“I’ve been practicing capital defense since 2003. I only have one person who was sentenced to death on my watch. I am still very bitter about that and I will never forget how it felt when the judge sentenced him. I still don’t know how I managed to walk out of that courtroom.
My client and I were the only Black people in the courtroom. So often, when my client is white, I look around and I am the only Black person in the courtroom. I’ve been around long enough to recognize the murders are getting crueler, more heinous and callous, and the system is joining in that cruelty. Case analysis has completely given way to politics and optics when deciding life and death.”
“I’ve heard people refer to what I do as a thankless job, but they have no clue about the rewards that come with work like mine. To talk about just one, this portrait was painted for me by one my clients, a U.S. Marine who was facing the death penalty for stabbing his mother and stepfather to death. He was so seriously mentally ill but we worked hard, and three years after the state asked for death, he received a double life sentence. After he went to prison, he told me he had a gift for me and he gave me this painting. He said he didn't know why, but this is how he saw me.
Now, I don't know if you know how prisoners produce art but they have to be very particular making colors. They don't have watercolors or any other paints; what they have are Skittles and M&Ms and the dye covering those candies. So they painstakingly soak the dye off to make paint, and they harden toilet tissue with water over and over, and that's what they use as brushes. He told me it took months to finish.”
“Back in 2013, when I was still with the public defenders’ office. I was representing a man charged with first-degree murder. The state was seeking the death penalty. My client was already serving a life sentence for the shotgun murder of his stepfather, committed when my client was 19. I’m pretty sure you can guess why he shot and killed his stepfather.
So I’m meeting my client who was very much a white supremacist. He was a legacy Klan member. Had a swastika tattooed on his torso, from shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip. When he first met me and my co-counsel — well, obviously I’m a Black woman and my colleague at the time was a Latina. So I asked him, as I ask all clients of that ilk, if he and I were going to have an issue because of his ideology clashing with my race.
He told me, ‘Well, this might sound funny — but honestly, I was hoping I would get a Jewish lawyer.’
I said, ‘Well… you’re in luck.’ From that moment on, I don’t know why or how but we clicked.”
“I was 15 years old the first time I attended services at a synagogue. It was Orthodox, and I didn’t understand a word of what was going on, but I knew how I felt. Up to that moment, I’d mostly been raised Catholic. I say mostly because my summers were spent with my grandmother who attended a little country Baptist church.
My other grandmother was a particularly devout Catholic who went to Rome every year. We were pretty devout: fasting during Lent, no meat on Fridays, the whole nine yards. Which was actually great training for living a Jewish life.
I was and remain a voracious reader. My mother was the same, so I had access to a huge and varied home library. There was a whole section devoted to matters of spirituality. So I was contemplating the nature of God at six and seven years old. I would pepper the nuns with questions at school, and they tried to break my inquisitiveness. However, my mother encouraged it, and I continued to read and question.
I did not consider Jewish life until college. I majored in religious studies. And I was still just absorbing everything I could about religion, organized and not. I went to college in the early 80s, when we were warned about the Moonies, Hare Krishna and Marantha. So I was learning without participating.
In 1993, when I was in law school, I started seriously thinking about Judaism. I was reading everything I could get my hands on, and the more I read, the more I understood that my soul had always been Jewish. That my soul was on Sinai and always had been. I was in a partnership with another woman, so I had to unfold my awakening soul and my pursuits with being a lesbian. Therefore, I studied with a reform rabbi.”
“My study with him really led me to think about my choices. He explained I could follow all the life cycles and the celebrations. and worship in accordance with Judaism. But converting meant aligning myself with the House of David and Israel. I wasn’t joining a religion; I was joining a people and he wanted to make sure I understood that. I was giving up everything I knew to align my fate with the Jewish people, so I had to really be sure of what I was doing, and why.
I never longed for a feeling of belonging or space to belong, because I firmly knew who I was and whose I was. My family ties and community ties were strong. So it wasn’t a lack or emptiness I was trying to fill by becoming Jewish; it was in the most visceral and literal sense uniting two halves within myself. So I studied for three years with Rabbi Straus prior to going before the Beit Din and into the mikveh.
At one point, my rabbi asked me, “You’ve told me everything you have to gain from joining with the Jewish people, but what will we gain from you?” I thought about that and I said the only thing I have to give are my children and that is what I will give you. When I said that, I meant I would give Israel and the Jewish community three warriors who aren't afraid of standing up and speaking out against injustice.”
“The global scale of racism and anti-blackness is soul-crushing. The knowledge that people will actually and actively hunt down people who look like me for the express purpose of murdering them (me, us) is frightening because you can never really know who is walking into your local grocery store with murder on their minds. One can't look at me and know that I'm Jewish or Queer, but one can damn sure tell that I am Black.
The rise of antisemitism world wide is also crushing — the knowledge that people want to destroy our places of prayer and worship, wipe us off the map and deny our right to exist. This is doubly exhausting for me because sometimes the ones who wish to annihilate Jews look like me and my presence at shul is questioned, as though I am there to do harm rather than pray.
Finally, the amount of LGBTQ violence globally is staggering. Whole countries have criminal sanctions for existing and loving. Some countries impose capital punishment as a consequence for people who love as I love.
How has this impacted me? I am withdrawing more and more into my circle and becoming more hypervigilant when I go out. I am trying to raise my daughters without a spirit of fear, suspicion, and cynicism... while simultaneously teaching them how to recognize danger, survive police encounters, protect their peace, and record interactions because their word will never be accepted over a white person's word. There is no safe place in the world for someone like me. The recognition of this truth is devastating.”
