Yavilah McCoy | The Deal with Nissim Black (Full Episode)

[Music] all right so javila mccoy really really happy to have you on the show nice to finally meet you in person i was watching some shirum on youtube you know i had to get myself well acquainted even though you know a couple of your family members i know pretty well so um i have to like come out of the gate and and ask you um the question so like me you're black you're jewish but unlike me you were raised this way he was raised in brooklyn he was raised orthodox jewish home the whole nine your parents are pioneers even for you know people like me um and you went to a jewish school day schools whatever and you also went to school in israel you also had to have the opportunity to be there in new york and also in israel so how was it like growing up in that type of environment um i kind of have an idea seeing my own children but i wanna i wanna know from your perspective how it was especially as a person of color yeah um it was it was training i guess that's the best way i could say it the way i look back on those i did those days it was training and what i was going to be and become in the early days i think what was most important was that i came from a home where my parents were very invested in both my judaism and in me growing up feeling strong and proud of myself so you know in my early days my father would go over the parsha with us my mother was very invested in my homework you know the very first pursuit that i ever learned in first grade i still remember because my mother sat up with me the first evening when i was learning my very first umash basu hebrew to hebrew we had the translator from ivory to be reached and she sat with me until i knew it by heart and here i am almost 50 years old i still know but in like those words came into me because of the investment my parents had in our education but also in our judaism and so that was the beginning that was the sun that was the sun that i came up in going into those schools that's a whole nother thing the biggest things i think that are are super important to notice that i look back on now and try to teach people differently about is the total lack of expectation for my existence that coming into those spaces and folks teachers principals having no expectation that a little um brown girl could come in and be fully invested and ready and excited and enthusiastic about judaism in the way that i was everything was a question and a curiosity and that changed the trajectory of my jewish education because of that lack of expectation when i came into school and i knew the parshat people would go wow or when i would my father speaks hebrew fluently and so when i would be able to speak hebrew people would be like wow where are you from all of that which from their perspective maybe may have been innocent um it lands upon a young child's consciousness that you always have to prove yourself you always have to come into the environment and make room for your existence make room for you to be and i think that was hard i think that was hard right so you know you know if i can't but you know talking to rafi also to rafi like definitely put me up on like him being in yeshiva your younger brother um and and and having that type of experience now i'm looking at my my own children right going through and they don't even have half the knowledge of i'm sure what your parents were able to give you because growing up in america and i think you know i think back in the 70s or so your parents had made their way to yiddish like very interesting how that was a time to where you really they really had to give you guys that awareness um much more so like my kids have really grown up in israel they're so far away from america they have no idea about american identity and what that is so we're like you know i it was like i want to say maybe my son was maybe six almost seven years old my oldest boy when i realized that he didn't even know what basketball was you know what i'm saying like you know what i mean so he imagined like cultural it was and it wasn't like uh on purpose thing but just like it just wasn't a part of his it was part of my life growing up just not a part of his life so my question is is like you know as you've grown and i'm sure you have children now also um how does that translate over to them now knowing what you knew before and then giving over to your next generation you know how much do you touch touch on social issues and feel the importance and need to give that over well i think as parents we're born in the generation that we're supposed to live right and in terms of our children they are living in the generation in which they're supposed to live i mean you know there's a concept in torah called uridos hadouros right means that you know every generation comes away from the light right right and i but i don't think that's necessarily has to be true in the context of your your righteousness like you noah was righteous for his time and is mentioned alongside the patriarchs why because in his time just his way of being even though it wouldn't have measured up possibly to an avraham it still was essential right that he did what he did in his time because it saved the whole world so there's a for for me when i think about what i came through you know early 70s yes because that's when i was born like early 70s coming through there are some things that are still the same that i can pull wisdom from in terms of what i lived through and there's some things that are completely new for this generation they're living at different times so the thing that i think is most important for my children to know for me like about my upbringing is that i grew up in a context of love i was very um blessed to have grown up under two african-american parents who loved