An Interview with LUNAR Collective’s David Chiu about the Jewish Asian-American Organization
By Casey J. Adler
David Chiu, a Los Angeles-based Jewish Asian-American theater artist, dishes out a whole lot of nachas in a wide-ranging interview about the influential LUNAR Collective, a first-of-its-kind national organization centered on the Jewish Asian experience.
JLiving: Tell us a little bit about the organization.
David Chiu: The LUNAR Collective is, to my knowledge, the only national organization that was formed by and for Asian-American Jews. It cultivates belonging and promotes visibility and instills joy. We evolved originally as a documentary series but have grown into community organizers. We do gatherings, events, and create educational spaces that make Asian-American Jews feel welcome, sometimes in places where they don’t always feel welcome, either because of discrimination or sometimes it’s that people don’t even think you can be Asian and Jewish. It’s so that you don’t always feel like you’re the odd man out–the only Asian Jew in the world. When you enter a space full of 40 other Asian Jews, you realize, “Oh, I’m actually very normal. There are a lot of people like me!”
We really try to create joy! We tried it in our theater show “WHAT DO I DO WITH ALL THIS HERITAGE?” We tried it in our gatherings. And we tried it in our publications, including our Haggadah, which we wrote from an Asian-Jewish interpretation.
JL: Could you tell us what you have planned for Passover this year?
DC: This year, we are producing a pre-Passover picnic! I really wanted this picnic because we thought doing something before Passover might be fun. Even though we are going to read parts of the Haggadah, this isn’t going to be a traditional Passover experience. I want to get moments where people are having discussions together, singing together, learning together. I want people who are Asian Jews to feel centered and seen, and people who are not Asian Jews who are there as friends and allies to feel part of this, too.
Pages from LUNAR Collective Haggadah
JL: Can you tell us about Asian resistance throughout history and how that relates to Passover?
DC: The Passover story is a resistance story in many ways. It’s about standing up for your people, against oppression, and fighting for liberation. Coming out of this wave of anti-Asian hate, we wanted to pay honor, not just to Jewish stories of resistance but historic Asian-American stories of fighting for dignity, rights, and awareness. Even the idea of “Asian-American” wasn’t conceived until the 1960s. Before that, there were just disparate groups. Filipinos, Chinese, and Japanese were some of the biggest ethnic groups. In the 1960s, solidarity was sort of born. And we wanted to pay homage to a lot of those activists, who helped birth that cultural awareness and identity.
JL: You have created your own Haggadah?
DC: We decided we wanted to write a Haggadah from an Asian-Jewish point of view. I was part of a committee with people across the country. We had rabbinical students, people with master’s degrees in Jewish education, artists, and some with no Jewish knowledge whatsoever but were interested in being a part of the process.
I wrote a passage about coming out of COVID. There was a lot of anti-Asian hate. If you recall, it was around the whole idea that Asians were spreading the virus or eating these weird things, which caused the virus. So, it touched a lot of us, very personally. In the hand washing ritual from the Passover Seder, I suggested that instead of washing our hands because we are “dirty,” we wash away all the ways others have harmed or marginalized us. And so it was a way of reimagining it. Now, I also knew that a lot of people were bringing–including me–somebody who’s not an Asian Jew to the Passover. So, I also wrote that if you’re not an Asian Jew, I want you to wash away all of the guilt and the connection with the people who’ve done that.
This was a chance to be present, supportive, start fresh, and wash away prejudices. I wanted to invite all to be part of a healing experience. And I think that is the LUNAR philosophy of joy. When people try to get us down, we’re going to respond with joy to lift ourselves up.
JL: Could you reflect on the Asian Jewish perspective of adoptees through the Moses adoption story?
DC: Yes! We reinterpreted the Moses story through an adoptee lens. We reimagined the four children as different types of Asian Jews, each of which having faced an obstacle to feeling welcome at the table: an interfaith Jew who’s told that you can’t be two things at once; a Jew by choice challenged when someone says to them, “You weren’t born in a Jewish family. You’re not a real Jew.”; the patrilineal Jews who face unique barriers in feeling welcome in Jewish spaces; and adoptees – someone from Asia, raised in a Jewish family. The adoptee may have no connection-nobody in their life, from their birth country – and is trying to be part of a community that they don’t have biological heritage to, but are inheriting a sort of shared sense of emotional and spiritual heritage.
Each of these passages was written by somebody from that group. My friend Vanessa Bloom, who had been part of the original documentary series, read the adoptee part. Then she started reading and crying – it was a powerful moment. That’s when I suddenly realized, in our first Passover, why I did all of this.
JL: What is a moment in Asian American resistance that resonates with you?
DC: The repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1943.
JL: That is a really interesting choice, because what you’re choosing is not an individual uprising or protest. But something that took a long time over many generations from the passing of it in 1882.
DC: It’s going to sound unrelated, but it’s not unrelated. I remember when there were the shootings in Atlanta, and, for a hot minute, everyone supported Asian-Americans. It was all on their Facebooks, and I remember thinking that this is going to suck when all those people take that stuff down three weeks later and move on to whatever the next cause is. And, look, I can’t blame them. You can’t do every cause, right? We’re humans. We have limited time. And we got to live our lives. We got to go out, have hobbies, have fun–we can’t just be locked in causes all the time. But I fear that we live in a digital age when activism is about the trending moments, and that it causes us to be in very shallow relationships with communities that we parachute into.
But the work of change and healing is long. It all takes work and investment. It’s nice every so often to get into the news and get a lot of people riled up about some injustice. Sometimes you can move the needle a little bit because of that. But what I think is really important is not to forget that the really important work is sticking around, building connections, building relationships, getting to know communities deeply, and doing the long-term work of change. That’s what LUNAR is trying to do.
JL: David, you should run for office.
DC: So that 50% of the country can automatically hate me?
JL: How can people support LUNAR?
DC: You can visit our website weareasianjews.org and donate to help create community for Asian Jews. Any support means so much to us. And on that website, anyone can join our mailing list and browse our events page to learn about LUNAR events. For example, on May 23, we are producing a reprise performance of our acclaimed first-ever the atre show about Asian Jews, which we created in partnership with The Braid, entitled What Do I Do with All This Heritage? It will be per formed at the Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center, which sadly burned down in the Los Angeles Wildfires but is currently being hosted by a lo cal church. So, you can go to a church to be part of a historic synagogue and see a show all about Asian Jews! You can’t get more multicultural than that!