Families were living separately from the fathers. And so although, according to African culture, men were the head of the household, the truth is women were the ones who were raising everybody, including men. And growing up with my mother, that was something I really learned to appreciate.
I existed in a space where my mother was a black woman and my father was a white man. And that's how I saw the world. I was just like, some dads are whites and some moms are black. And that's how it is.
[ My mother] went, OK, I've read the Bible. I've read the Bible again. I'm reading the Bible again. OK, let me - where does this Bible come from? What does this Old Testament speak - who are the Israelites? Who - what is Judaism? And then she went, and I'm going to study that. And, you know, she wanted to almost get to the core.
Those were the places where many people mixed if they wanted to mix, which was against the law [Immorality Act of 1927]. My mother was part of that group. My father was part of that group. People who were black and whites and Indian and Asian - and you came together and said, we choose to mix at the risk of being arrested. And so they did.
I was lucky to come along for the ride. [My mother] really is an amazing woman. And the world we lived in in South Africa at the time was a very matriarchal society because so many black men had been removed from the home.
I was really lucky in that my mom and dad never got caught in the act, so to speak. So my mom was caught fraternizing with my dad. My mom was caught, you know, in the building that my father lived in. My mom was caught in a white neighborhood past curfew without the right permits. My mother was caught in transition. And that was key because had she been caught in the act, then, as the law says, she could've spent anywhere up to four years in prison.
My mother converted, my mom converted to Judaism.
I learned to use language like my mother did. I would simulcast, give you the program in your own tongue.
[My mother] wanted to go as deep as possible into the world of religion. And that took her into Judaism.
I think it was something I inherited from my mother, who learned to do it. You know, I, like a baby duckling, was merely mimicking the survival traits that my mother possessed. And I came to learn very quickly that language was a powerful, powerful tool.
[My mother ] will write me an email, and it'll be Shanah Tovah. And the next day it'll be something else, Baruch Hashem Adonai. And I - I'm lost half of the time, but that was the world that I grew up in.
I lived in a world where I didn't share the love for my stepfather that my mother shared for him. She married him.
My mother's always looking for answers. She's always searching for new information. I think she has a thirst for hunger that very few possess innately.
My mother never stagnated in a place where she said, I have it all.
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