themselves like they were not confused about their blackness being anything that meant they were less than or anything that meant that they had to apologize in fact they were celebrating who they were and our brownness and i had you know i had a father who told me that essentially avraham and sarah looked like a bunch of europeans infer and and long locks along the side because they would have essentially died of dehydration living in the middle east like who can do that right right so you and your ancestors are essential and organic to this judaism you're not coming here apologizing or asking for people permission right so that love that came into me really early on that we are essential and that who we are as a further expression of what judaism can be was bred into me and so i think the super thing that's most important for folks who are raising young folks is to look into young people's eyes and tell them that they number one are exactly who hashem created them to be number two that hashem is celebrating every day that they get up and move in the world and are honest and authentic about that creation being a gift and then number three when folks try to run lies at you that have nothing to do with what judaism has taught historically or presently about the essence of what a human being can be in this world that's exactly what it is it's a lie right right this is for you that's not for you when you see somebody acting foolish stay away from them people and when you see people who can open up and welcome you and be a part of your torah welcome them with a full heart and open arms right i teach my kids to stay away from foolish people i'm honest like i just i don't need it i don't want it i need to do my kids right no i listen that you know you're who you hang around that's that's what my parents used to tell me so i that's interesting and here's another thing um which i want to understand to find is if i know this right that not only did you have your parents but initially were a lot of people i don't know if it was a movement uh something like that but you didn't grow but only your parents being the only people of color there was more families around um at the time that you grew up right maybe not as president anymore i know there was a lot and there's not a lot of families around um maybe as much but i grew up going to a pretty much um a school in which the majority of the mignon were men of color and families of color it was um it was run by you know a man named david patan who is um now passed on he died this year um his memory before blessing but um yeah we we came up in a space where there were multiple families my house on shabbat and yum toe was filled with other jews of color i was not isolated and i was isolated in my school right in the in the shiva i went to it was just me and my sister but in the world that i inhabited i did not see my experience to be um othered i saw my experience replicate it across lots of different faces and lack of lots of different ways of being and a lot of joy and celebration people enjoy coming to my mother's house she my mother was a prolific cook her challah and like her soup and you know she brought every ounce of southern culinary deliciousness into a kosher kitchen literally i'm like uh super jealous i mean watch your mother's your mother's uh shamash and heaven aliyah i i unfortunately heard about last year last year i think it was already um so i didn't get the opportunity to have any of this you know uh that you're telling me about but uh you know i really didn't even come to my house i didn't forget to figure it out all right we have to stop through when i when i get to boston you know so here's here's my but how important was that for you like um my kids are sort of growing up in a similar situation that's why i had to make sure that your brother-in-law's sister uh moved close to us you know and you know ezekiel and joelle and a lot of other people here my brother and sister-in-law my wife's sister is married to my best friend since kindergarten also both you know obviously jews of color my wife's from louisiana originally so we do feel like it's important to um for our kids to not feel alone you know what i mean and that's one of the biggest things like very similar to you when they go to school they are pretty much isolated you know they may have a cousin there they may have themselves but ultimately you know and i don't think that they're doing a horrible job here i think whatever has happened and i i may have to give a lot of credit to you and your family and what your mother and your father did also too because um i don't think it's the same as probably you know years back because some doors may have been broken down by you guys um but i think that it's been something very very important do you feel like that had an influence on you growing up feeling like you know what i mean i'm not alone i may be alone you know i'm singing and kid to gimmel but i'm not alone you know what i mean right right um i think that it is important for us to collect and build community but i'm going to tell you something very honest when i was younger my father wasn't very interested in me marrying um someone who was a convert and i think about that a lot lately i did in the end marry somebody who was a aguer but he he said that the the rambam taught that we cannot create a community of congress right the reason why we can't create a community of converts a jewish community of converts is because we have to remain at the essence at the center of what judaism becomes for the am to remain the um right for us to remain a part of the um so there's some both and that i in my own generation now remember this is a convert saying that he wants his children to marry um into folks who were essentially from from birth as a person