By Carolyn Bick
Northwest Asian Weekly
Alongside Jenni Rudolph, Maryam Chishti is the co-founder of Lunar Collective, a relatively new collective of Asian American Jews. While the collective began as a one-off, early pandemic film series spotlighting the voices of young Jewish Asian Americans, it quickly grew into the nonprofit organization it is today, after Chishti and Rudolph saw the need for representation and connection within the Asian Jewish community across the country. The organization recently launched its Asian Jewish Mental Health Initiative, which is meant to specifically address the unique challenges that the community faces.
Maryam Chishti
Chishti, the head of that initiative, is both Jewish and Muslim. She spoke with the Northwest Asian Weekly’s Carolyn Bick about her own overlapping identities, the challenges she has faced, and the tender young bud of a mental health initiative that she feels holds great promise for the Lunar community and beyond.
NWAW: If you’re comfortable sharing, what’s your experience as an Asian Jew?
I’m Muslim and Jewish, as well as Indian and Jewish, which I think is another layer.
I definitely felt like, growing up, I was living a 50-50 existence, where I would be kind of like a Jewish, white-ish kid on the Upper West Side [in New York City], and then I would spend my summers in India, and I’d be an Indian Muslim. It wasn’t really until college when I tried to fuse the two, and that was really hard. I definitely felt overwhelmed.
I felt a lot of imposter syndrome and just confusion in how to carry myself and what spaces would be right. I think it’s been a growing process of trusting that I know who I am and that I don’t need certain molds to feel like Jewish or Muslim enough and that I can find spaces that work for me, and also that not one space is going to meet all my needs, and that it’s really the holding multitudes of spaces and communities and relationships that will make me feel good.
It’s been really important and beautiful for me to have Muslim relationships and Indian relationships, as well as Jewish relationships—but also, some Jewish relationships can be cultural. Like if someone’s from the Upper West Side where I grew up, that’s really lovely. If someone grew up more secular, or grew up reformed, that is also lovely, because that’s where I grew up. But also, having friends who are mixed race, having friends who are New Yorkers, having friends who are [into] theater—those are all going to be things that make me feel good.
If I’m just in Jewish spaces or I’m just in Muslim spaces, I’m going to feel an absence at a certain point, because I am not just Jewish and I’m not just Muslim. I find when I feel like I’m spending too much time in one space or I’m in Jewish spaces where I feel like I can’t access my Islam, like that feels really isolating to me.
NWAW: What role did your parents play in you working to find your own identity, growing up?
I grew up on the Upper West Side. I have a Jewish Ashkenazi mother, who also grew up on the Upper West Side. Her father was a Holocaust survivor from Germany, and that’s where her lineage is.
And my father grew up in Kashmir, India. He came to New York for law school, and met my mom on the Upper West Side. They decided through the process of getting married and figuring all that out, that they wanted to raise kids in both their cultures and in both of their religions.
They definitely tried, and put in a concerted effort—they really wanted us to know our family in India. When I was younger, we actually lived in India for a year-and-a-half, so that we got to know our grandparents and our family, then we were there almost every summer. So, they were making a concerted effort in that way.
I was able to do the Muslim [coming-of-age] and the Jewish coming-of-age in the same ceremony, with an imam and with a rabbi, and that was all orchestrated by my parents. We have a piece in our theater show at Lunar talking about how annoying that felt at the time, to do two bat mitzvahs, and I was like, “Why? I can’t believe I had to do all this work.” But in retrospect, I think it was a really wise and super-thoughtful decision on their part.
NWAW: Tell me about the Asian Jewish Mental Health Initiative. How did it start, and why?
I am the co-executive director of Lunar Collective alongside Jenni [Rudolph], but I wasn’t always that way. I had started at Lunar initially when it was still a film series. It was like a one-off film series pandemic project. I came in as their community organizer at that time, coming out of COVID, figuring out, “Could we do some community events? What would that look like?” And from there … the film project wasn’t the right container anymore for our community.
I stepped up with Jenni to found the organization. In terms of the mental health initiative, it’s something we’re super excited about, and I think has been a real need for a long time that we weren’t able to put words to.
