Still not sure what it means to be ‘Jewish enough’

We all huddled together in the cold. The fog hung heavily over the field, like a secret. Our breath made disappearing soft clouds as we pulled scarves tighter around our necks and watched our boys kick a soccer ball. The white numbers on their jerseys hovered in the mist. The conversation turned, as always, to October 7. Some parents said their kids covered their Jewish school uniforms on the way to and from school, hiding signs of their identity out of fear.

Mine didn’t wear such uniforms – they attended public schools – but they weren’t untouched by the rising tide of antisemitism. The other mothers shook their heads. Their eyes landed on me. I took in my breath, used to this feeling. Someone wanted to say something that I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear.

“At least you’re lucky,” one woman said. She squeezed my arm and gave me a smile. “This wouldn’t be affecting you so much. You know, not being… you know, not really Jewish.”

It would be great to pretend that I had a clever response ready. Instead, I just stood there, mouth open. She had known me for decades. I grew up in what can be described as an American-Jewish, culturally liberal, left-leaning community, and with many school friends who were like me: mixed-race and from mixed cultures.

And in this privileged environment, having a Japanese mother and a Jewish father, whose family escaped the pogroms in Tsarist Russia, it didn’t warrant much conversation. I was simply me – an Asian Jew. At home, we celebrated the High Holidays and went to Congregation Beth Shalom. My Jewishness then felt solid, not a battleground to defend or a riddle to solve. It was just who I was.

Coming to Australia as a pre-teen in the ’80s, finding a place in Melbourne’s Jewish community was not straightforward for me. My parents – reserved and, quite possibly, snobs – didn’t seek out the community and we definitely didn’t fit into its tight-knit circles.

At the time, I felt like an outsider, unmoored from the rituals and rhythms that everyone else seemed to understand without thinking. But as I got older and found my way into work as a writer, producer and curator, I formed friendships with a group of Jewish creatives. They weren’t religious, not in the sense of attending shul or following any particular observance.

Their Jewishness was cultural and expansive, stitched together in ways that mirrored my own. They didn’t raise eyebrows at my lack of a Jewish school education. They put up with my blessings during Jewish rituals we celebrated together, said in a muddled mix of Japlish, Yiddish and Hebrew – the way I had heard them growing up. They ate my High Holiday meals, cooked with miso and soy. They let me in, made space for my awkwardness and, in their way, showed me I could belong – not perfectly, but enough.

So when, 18 months ago, I stepped into the role of director and CEO at the Jewish Museum of Australia, it wasn’t something that I stumbled into by accident. I wanted to fully enter into the community whose door, I had always felt, was only half-open for me.

I did suspect that being an Asian Jew and leading a major Jewish organisation could mean that some people would have questions about my background. But I hoped that it would just be a momentary curiosity, that soon enough we’d all turn our attention to the real work. I believed that once I proved myself, the noise would fade. I thought it would be that simple.

Then, three months later, came October 7. The questions about my Jewish identity – raised both within and beyond the Jewish community – were quickly overshadowed by what came next.

Social media feeds became awash with, at best, casual indifference to the increasing antisemitism, and at worst, outright Jew-hatred. Writers I had privately collaborated with, artists I had admired and knew, heads of organisations I had supported and worked with – some of whom had sat at my Shabbat table – expressed views about Israel and the war against Hamas that framed Israel as the sole aggressor, dismissing any complexity or shared culpability.

As a Jewish person, I’ve always understood that the world rarely fits into neat and simple categories. Ours is a culture of passionate debating. In any Jewish conversation, you can guarantee multiple versions of a story and an endless array of perspectives. I was taught to question everything, and when I feel certain, to question again – especially then.

I had always believed the arts sector shared these principles, embracing complexity and resisting absolutes. But after October 7 I saw I was wrong. It was disorienting. Were these not some of our brightest minds – those we rely on to grapple with nuance and question assumptions? Instead, came the brash and unequivocal declarations that Jewish people control all the money and hold all the power, that Jewish artists shouldn’t get awards, that Jewish shows should be cancelled and Jewish businesses not patronised.

One of my oldest friends, who isn’t Jewish and is a writer, told me she didn’t understand why her social media posts were affecting me so deeply. Naively, I tried to explain. I told her how it felt to see her sharing posts from prominent Australians mocking Jews as hysterical and irrational in the wake of October 7. I tried to convey how deeply those words cut, how they weighed on Jewish hearts already burdened with grief and fear. She listened, then brushed it aside casually and cuttingly with: “Well, I never saw you as Jewish.”

It wasn’t long after this that the questions about my identity reemerged – questions that often felt less like curiosity and more like accusations. Was I Jewish enough to lead a Jewish museum? Was I Jewish enough at all? The questions didn’t just come from outside, they also echoed in my mind. My Asianness, too, often came under scrutiny. You don’t look Japanese, people would say, as if identity could be distilled into a single, visible trait. I lived in a constant state of uncertainty. Where did I fit in, and who, if anyone, had the right to decide?

If my Jewishness was under scrutiny in some spaces, in others it became a label thrust upon me whether I liked it or not. I found myself in a professional setting where I expected solidarity, only to be met with silence, hesitation or even resistance, when I raised concerns about anti-Jewish sentiment. The focus would shift, slipping away from the prejudice itself and onto me – my identity, my affiliations, whether my concerns were even valid.

When I finally used the word “antisemitism” to describe the growing bigotry I was witnessing at the organisation where I was a board member, the response was not acknowledgement, but avoidance. Instead, some people with vested interests proceeded to explain antisemitism to me, of all people, as though it wasn’t a prejudice I understood first-hand, a prejudice that affected me.

“There have been concerns raised about having a Zionist on the board,” I was told. The words, delivered with careful neutrality, landed like a slap. Was my Jewishness now a problem?

At the same time, I was hearing from artists in our museum who were frightened – afraid of being known as Jewish artists, worried that their identity alone might put their careers at risk. I saw their work disappear from programs, their names quietly dropped from projects, their presence erased online.

Meanwhile, people from both Jewish and non-Jewish organisations began reaching out, asking for advice, for support – unsure of how to handle the unease that Jewish identity now seemed to provoke. There was a growing sense of isolation, of being simultaneously hyper-visible and invisible.

A close friend recently told me that after October 7 she’d started to see me as more Jewish than she ever had before. This is not something that I am yet ready to claim as a victory. I am not sure what it means to be “Jewish enough”. I am not even sure that I need to figure it out. I have spent most of my life on the edge of enough – not white enough, not Asian enough, not Jewish enough.

Over the past 15 months, the world has felt sharper, harsher. Certainty is everywhere. People rush to declare their ‘truths’ as if they have found the only answers. I don’t have this urgency. I don’t need to cling to absolutes. I continue living on the edge – a place where everything is fluid, where the answers only lead to more questions.

As the Jewish Museum faces relentless waves of online hate, I have stopped worrying about how people see me. I have found my footing through action. My team and I work to create light for the Jewish community by providing safe spaces that celebrate our culture – stories of our shared histories, songs of resilience and images of hope. We also invite other Australians to share in the spectrum of all these moments. My hope is that everyone there can feel “enough”. And maybe this is the most Jewish thing I’ve ever done.

This article is part of a collection in Ruptured: Jewish women in Australia reflect in life post-October 7, edited by Lee Kofman and Tamar Paluch, published by the Lamm Jewish Library of Australia. $34.99