who was born into this space as a black woman who was unapologetic about my blackness i found that it was harder for me to connect essentially with someone from the physicality of what whiteness has offered in the u.s it was harder for me coming from the strong solid background that i came from to be able to not have it be an inhibition and a barrier between me and someone i married to be able to be in a cross-racial cross-cultural partnership where there wasn't full understanding and appreciation of where i come from got it now i i in the end was willing you know when when it came time for you to scream we dated you know i dated across um cross-culturally cross-racially but the man that eventually became um maisie voog was a person whose spirituality matched mine to such a depth that i think also was a part of a sharing of physicality and a history and a tradition that allowed us to really understand what our trajectory forward could hold right so there's a both end parents they may have one approach to say okay we have to keep them all around other young jews of color we have to create a community of dudes of color and i think it's that plus being completely humble that there's what color has taught us in our family line and tradition and the context of racism still being alive and well and then there's the spirituality of what our color has taught us which is where i'm at now i want a spiritual community for my children where they are discerning about their judaism and can be in the company of other people who don't allow race to be a practical there are there aren't that many white folks that i meet who have spent a whole lot of time deconstructing the impact of race upon judaism i don't meet a lot of white people who have done that to the depths and breath to which i could have started a family right right my father probably would have encouraged me in the direction wow wow interesting so let's talk about ayesha all right you you started ifa in 2001 right yeah so what inspired you what motivated you uh to do this your professional career to serve the jewish people and specifically the jews of color like was it because of the upbringing or was there a moment or something like that that happened that made you like i got to do this it really was my mother um my mother was a very loving person and she um would always like give love especially to the young people who were coming through with us in our home she you know to everyone she was auntie dina and that was the people who who were by blood are cousins and even folks who were not and to the young jews of color that i came up with who needed a lot of and a lot of strength she was there for them and also when folks encountered challenges usually for jews of color the the challenge around identity comes up around adolescence right and when people become teens and are trying to find their identity on experiencing themselves as othered in so many different environments it's a very specific moment for when um folks can go off to their and like and and i don't even really believe in that phrase i'm just gonna tell you personally but okay i i want to hear about people act they can react to the experiences that com that are surrounding them when a young person does not feel integrated within their community i don't think that's most succinctly the problem of that young person it's also the problem of the community absolutely and when the community then shames and blames that young person and makes them feel like their ostracization is only their problem we have a problem right so right so that's where i feel and so my mother would re would like try to reach for jews of color and hold on to them but many of the young people that i grew up with did not stay in mainstream judaism they left because it became too hard right to feel like you had no community among black people who were non-jews and you also had no community among jews right and to really feel that sense of integration took a lot of work and so my mother never let go of any of those young people you know she was her own little key roof machine and she would call them and she would check in and she would say how are you doing and um she would always say to me yavi we've got to find those kids you've got there has to be some space where those folks can find home and even though our home was as best she could a place where people could come after a while you know if you're not doing the things other people are doing you feel sometimes embarrassed right you feel like you don't have a place and you know this is next-gen joc stuff this is not like you know in the first generation we believe everything is possible but when you've come through it over multiple generations you see what triage looks like in our community right and the triage is real and so when i first did ayaka where are you it was because my mother really wanted me to create some space online where folks who you know were spread out now and you know doing their own thing they could find their way back to us and that's what inspired me to do that work initially right i i agree with you so much i mean i i remember hearing so many different stories i guess at least about and and you said something you don't like the the frame off to there i really want to under give it get a better understanding of what it is okay so now that off the derrick in terms of off off of the way and i do think it has a very negative connotation where the community like you said have not taken enough responsibility to say that did we give a space for these guys to find their own path within judaism i see it as a creative a lot of talented young people you know of all different colors but always ending up in these you know yeshivas of the of the rejects which i think have really big shamans a lot of talent and and