new Jews

The Forward notes that in Cairo, Illinois, 55 African American recently converted to Judaism:

A rural community described as “far away from everywhere,” Cairo, Ill., boasts 40 churches, 40 blocks and fewer than 4,000 people - and as of earlier this month, it also has 55 brand-new Jews. …

[The conversion] was the culmination of an 18-month spiritual journey that has brought a number of Reform and Conservative Jews into common cause with a group of spiritual seekers from a town that is predominantly black and poor.

“It was incredible. Who would have thought that rabbis in St. Louis and Memphis would increase the number of Jews of color in America appreciably?” said Rabbi Micah Greenstein, who attended the conversion ceremonies and serves as the spiritual leader of Temple Israel, a Reform congregation in Memphis. “Judaism saved my life,” one of the converts told Greenstein. “That’s the first time in 100 converts that I’ve ever heard that,” the rabbi said.

It all began with Phillip Matthews, a disaffected Baptist. Here’s what he appreciates about Judaism:

In Matthews’s view, rising to meet challenges is part of the essential message of Judaism.

“When you read the Bible, when you read the Old Testament, and you see all the things that the ancestors of old endured, you see what it is to have endured,” Matthews said.

Yes, that’s true. I’ve long wondered whether, if we just changed the name of “the Jews” to “the Survivors,” whether Jew hatred, which refuses to die out even in the hyper-politically correct world we live in, would dissipate somewhat.

After all, the Jews’ skill at survival against the odds is what’s so mysterious about them: how stubbornly they’ve managed to survive as a self-identified collective, so to speak, despite their many travails all over the globe for thousands of years, how resistant they are even to extreme privation and to efficiently planned attempts to exterminate and eradicate them.