I am a Black, female, Jewish attorney—never just one or the others, though the order may change, depending on where I am, what I am doing, or who else is there. I am always this mélange of identities—I do not really change, but people’s reactions to me might.
I was asked to address how my various identities as a lawyer, woman, Jew, and Jew of Color complement one another, how my various identities affect how I see my work, and whether they affect how others see me. The first things people see are my color and my gender. Since all of my clients are from other countries, it does not seem to matter to them. However, there was an Australian who retained me to straighten out his complicated immigration case about which he had become hopeless. After I won his case, he told me that he had to confess that I was “very logical for a female.”
I often get asked about racism. Although I have only experienced racism openly at one job, working for the U.S. government, microaggressions are very common. For example, people have asked me, “Where’s your lawyer?” while I was dressed in my finest courtroom suit and carrying my briefcase, and have assumed that the scruffy, jeans-clad white guy accompanying me was a lawyer.
Similarly, as an observant, married, female Jew of Color, my head and hair are always covered, yet I cannot count the times, while entering government buildings, that I have been hassled by security because I had not removed my hat before passing through security. Standard procedure for government buildings is that headgear worn for religious purposes need not be removed. While security workers recognize the hijab as religious gear, they seem unaware that married Jewish women also cover their heads for religious reasons. Sometimes a simple explanation that my hat is for religious observance solves the problem, while sometimes it takes my threat of calling their supervisor before they drop it.
As I approach my thirtieth anniversary of practicing law, I remain deeply passionate about the law and justice and fairness and equity. My favorite quotations are: “Justice, justice, you shall pursue (Tzedek tzedek tirdof)”–Deuteronomy 16:20, and “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”–Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Family Background
As I reflect on my career, I look at the lives that influenced me. I am blessed that I was born into a supportive middle-class family. I feel that I was raised with Jewish values long before I was Jewish. My African American parents, z”l, grew up in an almost entirely Jewish area (the Bronx in New York City). They spoke some Yiddish—in addition to Spanish, some French, and some German. My family rejected evil and injustice in all its forms.
Although I have only experienced racism openly at one job, microaggressions are very common.
Both of my parents experienced racism. My father fought for the United States in the segregated U.S. Army Air Corps of World War II, and proudly told stories about his participation in fighting Nazis and liberating Jews from death camps. Among other assignments, his unit guarded Nazi prisoners of war. He said that the white U.S. soldiers treated the Black U.S. soldiers even worse than they treated the Nazi POWs. Among many worse offenses, the white soldiers told the local women that the Black soldiers had tails like monkeys, to make them seem less human and less attractive.
My mother worked as a proofreader for a publisher. One day her boss called her into his office to compliment her. He said that she was excellent and that she would have been promoted and gone much further, if only she were not “Negro.” When my parents bought their home, my mother was not listed on the mortgage because women were not considered reliable income-earners, as it was presumed that they would have children and leave the workforce entirely. (Even though my mother briefly left the workforce, after she returned she entered government service and was later promoted to supervisor with the U.S. Postal Service.)
I remembered these stories and incorporated them into my decision to defend the rights of individuals seeking justice. A part of me carries all of these incidents with me. I have spent my adult life trying to correct inequities and bring resolution where there was once only pain.
I am blessed that I married into a supportive family from Brooklyn. My mother-in-law, z”l, told me that she was never considered for jobs where the applications asked candidates to list their church membership because she left that question blank. As a Jewish woman, she attended synagogue, not church. If employers knew an applicant was Jewish, they drew a bagel on the application, so it would be rejected. There were different symbols for each “undesirable” group.
Both of these matriarchs were unjustly excluded from aspects of a full life—in New York City—but they enjoyed life and passed on a love of fairness. They encouraged me to be my best—to share my talent for connecting with people and to seek justice. They each taught me “to be my authentic self”—a Black and Jewish woman, not one or the other
Career in Public Interest Law
I started my career in public interest law and then worked at a Washington, D.C., “think tank” advocating for student loan forgiveness to encourage law graduates to pursue careers in public interest/government service. I later found my legal home in the private practice of immigration law for decades, before a brief stint at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security as an asylum officer. The director kept getting rid of non-white officers. It did not help that I approved the most cases, where others quickly referred them to court. I could never compromise my values or honesty just to please an authoritarian. It was hell.
My soul found its way home to practicing law at a Jewish non-profit, HIAS (formerly known as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society), where I am now the managing attorney. Guided by our Jewish values and history, HIAS provides services to forcibly displaced people in need of assistance, regardless of their national, ethnic, or religious background. Our U.S. legal protection team seeks to provide various forms of humanitarian relief to our clients who arrive in desperate need of protection. We provide direct immigration law legal services to people who have fled and/or are fleeing persecution based on religion, race, political opinion, nationality, or membership in a particular social group. We represent men, women, children, and families forcibly displaced from their countries of origin. We fight to end all forms of gender-based violence.
Historically in the United States, everyone has a right to legal counsel. Yet no attorney is required to represent any particular client. This is one way that my various identities converge. I chose the type of law that I practice, immigration law, and the cases that I represent, not on winnability, but rather on credibility. As all of my legal work at this point is pro bono, I look for honesty from potential clients, so that the most deserving and needy people get these very valuable and limited resources.
People say that I have literally saved good people’s lives—people who would have been executed had the government been successful in returning them to their countries of origin. I recall the time as a new lawyer when I raced to our local immigration office to inform the government that I represented a young man who faced deportation because he stupidly threw eggs at cars the day before Halloween. As the child of refugees who had fled a dictatorship, he would have faced execution upon his return to his birth country, in retaliation for his parents’ decision to oppose the ruling power and seek protection in the United States. I argued that the possible punishment of deportation did not fit the crime because deportation would sentence the teenager to death. He was saved.
Perhaps as important, I enjoy helping my HIAS colleagues change the course of countless lives by offering creative defenses or bold affirmative arguments that persuade government officers and judges to grant our clients’ requests.
I am very active in the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA), a proud member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. (AKA, a sorority for African American women), and a member of the 2025-26 cohort of Join for Justice’s JOC (Jews of Color) Organizing Fellowship. I am also an active member of several pro-Israel Jewish legal/social justice organizations, as well as JOC communities.
In December 2024 I was blessed to attend the second annual MOED North America Leadership Mission to Israel. A project of the Jewish Federations’ Center for Jewish Belonging, MOED North America JOC Community exists to celebrate the racial and ethnic diversity of the Jewish people, ensure that Jewish leaders of color and their organizations flourish, and mitigate the impacts of racism in Jewish communal life and broader society. The leadership mission gathered Jewish leaders of color (Black, Latin, Asian, Indigenous North Americans, Sephardi, and Mizrachi) for a transformative experience that deepened our relationship to Israel before, during, and after October 7th.
I love learning, including Black and Jewish history, and Jewish law. I embrace my family’s Gullah Geechee roots on my mother’s side. My husband and I married in a Jewish ceremony and also “Jumped over the Broom” (an African American slave tradition to signify marriage, as marriage was forbidden to slaves). I try to make it all work, and for the most part, I succeed.
This is my story. My soul seeks justice!