and amazing personalities and and i've seen some of these kites come out of their system and they are superstars right but they didn't fit the derek right they didn't fit the path right which is ultimately i would say that a lot of what we see today the system as as we as we know it i i'm saying at least in the more from places which is which is probably the best that we can do with what we know right i'm saying maybe however it wasn't designed for everybody and and and and years before people worked the trade not everybody was sitting in kohlel and for sure everybody's wife wasn't going out to go work for them you know what i'm saying like i'm not saying that there wasn't some golem and great people but not everybody's referring to not everybody you know what i'm saying not everybody can pursue that path so when you what's your problem with the term i would like to say like what is what bothers you about that term well mostly it's because um and again i learned most of my torah comes from home and a mixture of what i learned in the system as a yeshiva and seminary person and what i learned at home and my father was a deep talmud of rambam and rambam taught that we are that torah is a golden mean that it's the middle path is not the the best of it's not either on one extreme or another it's a middle path that a human being finds that allows them to bring the best of themselves to their service of god and i find that a lot of times when you're talking about folks that are on the margins it's because the path itself has become too narrow that we create paths that aren't wide enough for all of us to move through and you know i think it was last month or so when we were talking about the arie micla in relationship to the parsha it astounded me to find out no it was over the summer and it it astounded me that every single road in yerushalayim every single road in eretz israel had to be built wide enough so that if someone had to go down that road to find right a city it was clear it was clearly marked what does that mean about roads and paths right this is somebody who might be ostracized for murder and we made space enough on every road for that person to travel and find refuge wow how much more so in the context of who we are every single day just trying to find our way through torah and it's full there has to be space for people and i find that we do not take accountability for noticing when our roads have become too narrow for all of us to travel with us and that's why i don't believe in that term because i've met too many like you say beautiful nisha mo beautiful human beings that with the right love with the right smile with the right twinkle in somebody's eye with the right welcoming they could be amazing and they are amazing but they could be amazing in community and we don't do our work to make that possible so i look for the human in every interaction right it's amazing so tell me this you focus a lot on the um say the word is intersectionality right within jewish uh with race and gender and so forth so why do you why do you believe that focusing on these things like the identities and different things like that um why do you think they intersect why do you think the intersect is so crucial for opening up the dialogue like today while intersectionality at least in orthodox spaces sometimes not so orthodox basis too has gotten a bad rep because it's a way in which folks at least in regard to issues of like equality and justice are calling people out right so there's two ways to be able to justice you can call people in which essentially is like um it's it's like tohaka essentially you can give somebody tokaka quietly in their ear right or you can give somebody to if necessary in a public space but the intention behind it has to be correct correct in order for you to be right in the right lane with this work so the reason why i say intersectionality is so important is because if we don't understand that there are multiple things happening at once often in one person's identity that are creating the conditions in which they present in the world we often only have half the story right so my journey is about you know the amount of melanin in my skin possibly to some but it's also about my gender right and it's also about my class and it's also about my entry point to um jewish identity in terms of um elitism right the the elitism that the hierarchies of value that we create across denominations across um torah knowledge right so all of those different things intersect in one person's identity to the great conditions in which they present to the world right and so you know if someone just says oh we're all jews you know that's all like you know sing honey mommy we're all jews so if people want to do that that's great and if i'm singing anima and a group of girls who are inching slowly to the right and don't want to link hands with me specifically because they think my black skin is going to rub off on them which has happened to me okay so when this happens then it's we're all jews is not enough right you have to start breaking the dimensions which is why my organization is called dimensions you have to start looking into the dimensions of what jewish holds and still make the commitment that we are one community so intersectionality allows us to go a little deeper beneath the surface and look at all the ways in which we have the capacity to um welcome each other or exclude each other on various dimensions of who we are interesting so i want to get to i want to get to anti-semitism before i get there because you just said something that sparks me and it's something that you know all jews of color have absolutely have to deal with um is uh and more so in for sure the last year or two with everything that's been going on uh in america socially i view these