“That’s why I say today that I am a proud Jew, a proud Zionist, and I stand with Israel. I do not feel torn in two; I feel whole. I am a proud Black Jew.
I belong to a Facebook group called This Is Not An Open Discussion — This Is A Safe Space. So my profile pic carries my photo and the flag of Israel, right? A member of the group commented to me, “I don’t understand how a supporter of Zionism belongs in this group.” I told her, “What you infer from the flag on my profile pic is none of my business. I am not going to make it my business. You may ask the admins that question. If they determine the flag causes harm, they can remove me from the group.” Who are these children who think my grown-ass queer Black Jewish self intends to debate my lived existence? They march and yell slogans, when I am in the fucking trenches every damn day. The audacity.”
“My great-great-grandparents, George and Frances, were born into slavery on a farm in Rocheport, Missouri owned by a man named Nathaniel Torbit. They remained on the farm way beyond the passage of the Emancipation Proclamation. My great-grandfather had been born there in 1870. By the time they left that farm in 1873, they had been enslaved for 40 years.
My great-great-grandfather’s first act of freedom was discarding the name of the people that “owned” him and his family. The irony is the name he chose for himself and his family was the name of another slave owner, George Washington. When I located them in the 1860s slave schedules on the farm, they didn’t even have names listed. It was just “black male and female” and their ages, as well as the gender and ages of their children. So Washington has been the surname of my paternal line for 150 years.
When I was filling out my conversion paperwork, I had to choose a name for myself and my daughters. I thought about the journey of my ancestors and their first act of freedom, and I also chose an act of freedom as my name. To me, Masada represents a choice: I would rather die a free person than live as a slave. I chose it to honor my line. I chose Sarid because of the many horrors I survived as a child; in both Arabic and Hebrew, it means survivor. And finally I chose Ari because it’s the Hebrew word for lion, and I will fight to the death to protect what I hold dear.
Everybody who knows me professionally and personally has forgotten my government name. Even my mother had me listed in her contacts under the name Masada. Not even my childhood nickname, but Masada. Because that’s who I am now.”
“In my particular journey of life, some intersections are woven with such subtlety that their significance is only revealed in the fullness of time. My journey into this realization began at the age of 15, in a moment that would shape the course of my faith and heritage.
The first time I laid eyes on a mezuzah, it was not fixed to the doorpost of a Jewish home as tradition dictates, but rather it hung from a gold chain around my father's neck next to a gold St. Christopher's medallion. The juxtaposition was striking: a symbol of Jewish faith intertwined with a Christian icon, united in my father’s quest for protection and guidance.
My father, a man of few words about his past, shared a rare story from his youth. Before leaving for the Korean War, he had formed a bond with a Jewish woman who, upon his departure, gifted him the mezuzah. She told him it was for luck. Beyond this, he knew little of its deeper significance, yet he wore it close to his heart, a silent guardian throughout the war and long after.
For years, the story of the mezuzah remained a curious footnote in my family's history, a symbol whose full meaning was yet to be discovered. Little did I know that a decade later, my own spiritual quest would lead me to embrace Judaism, the faith from which the mezuzah originated. It was a path I walked with conviction, finding solace and strength in its traditions and teachings, yet never fully recognizing the symbol that had been shown to me years ago.
The passing of my father was a pivotal moment. In the immediate aftermath, as we sought to honor his memory, I felt myself drawn to the mezuzah once more. With a profound sense of purpose, I removed the chain from around his neck and handed it to my mother, a symbolic gesture of passing on a legacy that was only beginning to unfold. Years later, following my mother's death, I found myself sifting through the remnants of a life well-lived, her jewelry box a treasure trove of memories. It was there, among the glittering relics of the past, that I rediscovered the mezuzah.
Holding it in my hands, I was struck by the weight of its journey—from a token of luck given to a young soldier to a cherished heirloom that bridged generations and faiths. This mezuzah, once a simple gift, had become a profound symbol of my family's history and my personal faith journey. It reminded me that sometimes, the most significant discoveries in life come from the most unexpected places. It represented not just the luck it was originally intended to bring but also the enduring strength of faith, and the mysterious ways in which our paths are woven together.
In embracing Judaism, I had unknowingly come full circle, connecting with a part of my father's history that had once been a mere story. The mezuzah now serves as a bridge between past and present, a reminder of the intricate ways in which our lives are intertwined with those who came before us. It is a testament to the enduring power of faith, love, and the unseen threads that guide us on our journey.”
I had to sit with this a moment. My neurospicy self doesn't particularly like the spotlight. And I was tempted to let it ride and not bring more attention by commenting but that is not being authentic to ALL of my feelings. Sometimes I feel rushed and disconnected but then I experienced profound grace in being truly seen and heard by you guys. It's an affirmation of humanity, my humanity; a recognition that my voice matters and that I belong. It means that my struggle, triumphs, and yes my moments of vulnerability are not lost in the noise but held with care by the people around me. Being understood, accepted, and valued is a gift that strengthens my soul; offers me comfort and reminds me that I am never alone in this journey. I ❤️ Elissa for many, many reasons; her care for me is one. Shana tova.
My favorite line: "Who are these children who think my grown-ass queer Black Jewish self intends to debate my lived existence?"
Glad we're in the same tribe, Masada, and thanks for the introduction, Elissa!