehilla and JYCA were so crucial in the formation of my beliefs and orientation about the world. Kehilla is the Jewish congregation my family belonged to, and many of the families are interfaith, interracial, multiracial, non-heterosexual, and services almost always include dancing and singing and instruments in the audience. JYCA, Jewish Youth for Community Action, is a group of high-school-aged Jewish students in Berkeley, California, that focuses on youth leadership and community activism and social justice.

Despite all of these wonderful emotions and memories that occur when I spend time around Jewish people and Jewish communities, I can not help but feel creeped out when other Jewish people suddenly seem to like me worlds more when they find out I am Jewish. While I understand the importance of sharing time and relationships with people who also share histories and traditions and beliefs, I can not endorse the idea of treating people with more attention, more energy, more care, more love, and more interest just because you both are Jewish. I believe that we should share our energy and our love with everyone who exhibits the same love and energy for the world that we do. Sure, people cling and flock to those who share their same moral and political beliefs, but I want to be assured that when I am being loved, I am being loved for me and not for my ancestry.

"People are people are people" is a quote that our tour guide on my Taglit birthright trip to Israel kept repeating. He used the phrase to demonstrate that people are the same all over the world, that basic humanity connects us all. But his constant usage of the phrase bothered me, especially in light of the fact that not all Jews are treated equally in Israel (see one of my extremely old blog posts on the situation for Ethiopian Jews in Israel, for example, and the popular belief held by many non-black Israelis that they would never ever bring a black Jew home to meet their parents). So lately, as I've been spending lovely afternoons and evenings mingling with beautiful Argentinian Jewish young people, loving my heritage and roots and the chance to connect to these people here, I have also been contemplating this concept. To me, people are totally people are people (the more I write the word "people," the funnier it looks!). It almost feels wrong, then, against my internal moral compass, to accept this acceptance that I am receiving from communities that might not believe that "people are people are people" in practice. I think that I need to read more about Judaism and what Judaism declares about this concept. In the meantime, I am loving my entrance into Jewishness in Buenos Aires, and eagerly anticipating an Argentinian Passover seder (though nothing can ever compare to my faimly's seders, where we eat potatoes and hard boiled eggs while we read through the Haggadah 'cause no one can handle hunger pains, and the entire seder is sprinkled with pieces and songs on global justice).

With love for people who are people who are people, and with respect and acknowledgment of the ways that people are not always allowed to be or not interested in being people who are people who are people,

L