things really as separate things dealing with prejudices and racism in in the community in the jewish community and outside the community advocate had completely different experiences um part of the reason is i think and you know i've gone on record for sure saying that i don't speak for every person of color i grew up in seattle seattle is everything it does have a hood it has all this other thing one thing that it doesn't have a lot of is blatant racism don't deal with that back east and definitely down south my wife has probably experienced more coming from louisiana than what i have but i don't know from that you know i know of the systemic racism of what everybody else had to deal with in terms of like you know you know which i've gone on a record obviously saying being number one in sports performing arts my school we literally had the number one basketball team in the country we were high ranked in football we were and brand new uniforms brand new stadium everything brand new basketball court every year we had we we it was like amazing but we were last in test scores and we didn't have books inside this school so somewhere the budgeting i don't know who was doing the budgeting but they they missed out you understand but in terms of like actually feeling like somebody made me feel different about my color i didn't experience that um and i and and to be honest i haven't experienced it much in judaism i think a lot of it is because a lot of people know me i'm very much so out there i've been a public figure but my kids have you know my wife has and other people that i know have um so my question is do you look at these and try to address these from two different angles or do you view it as it's all coming from the same place well you know i'm a professional in this field now so you know in terms of my work well that's what i'm asking you i'm natural i know from the perspective of my partner right and my expertise i'm speaking about racism on two levels for sure one is just on the personal level yes how interpersonally our assumptions and our ideas and our biases show up in terms of how we treat each other that's one thing right but then there's systems and when we talk about systems this is how when groups come together and create opportunities for folks to join or be excluded from groups then racism has a different um spin in institutions right when you have the ability to admit someone or not admit someone when your institution has been set up to provide a service that has a different spin all of these things have to do with the way in which maybe i feel really great about myself right and i've never had anybody try to make me feel less than and when i walk into an environment where people have power more power than i do i experience myself as less than because of discrimination in that regard and it's super important for folks not to separate the two um i mean not to con conflate the two and act as if they're the same thing you know my neighbors say oh you're so great and if we're the only you know people of color on my block in boston because the zoning laws create barriers to class and to bank loans and to all sorts of different things then racism is not just a matter of whether you like me racism is about how in systems people of color are being discriminated against so we as a jewish community have issues and challenges to navigate around both of those things yes i want my children to be liked and yes i want yeshivo to be thinking about what part of their policies systems practices ways of being are exclusionary to people who are not ashkenazi and white and if they have not done any thinking about it they are probably more um [Music] open to like it's a you know they're they're they're more uh what did they call the word um susceptible they're more susceptible to practicing racism as a norm because the assumption the meta assumption is when they say we and when they say service they're talking about a very particular kind of jewish person and i've multiple times i've walked into spaces you know my kids are now grown my oldest daughter now is you know out of college and but from the time that like they had to enter into different institutional systems they people i'll sit across from administrator that says oh we have no race problem here i thought really have you ever asked [Laughter] so how do you know that's when how do you actually know if you've never asked have you ever talked to the people who walked in and walked right back right back out of the door do you have data do you have research have you looked at your policies and asked the question who is welcomed by these policies and who is left out this is the work of racism too right right right we spend too much time talking about whether we like each other quite frankly i'm old enough where i quite i don't care whether you like me i don't i have plenty of friends i have a really good warm community if you don't like me we don't have to like everybody right right right and we don't want to practice with each other right and we don't want to be in a situation where even if you can't love me you don't feel motivated that you should love me because that's what the torah has asked of you so if you're in your process and you're doing your work and you're not quite there yet like i said great you keep doing your work i'll catch you when you're ready in the meantime i'm loving on myself and i'm loving on my own family so there's a way in which we have to like balance like loving each other not loving each other that's going to be a human problem we're constantly going to be in that systems and institutions that's a whole different thing if my kid can't get into a school simply because he looks like this that's not a whether you like me problem that's your system has a problem right if i can't