In 1970, three-day-old Marra B. Gad was adopted by a white Jewish family in Chicago. For her parents, it was love at first sight—but they quickly realized the world wasn’t ready for a family like theirs. Marra’s biological mother was unwed, white, and Jewish, and her biological father was black. While still a child, Marra came to realize that she was “a mixed-race, Jewish unicorn.”  In black spaces, she was not “black enough.” In Jewish spaces, she was mistaken for the help, asked to leave, or worse. Even in her own extended family, racism bubbled to the surface. At turns heart-wrenching and heartwarming, The Color of Love is a story about what you inherit from your family—and what you choose to do with that inheritance. In her talk, Marra B. Gad shares her story with honesty, insight, and warmth and will connect her story to broader themes of race and Jewish community today. 

Marra B. Gad was born in New York and raised in Chicago. She is an independent film and television producer and now calls Los Angeles home. Ms. Gad is a graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and holds a master’s degree in modern Jewish history from Baltimore Hebrew Institute at Towson University.

Marra B. Gad joins Congregation Rodef Sholom on Wednesday, February 3, at 7:00pm to discuss her award-winning book "The Color of Love: A Story of a Mixed-Race Jewish Girl," winner of the 2020 Midwest Book Award for Autobiography/Memoir. We invite you to read The Color of Love with us this January.

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