Growing up, my identity was always divided into different categories. I was born in China to one Jewish-American parent and one Chinese-American parent. My dad was Jewish. My mom was Christian. I am a foreigner. A child who belongs to too many places but none at the same time. Too Chinese to play hide-and-seek outside with the American kids, too American to join in on the lunchtime Chinese checkers game with the Chinese kids. I struggled to juggle the various facets of my identity as I grew up. These divisions have informed who I am as a person to be sure, but they also confused me and created tension in my upbringing.  

My family was never the most “Jewish” family. Sure, we were Jewish. But in my mind, we were more Jew-ish. Growing up in Beijing and Shanghai, and attending an international Montessori school, I had few opportunities to grow and express my Judaism.   

On Christmas, my school put on Christmas celebrations and activities. During Chinese New Year, we would watch and (attempt to) perform the traditional lion dance. Every Easter, we all got dressed up in our frilly little dresses and ran around trying to find chocolate eggs teachers had hidden around the school. But for Hanukkah, or any other Jewish holiday for that matter, we would get a little announcement from the teacher saying: “Happy Hanukkah to all who celebrate! Now onto math.” It wasn’t that they didn’t care; it was just that they didn’t really know how to properly show their support.  

At home, my family never fully followed traditional Jewish guidelines. There was always a delicate balance between preserving our Chinese identity and our Jewish one. Mostly these cultures blended nicely, but in some instances they clashed violently. In Chinese culture, food is paramount. It is so important that when you greet a friend in Chinese, you don’t just say, “Hello.” You follow up with, “Have you eaten?” or “Are you hungry?” This focus on food is something I love about my Chinese identity. But it comes into conflict with my Jewish identity when Chinese cuisine does not follow kashrut. Pork is a big part of the Chinese diet. So are crawfish and hairy crabs. As Jews, we are supposed to keep kosher, and not eat pork or shellfish. While I didn’t mind not being kosher, I was constantly reminded how that made me “less Jewish” by my Sunday school friends and my other Jewish friends who did.  

My 23andme DNA test revealed that I was 49.8% Ashkenazi Jewish and 37.1% Han Chinese, with some other Asian DNA thrown in for good measure. How could I reconcile these two identities when they were so divided?   

The dichotomies were exacerbated by a religious dimension. My brother and I were raised Jewish, but our mother is not Jewish. During the days leading up to holiday season, we would wake early and scour the house for Hanukkah Harry’s hiding place, but we would also look for our Elf on the Shelf. Both our little friends made annual appearances. Our homemade menorahs brought back from Sunday School sat on the mantle, which also happened to be where our Christmas tree was conveniently located. Even at home, I felt as if my two identities were constantly fighting for a rightful place in my life.  

On the streets of Beijing and Shanghai, native-born Chinese people saw me as a foreigner, an American, an outsider. I could speak fluent Chinese, but locals knew something wasn't fully Chinese about me. And yet, when I moved back to the US at age thirteen, Americans also saw me as foreign. I had an American passport but was born and raised outside America. My customs and sensibilities were somehow different. Another split in my identity.  

These divisions in my identity continued to bother me until a fateful Havdalah evening at the 2022 BBYO international conference in Baltimore, shortly after I moved to the US. I stood in the auditorium with 3,000 strangers who all put their arms around each other and sang “Shavua Tov.” Just as I grew up singing “Shavua Tov” in my small, community shabbat in Beijing, I was now singing in a completely new environment on the other side of the world. Kids from all parts of the world—white, Black, Asian, Latine, mixed race—Jews of all racial and cultural backgrounds came together. No matter where they were from, what they were going through or had gone through, we came together as a community regardless of any social divisions to share a moment of calm, looking ahead to the week ahead and wishing each other peace.  

In that moment, I realized that all the dichotomies and divisions in my identity were less important than the feeling of belonging I had at BBYO. Bill Clinton, one of my parents’ heroes and whose ideologies I was raised on, said “There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America.” I channeled that same idea into my thinking about identity. There is nothing wrong with the divisions of who I am that cannot be overcome by the ties that bind me together as an individual.   

Since that Havdalah in 2022, since realizing there are thousands of Jews like me who also grapple with multiple identities, I have tried to see the various parts of my identity as a strength, and to use them to grow in my Judaism, and to support that growth in others. Unlike other religions, Judaism is both a religion and an ethnicity. That unique feature of being Jewish, Chinese, and American has fed my aspiration to ensure that more non-traditional Jewish people feel comfortable with their identities. I can be Chinese, I can be American, I can be from multiple different places and nowhere at all, and through it all, being Jewish is the tie that binds.