walk into a grocery store and get what i need on the shop this afternoon because you're serving everybody else and i you assume i'm the person who doesn't need what i actually need we've got a system organizational problem so we have to start paying attention to both sides of what impact is around racism you don't want to run a store where it's discriminating against people you don't want to run a school where it's discriminated against people we don't want to run yeshiva with their discrimination against people so that's an institutional job we have to do to clean up um what our entry point is to that work and that's what i do as an expert amazing make it lights go off lights go off uh or on so the next question is the anti-semitism question obviously you're gonna have to deal with your you have a perspective being a jewel color that other people are not gonna have now when it comes to anti-semitism which is like growing rapidly on college campuses right um how does it i mean how how do you deal with that also too from your perspective because just like you may get overlooked at the bakery you know i was i remember one time i was um giving service to somebody i was working in property management years ago um and i was helping them i had to keep on and everything but everybody you know black guy would keep on i think back then i was wearing another keep this several years ago so he thought i was a muslim which is very interesting because most of the time i get into a taxi even with a palestinian dressed like a hostage they still think i'm muslim anyway um so i'm talking to this guy and you know he's let me know and i'm hearing and i'm dealing with people that are coming from lower income or whatever and he had a problem with some last landlord and and the guy that kicked him out had a lawyer involved and lawyer was jewish and then he starts badmouthing jews right in front of me and i'm like hey you know brother you know you know i said picked up my yamaha like hold on you know and then we had had to have a kumbaya and had to talk you know um but it's one of those things where you may also get overlooked in other circles because you know i had a person come up to me who said that he's hurt things he he looks he looks ashkenazi but his father's black you know people know i don't know if he's like half albino or whatever so he's going to hear things when he's around people and and and nobody would ever expect because they didn't know that about him when you're around other people of color and and you blend in in other circles and people start speaking bad about jews and you have to also like i want to know how you how you deal with that and how you combat that yeah i think um anti-semitism is literally uh of the generation right of the jewish people our practices our cultures our customs and it's also systemic just like i was talking to you about racism having a displacement systems anti-semitism has had its place in systems too i mean there was a time in russia where there were 600 different laws on the books discriminating against jews right easy right right just like we have multiple laws that are still on the books in the united states that uphold um racism you know that are that are built upon segregation and assumptions of white supremacy that's still on our books here in the united states too so when i talk about anti-semitism and i encounter anti-semitism with um people of color who are especially you know black folks like me who might get comfortable as i guess who might get comfortable and something might pop out of their mouth i see it just as much as i see with white jews as a moment of education if we're in relationship right meaning if there's a relationship to be preserved here then what i'm saying to them is not to like cast and open them away and dispose of them as an anti-semite is to make them aware of where they might be practicing anti-anti-semitic behavior or where they might have assumptions that are based in something called anti-semitism that they want to give up so has that happened to me absolutely you know when i you know when i go down south my family's from down south i was in the park with my kids one time in north carolina and you know the woman sitting next to me on the bench was we're talking and having a good conversation then she's like oh like why do your kids have you know those hats on and i said um oh she said like you are you all muslim and i was like nope we're not muslim we're jewish and she's like y'all jewish because it was just like going through her head slow blind all the things she's ever heard about jews right and so then she like sits there for a second and then she's like yeah but doesn't that bother you that your children are gonna be going to hell just with a straight face and i just like i had to look at her and i was just like is that the first thing you want to say to me and i mean we just met each other here on the bench and everything like when you first meet somebody the first thing that pops out of your mouth to them go you know you're going to hell right like that does that even like just like i was just like talking there i was like you need to like hold that for a second like and then she had she started laughing right because she wasn't trying to hate on me right she was trying to process through all the things she's heard in her and it just it was a moment of cognitive dissonance and out popped out of her mouth wait a minute but what about that hell thing you know you're going to hell so after a minute then she because she she could like she could see i wasn't letting go of her that we were still going to be able to have a conversation then we talked about it and then talking about it she was just like yeah i guess yeah i guess that doesn't make sense and okay and like you know and our