The biggest thing I could say about Lunar is when you show up at a Lunar event—and this still happens to me, like, years later—and you look around at other Asian Jews when you haven’t been able to do that your whole life, you’re hit with this, like, “Oh my god! I have so much to say, now that I’m here, and you’re here with me. I have all these realizations and all these things that I want to say, because I’ve never had anyone to talk to about it.”
We find at Lunar that people just start talking. It’s kind of like a cacophony … so we end up [talking], even in our most light, fun programs. I remember we had a Shabbat spa day, and people just walked in, and they sat and looked at each other and it became a really deep series of conversations about family and lineage, and religious trauma, and cultural trauma and all of that, because folks were just so excited to be in the in the room with each other.
I think that’s a wonderful part about Lunar and folks have been really wonderful at holding that. I think in this stage in our growth, it is appropriate to have more facilitated conversations with mental health professionals that actually give us a space to talk about these issues in a more tangible way, and in a way where people go in knowing that it’s going to happen.
I also think [the Hamas-led attacks and subsequent Israeli invasion of Gaza on] October 7th[, 2023,] played into some of our feelings about this, as well—that while Lunar folks are on all ends of the spectrum around this, when we sent out a community check and survey and just some conversations with folks, we knew that folks all across the spectrum were feeling really lonely and really isolated and really sad and that the ability to have safe conversations about how they were feeling was really important. So, in that way, we increased hours with our rabbi, who does pastoral care, and we started to think about ways that we can support our community’s mental health.
That’s when the L.A. Federation’s Resiliency Microgrant came to our attention. We have a really wonderful relationship with the Los Angeles Federation. They were the first federation to really believe in us, and they’ve really championed us.
They put [the grant] on our radar and we were really excited to apply. I was also really excited that through the process of the application, I was able to articulate a vision that was individual sessions, group sessions, and a larger in-person Shabbat spa day event, because I felt like it was important for folks to have the chance to meet one-on-one with Asian Jewish therapists, but also to come together, and that would be a great way for us to also bring in some of our folks who are not in Lunar hubs.
We have hubs in New York, L.A., the Bay Area, Boston, Chicago, and Seattle, so for folks who live in Ohio, or who live in Missouri, it’s a little bit harder to engage. We wanted to give them space as well, and that comes in with the group sessions. The Shabbat spa day—because the grant is from the Los Angeles Federation—is a chance for us to give our Los Angeles community a full day to not only have conversations about mental health, but also relax and unwind.
NWAW: When did the idea for the Mental Health Initiative really start coming together?
I would definitely say it was the months following October 7th that we really started to think about it in a programmatic way, as opposed to collecting data on what’s been going on within our community, or like collecting data on what we noticed from our events. It became like, “Okay, we really need to find ways to support our community’s mental health at this time.”
NWAW: Are there other folks at Lunar who are both Jewish and Muslim? How has this whole experience been for you?
There’s a few Muslim Jewish people at Lunar. One of them is a very dear friend. She was in New York the week after October 7th. We were able to spend really intentional time together. She’s been like such a safe space, and was just a really wonderful person to be around at that time.
Sometimes, there are just no words of what it feels to hold the both of it [being Muslim and Jewish], and so it’s really great to be with her. I would just say there are no words to really hold the both of it.
NWAW: What unique challenges do Asian Jews face, particularly given those two identities?
That’s a wonderful question.
I think that Asian Jews just never feel like we quite belong, or that we’re enough in either space, either Asian American or Jewish, on top of the fact that, visibly, in the Jewish American community, a lot of folks do not think that we’re Jewish, inherently. We won’t get stopped on the street for Jewish things. People think we’re a babysitter or nanny, or they’ll just immediately want to know how we’re Jewish. It’s already an automatic assumption that we’re not, and that can be really isolating.
We find that a lot of folks who come to Lunar are very nervous, or they have a lot of apologies … about who they are [when they meet me or when they come into the space]—like, “I’m only half Jewish,” or “I’m adopted,” or “Well, my father’s Jewish, and so I’m not a real Jew.”
