https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/07/24/jesse-jackson-was-my-father-he-blessed-my-embrace-judaism/
I love the art included with this piece.
Two years before he died, my father came to my synagogue. For many of my fellow congregants, it was the day they learned that my father was the Rev. Jesse Jackson — a stalwart of the civil rights movement, an African American Baptist minister and one of the architects of multiracial coalition politics. To me, he was simply Dad: a gentle father who reached back for my hand on every car ride and taught me to meet difference with curiosity.
As the Saturday morning service proceeded, my father sat in the front row — holding my hand, dancing to prayers in a language he did not speak, eating the Sunkist candies the congregation had tossed to celebrate a bar mitzvah. Beside him, I banged on my siddur like it was a tambourine, weaving into those ancient prayers the rhythm of the Black church I was born into.
On June 12, carrying my parents’ blessings, I completed my conversion — a journey I held close until now. I was raised to believe that faith must lead to action. In Judaism, I found an enduring expression of this belief. Ancient ritual and the rigors of textual study were accompanied by the calling to “repair the world.” The Hebrew liturgy felt familiar on my tongue before I understood its meaning. On my first Rosh Hashanah, the shofar’s cry touched a depth of my soul I had not yet reached, and tears poured down my face.
As my father looked on, I reflected on the identity I would claim as a Black and Jewish woman, a twin inheritance filled with sorrow and wonder. Sorrow because, for Black Jews, racism and antisemitism can surface in even the most intimate and familiar spaces. But wonder, too, in the meeting of two diasporas: kosher soul food, Black oral tradition finding its cousin in Jewish debate, twin memories of an exodus from slavery.
So much of my life was determined before I was old enough to choose it: who I was expected to become, what I would inherit, how the watching world would understand me. My parents understood the burden of those expectations and were careful to give me the freedom to become a seeker — of knowledge, meaning and God.
Though I was raised among people of many faiths, Judaism became personal to me almost by accident. In college, my studies kept leading me back to questions of faith and justice, and during the pandemic, a serious illness and the long isolation that followed gave those questions new urgency. I happened across an online conversation about Jewish life and became captivated. That encounter led me to read about the faith and eventually attend my first Shabbat service. I kept going back. In that community, I recognized myself, and over time, we became bound to one another.
The connection between African Americans and Jewish Americans was forged in the struggle for civil rights. This shared history is now under attack. In some communities, speaking out against antisemitism is seen as siphoning attention from the fight against anti-Black racism. In others, confronting anti-Blackness is seen as a threat to Jewish identity and belonging.
About 1 percent of American Jews identify as Black. Their experience — my experience — shows that the alienation between these two communities can be overcome. The ethical language of my childhood was shaped by a Black prophetic tradition that responded to dehumanization with an unyielding insistence on the sanctity of life. Judaism supports this struggle for dignity, affirming that whoever destroys a single soul destroys an entire world, and that whoever saves one saves an entire world. Both traditions tell a liberation story that begins with a particular people but does not end there.
At the end of my father’s Shabbat visit, my rabbi, Sharon Brous, called his name to offer him a blessing. Before she could speak, the congregation was already on its feet. My father — one of the most recognizable Baptist ministers in America — wept as the congregation offered him a spontaneous ovation.
It was a moment of mutual recognition. Speaking a year and a half later at my father’s funeral, Brous said, “What a holy thing it is to be seen for who you really are.” That morning, my father and my Jewish community saw one another clearly.
A few weeks after my conversion, I stood before my community and announced my Hebrew name, Miriam Yiskah — the latter a feminine echo of Jesse, carrying my father’s memory into the covenant. I feel as though I have been entrusted with a sacred charge: to do for others what my father and my rabbi had done for me. Amid widespread concerns about antisemitism and anti-Blackness, it is necessary to recall that our differences do not preclude unity.
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