The Problem With JOC and Why I Walked Away
Labels born in America can’t contain Jewish peoplehood.
Why I Don’t Identify as a “JOC”
On my last trip to Israel, somewhere between history lessons and hummus, my very Israeli tour guide asked me a question I didn’t expect:
“Do you identify as a JOC?”
Without hesitation, I said: “Absolutely not.”
Maybe 5-7 years ago, I would have said yes. Back then, I was still thinking in the American framework of oppressed vs. oppressor, a world neatly divided into categories of who had power and who didn’t. George Floyd was on the tip of everyones tongue. It felt natural to slot my Jewishness into that paradigm. Since then, I’ve been unpacking. This essay is about why the label no longer fits and why clarity around who is Jewish matters just as much as refusing labels that flatten us.
The Origins of “JOC”
The term Jews of Color was born in the American Jewish world. I emphasize American because that’s the critical piece. The people who coined the term were responding to how they were perceived in American Jewish spaces, where “Jew” was assumed to mean Ashkenazi and white. JOC became a corrective: a way of saying, “We’re here too, and we don’t fit that mold.”
But the term doesn’t exist outside of that context. It’s not global or timeless. It’s a modern, American invention rooted in race and reaction. To use it, you need a counterpoint: the “default Jew” who is white and Ashkenazi, and then the rest of us who must be “of color.” That framing may describe one slice of the Jewish experience but not the whole of Jewish peoplehood.
Why I Moved Away From It
1) The Oppression Framework
When I identified as JOC, I noticed the framework required me to understand myself in relation to whiteness and oppression. I wasn’t simply Jewish; I was Jewish of color always defined against someone else’s category. That works if the only canvas is the U.S. But Judaism is older, broader, and deeper than America. Decolonizing my thinking meant letting go of American racial boxes as the primary truth of my life.
2) The Israel Factor
I also noticed an implied politics about Israel baked into many JOC spaces. Increasingly, those circles leaned anti-Israel or anti-Zionist, as if the only “woke” posture read through American race politics were suspicion or hostility to Israel. But Israel is not America, the Middle East is not a U.S. domestic metaphor, and Jewish sovereignty cannot be reduced to American binaries.
My relationship to Israel will not be set by an American lens.
3) The Question of Jewishness (and the Problem of Hiding Behind Identity)
Here’s where I want to be both precise and generous:
Conversion is conversion. A halachic conversion makes someone Jewish. Period. Full stop. No one gets to take that away.
I’ve also seen the opposite. I was part of a JOC initiative once I won’t name the organization but in that cohort, there were serious questions about whether some participants were even Jewish. People would share details about their background that made it obvious they hadn’t converted, had no Jewish lineage, and no halachic foundation. And yet if anyone tried to ask a clarifying question, the response was swift: you were called racist, or accused of “re-creating the environment of exclusion” they said they were escaping outside of the cohort.
I remember sitting there thinking: but you’re not Jewish, just based on what you just said. And still, the identity label shielded them from scrutiny. That’s the danger of “JOC” as a category. It can become a place to hide behind identity, where no one is allowed to ask the most basic and necessary questions of belonging.
Side note: This same cohort also revealed deeper problems. After October 7, several participants celebrated the attacks as “resistance.” At our retreat, roughly half used organization funds to attend a “Not In Our Name” protest, then expected to be welcomed back into the retreat as heroes. One member later posted content suggesting Osama bin Laden was correct in his letter. In group chats I was called a “genocide lover,” “baby killer,” and “oppressor.” When confronted about her words, a participant who was not halachically Jewish threatened self-harm, and some people then made light of that threat. All of this showed how identity was being used to shield people from legitimate questions and accountability.
Why “JOC” Fails to Capture My Story
Here’s the part I always want to shout: if you call me a JOC, I want to ask have you been to Israel? Because if you had, you’d know that in Israel, an entire country could technically be considered “Jews of Color.” Mizrahi, Sephardi, Ethiopian, Yemenite walk the streets of Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Be’er Sheva, and you’ll see the Jewish world in its full spectrum. But no one there calls them JOCs. They are simply Jews.
And so am I.
“JOC” is skin-deep. It stops at melanin content. It tells you nothing about the fact that I am a Black Sephardic Jew. It erases the richness of my story the way my Judaism leans observant, the traditions I keep, the Sephardic melodies that shape my prayer, the halachic framework that guides my practice.
That’s not a minor detail. That’s the core of who I am.
Claiming My Identity Differently
So no, I don’t identify as a JOC. That label might have felt right five years ago, when I was still tethered to American categories. But I’ve grown past it.
Today, I identify as Jewish. Full stop.
And if you want to get more specific, I’ll tell you: I am a Black Sephardic Jew, rooted in halacha, observance, and peoplehood. That is more truthful, more specific, and more deeply connected to the Jewish story than any American-born label ever could be.
Because ultimately, the term JOC is not about me. It’s about the narrow imagination of what Jewishness looks like in America. And I’m done living inside that box.
Final Thought
When people ask me now if I identify as JOC, I think back to that moment in Israel. My tour guide wasn’t asking from an American lens; he was asking as someone who lives in a country where Jewish diversity is the norm. And my answer then is my answer still: Absolutely not.
I don’t need to tack “of color” onto my Jewishness to make it real, valid, or visible. My story, my practice, my peoplehood those stand on their own.
I’m not a Jew of color.
I’m a Jew.
Great easay.
It reminds me, have you read Aviva Ben-Ur's "Sephardic Jews in America: A Diasporic History," as it touches on this somewhat