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NEW YORK (JTA) – In 2014, Lacey Schwartz Delgado made headlines around the world for a documentary in which she explored a shocking family secret.
"Little White Lie" tells the real story of Schwartz Delgado, according to which he was allegedly raised in a white Jewish family in Woodstock, a city in upstate New York State. Although she has a darker complexion than other members of the family, she was told that she had inherited the skin complexion of her Sicilian Jewish grandfather.
In college, though, she could not ignore the fact that she did not look white. She confronted her mother, who finally admitted that Schwartz Delgado's father was actually a friend of the African American family with whom she had had an affair.
The revelation put the filmmaker on the path of self-discovery, which she shows in the documentary. She is currently National Outreach Director for Be'chol Lashon, a group that promotes diversity in the Jewish community.
Four years after the release of the film, Schwartz Delgado, 41, is on a new path, her husband, Antonio Delgado, representing the 11th district of New York in the House of Representatives. He is in a tight race against Republican MP John Faso, offering a platform that includes protecting local jobs, supporting universal health care and protecting the environment.
JTA spoke on the phone with Schwartz Delgado last week about her involvement in the campaign, her husband's perspective on Israel, and how the couple, who met Harvard Law School, was a student. his 5-year-old Jewish twins.
The following excerpts from the conversation have been changed for clarity and style.
JTA: How did you decide with Antonio to run for election?
Schwartz DelgadoAfter the 2016 elections, we had a rallying moment for a variety of reasons. We were 40 years old. He was at a crossroads with his professional team. [law] my career and I had left the road after spending most of the two years promoting 'Little White Lie' and realized that many countries jokingly 'leave the country'. we wanted to do the opposite, that is to say move to the house.
We have identical twins aged 5 and two sets of what I call empowered grandparents. So it was really about knowing how to live our ideals, how to live close to the family and where and how are we going to raise our children? And with that, we also started to look into political spaces, in which my husband was more traditionally oriented but had problems with the system. We have problems with money in politics and with the way you must expose yourself to unwelcome and unavoidable personal attacks. But when we looked around and saw what was happening, we felt both left and right, that the world was becoming too extreme.
Were you surprised that he decided to run for office?
I am not totally surprised that he is running for office. I think my involvement insofar as it surprises me more in a way. Obviously, I would always have supported him and, of course, I believe in him and I am partially involved because I support him. But to the extent that I'm involved, it's really not him, it's about my strong views on what it takes to build a stronger community and how important the community is to me . In my opinion, one of the things that have failed for the political system in recent decades is an excessive insistence on the presidency and federal politics, instead of starting from the bottom and throwing it up and down , looking at our villages and our cities and our counties and our states.
What is the relationship with Judaism as a family?
I grew up in a Jewish community close to home. I've been fighting mitzvahed here. And Antonio was not raised in the Jewish religion, but we have embraced the transmission of Judaism to our children. Our children are five years old, so in many ways we are like many families with children of that age, whether or not they are two Jewish parents or one Jewish relative. He was exposed to the fact that Judaism resembled my family in previous generations. Like many people, I think that the traditions that I learned from my family hold an important place in my Judaism and that I am bound by Jewish wisdom myself. So I think that, like many young families, we are at a very typical point where we understood what our family looked like.
In your documentary, you explore how your new racial identity is hitting the fact that you were raised as a white Jew. How do you relate to this now?
There are still discussions about the dialogue between Black Jews and Blacks, but many of us have internal conversations and struggle to integrate these identities internally. I think that's largely because society almost told us that being black and Jewish was sometimes almost diametrically opposed, and in fact it's not really. So for me, it was a process and a real educational experience of learning the reality of who we are as a Jewish people, a diverse group of people, from very different horizons.
Antonio was criticized for stating in a debate that Israel was not a Jewish democracy. He then clarified his position, saying the country was in fact a "Jewish democracy". Can you tell us more about his point of view on Israel?
He understands the profound importance of Israel and I think that in terms of conversation, he clarified it in terms of tension and specifically clarified it in terms of his support total to Israel. I think it all too often comes down to talking about it in the political space, rather than being a dialogue, people want to jump on something and misinterpret it and put it in some box, and I think it's not who we are. We are not the type to talk about political issues here. We live it, we submit to the process, we ask ourselves the hard questions and we make sure to stay true to the ideals we believe in, and support for Israel is an important part of it for both of us as a Jewish family.
The wife of the New York House candidate, Antonio Delgado, speaking about the couple's Jewish involvement, first appeared at the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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