The Color of Love: A Story of a Mixed-Race Jewish Girl

by Marra B. Gad

I cannot simply decide to be only one of the things I am.

This is the story of how I have come to know who I am when faced with exactly this, and I know the choice is mine. And mine alone. It is because of everything I have ever experienced, and the fact that I exist in this unique form, that I am able to choose as I do. And not despite it. And, for me, the choice is always love.

That’s the thing about abuse. Its ghost lives on long after the abuser has died.

But that is the thing with racism. It is taught. Carefully taught, just like the Rodgers and Hammerstein song says. It’s passed down from generation to generation—like a precious family heirloom. And Louise inherited hers when we were young.

“I do wish that people were different,” she has said. “But never you.”

Racism wrapped in the guise of friendship is perhaps one of the cruelest forms.

There it was. Jewish boys didn’t want to explain my brown skin. And black boys could not understand or embrace my Judaism. I was good for sex, but even that would only happen in the shadows. Wanting me in any way was, it seemed, a dirty little secret.

One of my favorite sayings is “If the door does not open for you, it’s not your door.” It

It took a long time, but I came to understand that I must stop wanting the people who don’t want me.

I defaulted to love.

My love for my mother in that moment was bigger than anything Nette might have ever said. It really was that simple.

I have often wondered if Alzheimer’s and dementia simply bring people back to who they are on the inside, before the world changed them.

have always held: that we are all born as loving beings. Eventually, some people let life bury that love inside of an angry, mean exterior.

I think two things can happen when one finds one’s most peaceful center, especially if food and body image issues were ever a part of one’s nonpeaceful life. You can get bigger. And you can get smaller. For me, finding my peace has meant getting smaller. Literally.

It should be said that Bubbie was right.

But to hate any of these groups would be to hate a part of myself. And I cannot live that way.

I know now that I stand with two feet solidly planted in love. That both unconsciously and consciously, I choose love.

Always. Because of everything I have learned living at this unique intersection of my religious soul and brown skin. Because I know what it is to be deemed unworthy and hated because of my skin color and because of my religion. And because I will not be an instrument that puts more hate into the world.

I only know who I am because of the choice I did make. That to live and act from a place of love is what is right for me. And for me, that is enough.