Uncomfortable Conversations with a Jew

by Emmanuel Acho

All I could wrap my head around was “Israel’s been attacked”—but truth be told, I didn’t really know what that meant because we’ve been here before; it’s not like this is the first time we heard the words “Israel” and “terrorist violence” in the same sentence.

This was exactly how I was feeling when my husband woke me up that morning to tell me what was going on.

EMMANUEL: We spent about an hour talking through the events of the 7th, with Noa giving me all kinds of context—or at least everything she was able to know at that point. We knew that Hamas had started a war. We knew that hundreds of people had been slaughtered and/or kidnapped. We knew everything was in chaos… Then came my final question: What can I do to help? Which elicited the most raw and authentic answer: Stop what you’re doing and check on your Jewish friends.

One way to bring forth justice is through dialogue. Through respectful curiosity, asking, and listening. So, this book is also about modeling for people how to do something as simple as having a conversation in the first place. How to give someone else the space to speak plainly and communicate their own truth, while also examining your own—however inconvenient or even painful that might be. Because everything great, I believe, is birthed through discomfort.

It’s always bothered me how when someone is trying to elicit an emotional response, they’ll say, “Imagine that person is your sister/brother/mother/father.” I say that’s part of the problem—this idea that we can’t fully connect with someone else’s experience until they’re someone we know or are related to or look like we do. To me, understanding should come automatically because we are human beings. It should go unsaid that if tragedy befalls some of us, it befalls all of us.

Jews are just over 2 percent of the US population, but they are the target of 63 percent of religion-based attacks.

I felt oppressed groups too often speak in silos. Black people fight for Black people, women fight for women, and Jewish people fight for Jewish people, but why don’t we ever fight together? Imagine how powerful we would be if Black and Jewish people—two of the most historically oppressed groups—fought together.

EMMANUEL: Well, in that case, here’s my first question: Why was it so important for you to have the book be called Uncomfortable Conversations with a Jew? Because if I’m being honest, it made me uncomfortable at first. When I started speaking on race, I made a conscious decision to say, “Black people,” not “Blacks.” Asian people, not Asians. Jewish people, not Jews. It just sounds offensive. So why “Jew”? NOA: Exactly because of your reaction. That word, Jew, has been used as a slur for thousands of years but not because there’s anything inherently wrong with being a Jew. The problem is with the meaning that people have assigned to it, the dehumanization and humiliation associated with it. So, I am now reclaiming this word and owning it proudly. I’m a Jew, and I love it.

October 7th, when the world began roiling with more antisemitism than Jewish people have seen since the Holocaust. As a community, we have had to put our mourning, grief, and anxiety on pause in order to hold the front lines of combatting anti-Jewish hate.

most people in the world have never met a Jew by any definition of the word, seeing as we’re just under 0.2 percent of the population and are most densely clustered in North America and Israel. It’s also true that the less people know Jews, the more antisemitic they are.

Judaism is different from Christianity and Islam because it’s not just a religion, it’s an ethno-religion. Meaning being Jewish is not solely about being observant or practicing daily rituals. It’s about a shared story and history, a shared culture, and a shared ancestral homeland—in Hebrew, it’s an Am and Uma, a peoplehood and a nation. And yeah, a religion, too. But to me, it’s mostly a peoplehood.