kids are playing together you know right right right right it's still cool cool but the problem here became um misinformation that got laid in pr primarily i would say from a christianity context right in black communities about what jews are and right when i left that encounter i wasn't just like you know i wasn't just happy that i had a chance to stay in connection with another black person and give her a lot of good information that she could now use i also was concerned about how much misinformation people get from being separated from jews in communities in the us we do not live together we live in the same communities and end up living separate lives right and so that's where misinformation gets laid in and just the same way that i'm doing that with a black woman who has heard some things about you know jews having horns and jews going to hell and all this other stuff that makes no sense in my body that she's meeting right right the same thing is true of um white ashkenazim who make the same assumptions about people of color and i've had to like sit with them too and say do you really want to sit here and have a conversation with me where you're using the term schwarzer right is that is that something that makes sense to you given what pops up in your mind when you say sparta and all of that negativity and you're sitting right over here looking at me right you're supposed to be having kiddush and shabbat right right right right how does all of that go together nah it's real it's definitely it's a real thing it's a real thing so anti-semitism is real and i i fight anti-semitism in systems so the way in which anti-semitism shows up in elections the way in which anti-semitism shows up in communities where folks have been segregated as a result they was a jew like baltimore a lot of people don't know this baltimore's big shiva town but baltimore jews were told where they could live right and as a result of being told where they can live the entire derivation of baltimore as a city came up under racism but also anti-semitism because jews couldn't live on the white side a town they had to live in the jewish part the jewish ghetto that was created in baltimore so that's anti-semitism the fact that there's a jewish hospital in every town almost every city you can go to in the u.s why is there a jewish hospital because the medical system in our country wouldn't give white jews who graduated from our university systems jobs to the point where they had to create whole hospitals right to resist anti-semitism in our medical institutions that's baked into who we are in the u.s right that's anti-semitism if you ask me and there's folks who are holding anti-semitic views because of what they've been taught in their families and the way we've lived with each other here in the u.s and that's the kind of anti-semitism that caused somebody to pick up a gun and drive miles away to a pittsburgh synagogue and shoot up people because they feel like jews are the reason why you know this country is going down right jews are the reason why we have immigrants here all of that is anti-semitism to me that's the most dangerous form of anti-semitism the anti-semitism that i've i've encountered with black people for me mostly has been a point of education it's been an education piece okay so i know i want to get you out of here soon but i'm enjoying myself a little bit too much so i have to ask you like one or two more questions um i didn't know i was gonna enjoy so much i'm like i'm just sitting up here i feel like i'm in class anyway so growing up there were obviously some people that influence you apart from your parents i'm assuming i'm not saying maybe there maybe there wasn't but like when they're role models of people that had a huge impact on you they had some type of hushpah even maybe from the yeshiva system maybe there was a teacher who did show love or maybe there was some you know was there people that really had an impact on you that you can look back and say like you know this was a life-changing experience and it's helped me throughout my career absolutely um when i was in seminary i went to seminary in hanov and i got to be reunited with my pre-1a teacher more ovivia langston and um more ovia langsam taught us in pre-one a but she had a very specific practice in circle where she would go around the circle and she would say rock panina and what she was saying when we got around the circle is that at this point only this child is going to get to speak and say whatever they needed to say in relationship to the parsha so rather than just call on kids to start it off with that rock practice right only you it was it was loving on us and giving us a chance to shine and everybody knew they were going to get a chance so it wasn't like a hierarchy thing um and so i just thrived for the time when she would say rocky villa and i would get to like a forth about whatever my parents had been telling me whatever so um but the the other thing was that i grew up in the 70s so rock also was resonating for me i remember as a young kid with like rock steady right the kids around the block we would have this rocksteady thing where they would go rock rock rock rock steady and then one person would get to do their thing right and a group of girls so the confluence of those things of me being able to rock and also me being rock only uh in hebrew was a beautiful thing that i experienced with moravia and maura ovia also had so much love in her that she was the first person to teach me hebrew like i learned hebrew under her tutelage i was you know she made me she didn't make me queen esther even though i wanted to be queen esther in the play i did get to be king of coach veros though she made me feel really excited about being king of cajun i remember them those words to that play too so