"As if African-American women don't have enough challenges already, why would you want to go ahead and do something like this?" Tamar Manasseh says, asking the question that others have posed. "You don't make the decision to do it. It kind of comes to you." The Chicago-born mother of two has four years to go in the five-year rabbinic master's program at the African-American-founded Israelite Academy. Raised by her mother in the Jewish faith since youth, Manasseh, 30, is a lifelong member of Beth Shalom B'Nai Zaken Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation.
The congregation, which is largely black, was founded in 1915 and moved to its current location -- the former Lawn Manor Hebrew Congregation on South Kedzie in Marquette Park -- in 2004, from the Southeast Side.
But she faces challenges, Funnye says. Among them: critics in the black Jewish community. Funnye says many of his colleagues are against women being ordained. Manasseh and her family say she has been dealing with naysayers her whole life.
"She did face some challenges," says her mother, Everloyce McCullough, who "reverted" from Catholicism to Judaism before Manasseh was born. "I don't think that she ever said, 'I don't want to do this.' But it was difficult for her, and we talked through it, and she managed to do some introspection. And she realized that this is who she is, and this is where she belongs."
'Fought to defend who I was'
Still, especially as a teenager, it was hard to blend in as a black Jew.
"At some point, every kid feels like they're a freak," Manasseh says, "but it makes so much sense to me now.
"I couldn't wear my star of David because it was too gang-related," she says, noting that the religious symbol was also the sign of the Gangster Disciples gang. "I've never understood that. Sometimes, people will still kind of look at me funny."
Continued with the Sun Times piece...