Ruth Jordan was born in Poland and became a Jewish immigrant in America along with her poor family. Her early experiences were riddled with struggles as her father, a rabbi, had to move around the country he exploits his career. Her family eventually settled in Virginia and opened a general store. Ruth’s father (Tateh) is a racist and is depicted as overcharging the African American customers (Johnson 1998). However, Ruth resists her father’s bigotries and sympathizes with the blacks within the neighborhood. She is aware that the whites encourage violence and discrimination against the African Americans.
However, as a Jew, Ruth does not interact very much with the whites in the in the American South. The fact that she could not interact freely with the whites of the South ensured that she is not able to be influenced by their beliefs and their prejudices against the blacks. She uses her Judaism as a refuge whenever she is facing challenges and always emerges as a better, stronger, and wiser person capable of dealing with her problems. The fact that she reverts to her Judaism beliefs shows that she values the religion very much. It is apparent that she favors the philosophies of Judaism believing that she would be able to overcome her challenges, which she does.
During her adulthood, Ruth’s life is different from that of her relatives. First, she gets married to a black man, Andrew Dennis McBride. As soon as she married a black man, Ruth’s relationship with her Jewish relatives becomes tense. The relatives were disgusted by Ruth’s decision to marry a black man rather than a fellow Jewish man, her overall failure to comply with the demands of her father, and her failure to embrace Judaism in totality (Perlman 1996). She eventually cut her ties with her Jewish family after her tyrannical father lorded over her submissive mother. Ruth, her husband, and their children lived in Harlem for many years. While in Harlem, Ruth loses the privileges that she has previously enjoyed in the South (169). She engages herself in poorly paid jobs, socializes extensively with the African Americans, and basically lives her life just like an African American woman. This shows that Ruth is a strong and big-hearted.
Ruth converts to Christianity from Judaism when she moves to New York. She becomes very dedicated to Christianity and gets increasingly involved with the churches in her neighborhood (129). Ruth together with her husband ultimately establishes their own church. During her childhood, Ruth had been indoctrinated into Judaism by her parents causing her to become a spiritual person from a tender age. Ruth’s separation from her family and her remorseful emotional state leads her to seek relief in the Christianity, which emphasizes on the forgiveness (Hevesi 2010).
Ruth chooses to experience what may be regarded as an unconventional life and manages to succeed because of her determination and conviction to tolerate different views. For instance, she is aware that some African Americans do not accept her as one of their own but overcomes this challenge by acknowledging that there exists too much pressure on mixed-race couples from their respective relatives. The painful details of Ruth’s own experiences echo throughout the memoir. Though she eventually finds her proper path in life, she does not take the easiest options towards her true happiness. Ultimately, it is her early interaction with Judaism coupled with the hardships that she undergoes throughout her childhood that sows the seed of her adult spiritual life.
Work Cited
Hevesi, Dennis. "Ruth McBride Jordan, Subject of Son’s Book ‘Color of Water,’ Dies at 88".
New York Times. 16 Jan. 2010. Web. 4 Apr. 2014.
Johnson, Kevin. Book Review: The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White
Mother. Civil Rights Journal. 1 Aug. 1998. Web. 4 Apr. 2014.
McBride, James. The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to his White Mother. New York:
Penguin Group, Inc., 2010.
Perlman, Susan. The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother. Jews For
Jesus 12(1). 1996. Web. 4 Apr. 2014.
