Kylie Unell’s Leap of Faith

Kylie Unell holds a number of identities.  She is a Doctoral fellow at NYU studying German and Jewish philosophy, a board member for Jewish organizations, a writer, a podcaster, and a public speaker who is Jewish and bi-racial. But it is the acceptance of the struggles that come with her faith for which she may be most well-known.

Kylie is the founder of both “Rooted” – a nonprofit that creates environments to help young Jews feel confident about living a life guided by Judaism and a relationship with God, and “Models of Faith” – a photo blog sharing spiritual and religious journeys of individuals of all faiths. Kylie encourages young people to explore their past and figure out how it defines them, to question their religion, their traditions, and their faith to become closer to their most authentic selves and build connections and community.  The wisdom she shares through these experiences make her seem more of an “old soul” than a twenty-something spiritual influencer.

In many ways, Kylie is the perfect evangelist for this kind of work.  Her mother is a devout Jew, her father is a Black man, and after her parents divorced when she was young, her mother raised her for many years in Israel.   “I grew up listening to Gospel music because my mother loved R&B. She was really into the televangelist singers because they talked about God in a way that wasn’t super Jesus-y.  And that exposed me to a relationship with God, not necessarily religion.”

But it was Judaism that was the central pillar in Kylie’s life.  When she graduated with her bachelor’s from NYU, she worked at a Jewish non-profit.  She studied Jewish philosophers and read America’s Prophet by Bruce Feiler, which illustrated the influence of the Moses narrative on major events in American history, from the Pilgrims to the Stonewall Riots and the gay rights movement.  She began to see that there was so much more to her religion that people, particularly young people, weren’t engaging in.

Kylie admits that the global pandemic, along with the national racial reckoning, threw her off course and put both Rooted and Models of Faith on hold.  She experienced mental health challenges and again, looked to her faith.

“There are so many organizations out there trying to make Jews become more Jewish.  But it’s putting certain types of people on a pedestal – which is ‘this is who you should strive to be’ as opposed to who you are, which is okay.  So I started Rooted to help young Jews feel confident about living a life guided by Judaism.”

Kylie says the conversations are for everyone.  “I wanted people to feel like it was okay to struggle. My goal is to make people feel understood and inspired to be a person of faith, no matter the religion; to feel like you don’t have to be perfect when you take on religion and start a relationship with God. Struggling is a part of the equation and being a person who cares about their religion or doesn’t even know they care or has a certain impulse to care – that’s normal.”

Rooted was founded in 2019 as a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that creates events and environments to inspire people to see themselves as part of the Jewish story by understanding who came before them.  As a doctoral fellow, Kylie is researching Moses Mendelssohn, the 18^th  century German philosopher who helped Jews integrate into Germany, and Booker T. Washington, who helped emancipated Blacks integrate into American society.  Like her work with Rooted, she is making connections between people and communities that don’t necessarily know they are connected, bringing more understanding to common human struggles.

In 2019 Kylie also started “Models of Faith,” a photo blog that tells peoples’ stories about their faith, though not for Jews alone.

“In this life, we’re encouraged to care about our faith, so I wanted to make Models of Faith a very open dialogue, just showcasing humans who are trying to figure it all out,” said Kylie, who interviews people for about an hour and then releases segments in three parts.

“We tell people’s stories and we ground it in the reality of being human and the fact that it’s a struggle.  You don’t feel love for God all of the time or you get angry or you don’t grow up with religion and you decide that’s important but what does that look like? We just want people to feel like they’re understood.”

Kylie recently found herself labeled in a way that challenged how she understood herself.

“When all of the riots occurred after the death of George Floyd, suddenly race came into the picture in a very different way,” she said.  “Something that was always there is now referred to as ‘Okay, now this matters.’  Whenever there’s a big thing people want to get on a bandwagon and talk about it.  People started reaching out to me about being a Jew of color – a bi-racial Jew.  And I never thought about it like that before and I didn’t like it.”

Kylie wrote an article expressing her feelings about it which blew up on social media, particularly among the Jewish community.

“I was getting all this attention because I was a Black Jew and it really forced me to confront the fact that people see me differently than how I see myself.  People were so concerned with making sure I fit in in the Jewish world with the assumption being that I didn’t fit in already. It gave rise to a tension that I think was there about how you can hold two identities together.”

Kylie has an interesting take on the subject of diversity, a universally-desired ideal that is more complicated for those wearing the difference.

“The going assumption is that people should feel bad for you because you’re different and when people go through the world like that then you start to question yourself, “Wait, is there something wrong with me? Do I not fit in? I really felt like I fit in but now you’re saying that I don’t.  What is true here?”

Kylie admits that the global pandemic, along with the national racial reckoning, threw her off course and put both Rooted and Models of Faith on hold.  She experienced mental health challenges and again, looked to her faith.

“Religion and faith almost feel like two different things for me.  I think religion’s important from a communal standpoint to find your place in the world and know you’re not alone. Faith feels like a relationship with God that’s personal.  Both of these things are really important as it relates to mental health.  At least for me, these last couple of years have been the hardest of my life.”

Kylie said she saw a therapist but relied most heavily on the people in her life who knew her best and worked through her issues with her faith in God.

“I knew strongly I was in God’s hands and there was this feeling of being taken care of and knowing things are moving in the way they’re supposed to be moving.  But it was so hard.”

Kylie is now working to reinstate Rooted and Models of Faith within a new normal.  She continues pursuing her PhD at NYU, speaks at conferences and schools on connecting history to modern-day Judaism, and recently led a podcast called “How to Fix the Soul in 30 Days.”

“Every week, I would try a different way of taking stock of my soul in preparation for the new year.  I did things publicly.  I did things that I would never do and recorded it.  There’s one episode of me walking through a park and I’m talking to God, and I’m crying, and we used it in the tape. I was super proud of myself for that because it was such a vulnerable moment.”

Vulnerability is something Kylie leans into in her work and life, acknowledging the struggle as part of the evolution, not just the thing that’s hidden.

“I don’t think there’s enough of that in this world. I think there’s a lot of showing people who made it, but not showing the process in the middle.  We’re really big into celebrities and everything we see is really fabricated because it’s reality TV or it’s Instagram, but it’s not the middle. The struggle is there to get you to a point where you’re trusting of the world and the unknown.”