Linda, your experiences sound painful. You are not alone - many people have felt alienated by the way they were treated or not included or not considered. At the same time, we do have a lot of resources. JFS was created to help poor Jews and immigrants, and they still run a kosher food bank and have lots of workshops and counseling, etc. The Orthodox community runs an informal, very under-the-radar assistance network. I think there's even (or was) a Jewish professional development network. Two things can be true at the same time - our community can be very helpful and supportive, and we can feel alienated and disrespected too.
The door is still open to anyone who wants to stand up for me. Let's see what kind of community and I have around me as an educated, ethical and qualified professional deserving of respect.
It would also be nice to go to a synagogue and experience welcoming and friendliness from people, and appreciation of our skills and talents. When I first moved here, I went to a dinner at a synagogue. The rabbi and his wife went around to all the tables and greeted people. They said hello to everyone at the table *except me.* How did that make me feel as a person who had just moved to the area? That is just one example.
I moved here for a contract job at Microsoft that turned out not to exist. Not one Jewish person in this entire community talked to anyone about getting me an interview anywhere. Not one person talked to me anyone at UW Medicine about helping me get a Research Scientist 3 or 4 job. Not one. I have lived here for 14 years and not one. I was an age 50+ woman with an M.S. in electrical engineering from the top school in the country, and a person with arthritis, and a rabbi told me I could clean houses. If we expect others to be supportive, we have to support each other and not view other Jews as people to just push aside. The Black community builds strength *from the inside.* They build education and career networking and professors who support other Black students. I would love to experience that kind of welcoming and inclusive community.
If we want the outside world to be supportive, we need to have our own community of support, not a community that throws other Jews under the bus, especially those who didn't come from a family with wealth and inheritance.
I recently encountered anti-Jewish language concerning the Holocaust in a video played at a King County meeting. I was bullied for politely and carefully raising the issues. Not one person in the Jewish community stood up for me personally. Not one person in the Jewish community personally stood up for my right to participate in a county government committee without hearing negative comments about the response to the Holocaust, or my right not to bullied when I raised the issue. Who is standing up for me, as an individual Jewish member of the community, and showing support for my participation and my ability to participate at a professional level in the government?
Since I'm one of the Jews with a dark complexion and from a low-income family, I have been talking about this since the 1970s. Black, Asian and Hispanic people demanded to be counted for inclusion and affirmative action. They could check abox on a job application and be counted. But the Jewish community never stood up for itself and demanded to be counted. Since there is no data collection and no oversight managers don't have to care about whether they hire us. The result: Look at the education Jewish women have. Look at the jobs we have. Companies have to study the checkbox results to get government contracts, or to not get sued. So the next step is for discrimination against Jews, especially Jewish women, in employment, to be *quantified.* The Pew Charitable Trust said that 10% of American Jews earn less than $32,000 per year. Our community needs to stop shoving this under the rug. And consider this: The Catholic Parish has career networking, in which parish members actually help other parish members get jobs. The same networking goes on in the LDS church. Our community has no such support system.
Linda, your experiences sound painful. You are not alone - many people have felt alienated by the way they were treated or not included or not considered. At the same time, we do have a lot of resources. JFS was created to help poor Jews and immigrants, and they still run a kosher food bank and have lots of workshops and counseling, etc. The Orthodox community runs an informal, very under-the-radar assistance network. I think there's even (or was) a Jewish professional development network. Two things can be true at the same time - our community can be very helpful and supportive, and we can feel alienated and disrespected too.
The door is still open to anyone who wants to stand up for me. Let's see what kind of community and I have around me as an educated, ethical and qualified professional deserving of respect.
It would also be nice to go to a synagogue and experience welcoming and friendliness from people, and appreciation of our skills and talents. When I first moved here, I went to a dinner at a synagogue. The rabbi and his wife went around to all the tables and greeted people. They said hello to everyone at the table *except me.* How did that make me feel as a person who had just moved to the area? That is just one example.
I moved here for a contract job at Microsoft that turned out not to exist. Not one Jewish person in this entire community talked to anyone about getting me an interview anywhere. Not one person talked to me anyone at UW Medicine about helping me get a Research Scientist 3 or 4 job. Not one. I have lived here for 14 years and not one. I was an age 50+ woman with an M.S. in electrical engineering from the top school in the country, and a person with arthritis, and a rabbi told me I could clean houses. If we expect others to be supportive, we have to support each other and not view other Jews as people to just push aside. The Black community builds strength *from the inside.* They build education and career networking and professors who support other Black students. I would love to experience that kind of welcoming and inclusive community.
If we want the outside world to be supportive, we need to have our own community of support, not a community that throws other Jews under the bus, especially those who didn't come from a family with wealth and inheritance.
I recently encountered anti-Jewish language concerning the Holocaust in a video played at a King County meeting. I was bullied for politely and carefully raising the issues. Not one person in the Jewish community stood up for me personally. Not one person in the Jewish community personally stood up for my right to participate in a county government committee without hearing negative comments about the response to the Holocaust, or my right not to bullied when I raised the issue. Who is standing up for me, as an individual Jewish member of the community, and showing support for my participation and my ability to participate at a professional level in the government?
Since I'm one of the Jews with a dark complexion and from a low-income family, I have been talking about this since the 1970s. Black, Asian and Hispanic people demanded to be counted for inclusion and affirmative action. They could check abox on a job application and be counted. But the Jewish community never stood up for itself and demanded to be counted. Since there is no data collection and no oversight managers don't have to care about whether they hire us. The result: Look at the education Jewish women have. Look at the jobs we have. Companies have to study the checkbox results to get government contracts, or to not get sued. So the next step is for discrimination against Jews, especially Jewish women, in employment, to be *quantified.* The Pew Charitable Trust said that 10% of American Jews earn less than $32,000 per year. Our community needs to stop shoving this under the rug. And consider this: The Catholic Parish has career networking, in which parish members actually help other parish members get jobs. The same networking goes on in the LDS church. Our community has no such support system.