I realize it’s a big part of my job at Lunar, and a big part of the spaces that we want to create, to immediately off the bat be like, “Hey, I’m hearing all that and I want to let you know that you’re Jewish. You’re an Asian Jew, you totally deserve to be here.”
For people to take that in is really huge, and I understand it, because I also struggle with that, even now, leading an organization.
On top of that, Lunar is a really young organization, in terms of years that it’s been alive, but also we’re 80 young adults—we’re 20s-30s, so I think even in my leadership and my role in leading this organization is getting people to understand that we are a legitimate organization that represents thousands of people. We’re one of the largest growing Jews of Color communities, and that they should care.
I think sometimes there are perceptions that we have to combat, like this is a little kid’s club, as opposed to a large, national organization. I think some of those elements are also tied to whether people take Asian Americans or Asian women seriously, and that we are a loud vocal group, as opposed to a more docile, cute group. [Those are] some of the things that we are trying to combat, as well, with our organization
NWAW: Can you explain a little more about what you mean by that, especially in the context of the Asian Jewish Mental Health Initiative? Can you perhaps even give some examples of how you are trying to combat that honestly massive stereotype that Asian women are just cute and docile?
I think in our own leadership, Jenni and I have definitely had a lot of internalized things that we’ve had to work through around our ability to take up space, our ability to stick up for ourselves, to get mad, to be more than just grateful and humble all the time, even though we are grateful and humble—for us to to have other feelings
I think in terms of our leadership, for us to give ourselves permission to be assertive, and to be firm and to be persuasive and be more than just counseling has been a huge area of growth for us as leaders, and in terms of our own mental health.
I think I used to feel like when I was stepping into those elements, the role, that I was losing myself. I’ve had to reframe it as, “I’m just adding more tools to my toolbox and I’m stepping into what the situation calls for.”
And with that, we have a fellowship now at Lunar, the Leading Light Fellowship, for 16 Asian young adults for them to get leadership skills, and mentorship and leadership development, and for them to run the Lunar events on the ground where they live. We think it’s super -important that their leadership journey looks easier than ours, and that they’re given permission earlier on to be all of those multifaceted elements of leadership, and not just the ones that would be stereotypically prescribed to Asian folks.
NWAW: And so how does that tie into caring for your mental health as individuals and as a growing collective?
With the mental health initiative, we’re just getting started and having these conversations. We had our first group session [in November], so even as I’m talking to you, I’m like, “Wow, that’s a huge Asian Jewish mental health theme that I didn’t even connect with.”
I think we haven’t even recognized our Asian Jewish mental health themes, because the notion of Asian Jewish has not existed before, because Asian Jews as a coalition group in a collective has not also existed before. It’s indicative of the new work that we’re doing here for the first time. What does it look like to have done something that’s not been done before? What are the conversations that we’re going to want to have?
I think we’re just starting to get the ball rolling on that. I have guesses of what I think they could be, but in a lot of ways, I don’t know, because I think it’s just going to be what ends up coming out in conversations.
I think we’re in a moment in time when we can reject or embrace the fact that we’re becoming a more multicultural America, and a more multicultural people.
I think if one was rejected, it would be a loss to a really growing community that, if given the chance to be embraced by the collective, but also given the chance to be with each other, that is so special.
Something that I try to show in my leadership, when I’m telling people why to support Lunar [is ways] to support Jews of Color. There are so many ways to do it. You can invite them to come into schools. They can kind of parachute into different avenues of Jewish life or Asian life, or you could give them the space in this moment to come together, and figure out what they want to say, what they want to talk about, and who they want to be.
I think the mental health initiative is really important in that way. Right now, it’s just the beginning of a safe space and a container for us to come together for the first time and figure out what we want to talk about, and what parts of us we need to heal. What are we struggling with, and what does it look like when we reach a threshold of people who’ve been able to work together with Asian Jewish therapists—led by people who also reflect our identities? What does it look like when we come out of that process?
I think it is really exciting, and I think that’s part of embracing this multicultural, growing American community Jewish Asian community.
Carolyn can be reached at editor@nwasianweekly.com
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