LAST SUMMER, I was on a video call with photographer Shlomi Amiga, whom I’d worked with on multiple projects in recent years. My company had been hired to create a magazine-style impact report for a Jewish foundation, and I knew I wanted him involved—not because I knew he was Israeli, but because of his incredible talent. It occurred to me, though, that he might not know my own background, so I decided to tell him. “By the way, you know I’m Jewish, right?” I asked. Reader, he did not, in fact, suspect that I was Jewish. His eyebrows went up, and he said, “No way!” I replied that I’m reliably gentile-passing, and no one ever
guesses. He joked that between my (Brit- ish) name and appearance, I didn’t “look Jewish,” and we had a good laugh. We also had a thought-provoking conver- sation about what it means to “look Jewish” or not, and how visibility — or invisibility — can impact our lived experiences and iden- tity. Months later, a collaboration was born. Shlomi wanted to visually explore percep- tions of Jewishness, and I wanted to explore it in my writing. Identifying someone as Jewish by their physical features has a problematic, un- comfortable, and sometimes painful histo- ry. Many of the stereotyped visual cues — a large curved nose, curly or frizzy hair, dark beady eyes—were introduced by Western European white supremacist scientists in the late 19th century to racially categorize Jews (and other marginalized populations) as inferior. The antisemitic media portrayal and Nazi propaganda in the subsequent 50 years that led to the Holocaust resulted in a deep irony that plays out to this day: visible Jewishness is narrowly defined and exclu- sionary by nature. That template places Jewish identity and belonging out of reach for the people it makes invisible or actively excludes. However, they’re often the ones with the most hard-won and intentional relationships to their Jewish iden- tity, precisely because they’ve had to active- ly claim it rather than taking it as a given.
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about being incognito, she was never hiding. The community’s imagination was just too small to see her. For a long time, Cooper distanced herself from both the Jewish com- munity and that part of her identity entirely. However, that changed during the pandemic, when she participated in an exhibition at the Fentster Gallery in Toronto that examined being Black and Jewish. The project generated artistic recognition at the international level, leading to invitations from Euro- pean galleries as well as an unexpected form of validation. “Strangely, since letting myself be known, I’ve felt more welcomed by the Jewish community than ever because of my art,” Cooper says. The experience also led to the Right- eous Persons Foundation— a non- profit that funds Jewish arts, commu- nity services, social justice initiatives, and more — approaching Cooper to create an immersive photo and video series around Black Jewish life. That work dominated her life for more than a year, during which she travelled across the United States to various Black Jewish communities and took por- traits of people who were active in those communities. The goal was to capture moments that were sacred to them within their Jewish traditions, but the process also brought Cooper a sense of belonging and Jewish identity. She realized that being Jewish is more expansive than many of us are willing to acknowledge. “When we say Judaism is one thing and one thing only, then of course, we can’t fit within that. It’s too broad,” she explains. “To be Jewish means so many different things to so many different people.” Kate Gardner has spent much of her adult life untangling the complexities
I WEAR THE STAR of David when I know I could not do so and have this false sense of security, especially in this day and age. But why would I? Because this is my space. I belong in this space no mat- ter what others may think. I find it kind of funny when Jews are standing up and saying, Well, we’re not white, or, We’re not colonialists. We’re multicultural. We’re very diverse, when on a basic level, you’re still questioning those of us who don’t fit that Eastern European mould. You’re still othering people like me — implying that, be- cause I present a certain way, I don’t know what it’s like to be Jewish. That’s ironic, given that I work in a synagogue. The majority of the Jew- ish world is various shades of me. That’s the beauty of Ju- daism, of being Jewish: that we were scattered peoples.
Filmmaker Ella Cooper jokingly refers to herself as an “incognito Jew” — de- spite being raised in Montreal’s vibrant, liberal Jewish community and attend- ing Hebrew school— because she’s Black. “There’ve been times growing up within the Jewish community where, obviously, I didn’t fit in,” she says. “I am half Black, and I’ve often been questioned because of that, so it really had me pull back and feel like I wasn’t a part of that community.” The fact that someone raised in such a rich Jewish environment could feel so disenfranchised should come as no surprise. As a Black Jew, Cooper exists at the intersection of two marginalized identities, but is mostly clocked as the most visible one no matter where she is. Even though she makes those jokes
24 SUMMER 2026
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