My Daughter Wants to Play With Other Black Jewish Children But Her Options Are Limited in Our Neighborhood
My almost 3-year-old daughter, Gadiella, is crazy precocious. Thankfully, we have a close-knit slew of highly creative friends with precocious little ones of their own. More often than not their tykes are older than our daughter, which is all the same to her. (After all, she says things like, “I don’t know if you’re aware of this Grandma, but I currently have the hiccups.”) All of our friends’ kids are Jewish, and come from the same side of the observance spectrum that we do. All of our friends’ kids are also white. Except for one.
Out in the wilds of Philadelphia is a little black Jewish Orthodox girl named Chana. She is Gadiella’s bestest bestest friend. Gadiella talks about her literally all the time. My wife and I are good friends with Chana’s mom, and her family, and we occasionally host each other for Shabbat. But, since we live so far away, we don’t all see each other that often outside of the realm of Facebook. In fact, Gadiella and Chana have only met three times.