LONDON, United Kingdom – Ashley Laverne Jackson, daughter of the late American civil rights leader Rev. Jesse Jackson, has opened up about her conversion to Judaism, describing the fears she faced before making the decision public and the welcome she subsequently received from Jewish communities.
Jackson, 27, converted in June and publicly revealed her conversion the following month. In recent appearances in Britain, she discussed her spiritual journey, her father’s reaction, and what it means to identify simultaneously as a Black American and a Jewish woman.
Her story resonates because of her family history.
Rev. Jesse Jackson, who died in February at 84, was one of the most prominent figures in the American civil rights movement after Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. He twice sought the Democratic presidential nomination and spent decades advocating for civil rights and economic opportunity.
His daughter has now publicly embraced her own religious and cultural identity.
Before revealing her conversion, Jackson said she was deeply concerned about the reaction.
She told an audience at JW3, London’s Jewish community and cultural center, that she had been “really scared” before publishing an opinion article revealing her conversion.
She feared possible backlash and even concerns for her safety.
Instead, Jackson said approximately 80 percent of the reaction she received was positive.
The response appears to have strengthened rather than diminished her willingness to discuss her Jewish identity publicly.
A Journey Toward Judaism
Jackson said her path toward Judaism followed a period of spiritual questioning.
She had attended bar and bat mitzvah celebrations while growing up but did not attend her first synagogue service until 2024. One unexpected influence was Jewish actress Mayim Bialik, whose online discussions about Jewish life resonated with Jackson.
Jackson’s father was a Baptist minister, making her conversion especially notable to those familiar with the family’s public history.
But Jackson has said her parents taught her to understand faith through justice, dignity, and bridge-building, and she has described her conversion not as a rejection of that inheritance but as an expression of it.
Her father supported her journey.
Jackson has also spoken about remembering him through Jewish ritual. Before his death, she would whisper his name during the prayer for healing at her Los Angeles synagogue. Following his death, she recited Kaddish for him.
She has taken the Hebrew name Miriam.
Welcomed By Holocaust Survivors
Jackson’s recent visit to Britain included an appearance at JW3 and a visit to Jewish Care’s Holocaust Survivors’ Center in London.
She arrived at the center expecting primarily to listen to survivors.
Instead, Jackson said the survivors wanted to hear about her.
“They called me by my Hebrew name, Miriam,” she later recalled in a social media post describing the encounter.
Jackson said the experience left a powerful impression on her.
She had entered a room containing people who had experienced extraordinary persecution and expected their histories to dominate the conversation. Instead, she found people interested in welcoming a new Jew and hearing about her path into the Jewish people.
Her European trip also included a visit to the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam.
The journey formed part of what Jackson described as a “hope mission” through Europe connected to PUSH The Next Generation, the organization she founded to equip young people to confront contemporary social challenges.
Black And Jewish
Jackson has placed particular emphasis on refusing to treat her Black and Jewish identities as competing loyalties.
She told the JW3 audience that the histories of Black and Jewish people are profoundly different and should not be collapsed into one another.
But she also argued that their destinies are “intertwined.”
Jackson pointed to the importance both traditions place on memory, perseverance, family, learning and hope.
Her organization is now piloting a project intended to bring Black and Jewish teenagers together in Los Angeles.
That work arrives at a time when relations between parts of the Black and Jewish communities in the United States have been strained by political divisions, including disputes surrounding Israel and the war that followed the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack.
Jackson’s decision to embrace Judaism publicly therefore extends beyond the private story of an individual’s religious conversion.
It places the daughter of one of America’s most recognizable civil rights leaders at an unusual intersection of African-American history, contemporary Jewish identity and the struggle against antisemitism.
Jackson has made clear that she does not intend to choose between those worlds.
She intends to inhabit both.
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