Are Jews White? A Conversation on Race, Erasure, and Sephardic History with Devin Naar

As the United States continues to experience a national reckoning with its long history of racial inequality, so too a debate has taken hold in the Jewish community about where and whether Jews of Color fit into the communal mainstream. This episode features Devin Naar, Isaac Alhadeff Professor of Sephardic Studies at the University of Washington, who sheds light on this question through the lens of Sephardic Jewish history. He challenges the imposed racial categorization of Jews in the United States, discusses the erasure and exclusion of Sephardic and Mizrahi identity in mainstream Jewish institutions, and proposes a historical reclamation of Sephardic identity and a radical reimagining of community spaces.