maura olivia langston showed me love when i was very young and that was my first entry the very first year coming into yeshiva and it created a foundational space where the acceptance that i had at home could also be experienced in the jewish institutional space and not all my siblings had a similar experience that was crucial i feel like to my entry the other teacher later on going up into like eighth grade kind of like heading into high school was rabbi label newman and rabbi label newman would come in once a week to teach the girls he was the principal the hebrew principal the the mashbia and he would come in once a week right after davening you know i still can hear the sounds of all the cheers when when an elder walks in the room you have to stand up no matter what you're doing so we would be shuffling around whatever and all of a sudden that he hit that door and everybody stands up yes so we stood up for rabbit label newman but and he and we had such a deep respect for him as an educator but what happened is as he taught us the kavod what he would do is he would come close to the edge of your desk and if he felt like what you were saying he would lean down he would look you in the eye and he would go excellent and i still remember what it was like to have rav label newman come by in the middle of a torah share stand by the edge of my desk after i had said something and lean over and go excellent wow because what it did i remember inside of me it made me feel like like i'm here right like this is my place like learning torah is something that's like that where i get to be excellent right and so those two i think those two teachers were foundational and deeply made a deep impression on me that even when i was in spaces where folks would like you know not like my kids teacher wouldn't call on them where they would you know be assumed that they didn't know the answer there was all sorts of ways like i said this lack of expectation for excellence in yeshiva with young children of color becomes a problem and a challenge the ones who didn't do that and the ones who showed me something different gave me hope that there could be something else that's amazing so that's why i remain connected even to my torah now because of those people amazing so my last but not least question is if you could go back and you could talk to a younger villa what advice would you give your younger self [Music] i know it's a tough one i've been asked it before and also stopped for a second but what did you get to think about it i'm thinking about it i mean mostly what i would tell her is um stop worrying so much about what other people think and spend more time just enjoying what you have i think when we're younger we always are looking toward the next day tomorrow is going to be better or something else is going to happen and it's going to change what you see right now but there was a lot of beauty around me that i can see now as an older person that maybe i may have stepped over quickly when i was young like if i could just hold on to how rich and unique the experience of being in a sukkah with my parents and multiple you know families and generations of jews of color and the singing you know like there are so many different things so many different things that left a an imprint on my soul if i could have just spent more time living in that and being in that and just noticing how special and unique it was like if i could travel back in time i would sit with uvila and just enjoy that wow wow beautiful answer beautiful answer appreciate you being on the show and uh i'm like excited to talk to you again hopefully next time it's in and uh in person in boston over a few of your mother's recipes may have been so okay but i really appreciate you coming on and uh it was power power power i really appreciate it to the max thank you thank you all right take care of me bye-bye you too wow wow wow ladies and gentlemen i am like stunned that was an amazing conversation with uvila mccoy and i learned a lot but not only did i learn to learn a lot she actually affirmed some things it was beautiful to have that conversation i think still on the deal i really haven't had apart from i think you know marc stuttermeyer another jew of color um but you know just the amount of knowledge that she was able to give and bring forth and the fact that she's still seasoned she was born jewish she grew up and i and like you know being a jew color i heard about her family for many years um so it was just an amazing opportunity for me um to hear her perspective and i'm like really floored i really didn't expect for the conversation to be just like wow like that and it was um she's a powerhouse um i think that i have a lot to learn from her i feel like the overall community can learn a lot from the things that she's saying and um you know i'm just stunned by that conversation so as i always do i love to leave you guys with the song and i think my song for this week is my brand new song change um i think that it's a very very uh appropriate song for for not only the conversation but just for the time ready to change a song about growth and going through hardships and really looking towards god and being able to say like you know i'm going to take this leap there's a lot of people have to do even of of color or whatever background that they came in coming into judaism of being like i have to trust you my heart is leading me in this direction god but i'm not used to trusting you but now i'm gonna give it over to you and i'm ready to change and and i just don't want you to leave me so that's the word to this song and so until next time dealers only go from strength to strength and be strengthened peace out running so blinding nearly tripped all over you yeah yeah i only stumble i got humbled light on me and let me