MaNishtana’s bio states that he is a writer, speaker, rabbi, playwright and author. It goes on to explain that he is also black, Jewish and Orthodox.

Growing up in the Orthodox community of Monsey, New York, as the son of an African-American mother who converted to Judaism and a white Ashkenazi father who became religious later in life, Isaiah Rothstein knows what it’s like not to fit in.

They were older than me, by at least five years, and I was afraid. Though my Satmar Hasidic neighbors were my friends, their cousins usually approached me with disdain whenever I’d go over for a playdate.

Today I am a yeshiva student studying Torah full time. Before this, I was a Republican candidate for Congress.

But when? and how?! How do I harmoniously keep inclusion as a central value in my life, while also recognizing the need for boundaries?

Both sides of my family came to Judaism from Christianity. My paternal grandfather began to learn more about Judaism after he already had children. He went to a Jewish book store and since there wasn’t a Rabbi at the time who was willing to teach him, he taught himself through books.

The doors are open to everyone at Shabbat services held on the ground floor of this Nostrand Avenue building in Brooklyn. But, unlike most Orthodox spaces, here it’s the women who lead prayers. Men? They can sit in the back.

Black, Jewish and gay, Twitty is devoted to exploring the culinary history of his African and Afro-American roots, but equally interested in Jewish cooking.

When Michael Twitty was growing up outside Washington, D.C., the treat in his house every weekend was challah—a taste his Lutheran mother developed during her childhood in Cincinnati, where the only baker open on Sundays was Jewish.