8/28/2021 - Ethnicity, Ladino

 One thing I have struggled with for the majority of my life is my ethnicity. Being an Americanized Latina is interesting to say the least, but I often find myself battling to feel a sense of belonging within the Latin community as I born in the US and do not speak Portuguese. My last name is an obvious indicator of my ethnicity, but when friends met my father they were shocked by his dark complexion and accent. I felt false identifying as Latino because I was not raised in a traditional Latin upbringing. And for a long time, I similarly felt like a fraud wanting to convert to Judaism, especially considering it is an ethnoreligious community, I feared that converting would equate to cultural appropriation. I felt like a fraud because I was raised Catholic, not Jewish, and I had never met a Latin Jew.

But this past week, I was scrolling through Spotify and stumbled upon a song called Avraham Avinu. I couldn't pinpoint the dialect so I found the playlist it was in, Ladino Jewish, and began skimming the title of the songs and began noticing how some of them oddly sounded Spanish. Upon searching what Ladino meant, I was shocked when I read it was a Hispanic language of Jews of Spanish origin. I researched more and found an article on Amazonian Jews, a small group of Jews that resided in the northern region of Brazil. I couldn't believe it. Sure, it was a stretch considering how small the community is/was and how many ended up converting to the matriarchs Catholicism, but I couldn't help feeling so elated knowing that there was a small percentage of Brazil that practiced Judaism. 

I feel less like a fraud knowing that at some point in history, the two intersected. I felt a deeper sense of belonging to Judaism just knowing that there are Brazilian Jews. 

Being Americanized does not make me any less Latina, and being raised Catholic does not make me any less Jewish. 

God gives us free will. Being born Catholic does not bind me to Catholicism; I always had a choice, and I choose Judaism.

Amazing what one song on Spotify led to.