At a moment when Jewish teens are navigating rising antisemitism alongside broader conversations about race and justice, Moving Traditions, a JoCI grantee, is asking a deeper question: What could it look like to address antisemitism in ways that reflect the multiracial reality of the Jewish community? Through its Kumi program’s recent efforts supported by the Jews of Color Initiative, the organization is expanding how young people understand and interrupt antisemitism, guided in large part by the leadership of Rebecca Ezersky, a rising Jewish leader of Color helping shape this work.
Moving Traditions is a national nonprofit supporting Jewish teens who are eager to explore identity as a key component of social transformation . One of its signature immersive experiences, Kumi, offers teens sustained learning around oppression and justice. With support from JoCI, Moving Traditions is deepening Kumi’s work to address antisemitism explicitly through a Jews of Color lens. Around the same time, Ezersky was hired full time as the Kumi Senior Manager to strengthen the program’s capacity to carry out this work.
At its core, Kumi is “an opportunity for Jewish teens to learn about different manifestations of oppression, such as racism, antisemitism, sexism, etc, and learn how to interrupt it in their communities,” Ezersky said.
The program includes two affinity tracks—Jews of Color and Anti-Racist Ally—creating space for identity-specific exploration alongside multiracial sessions where teens come together across difference. Through two retreats, Kumi Foundations and Kumi Exploration, as well as ongoing virtual gatherings, participants build both analytical skills and relationships. As Ezersky explains about Kumi Exploration, the second retreat in the series, which brings the alumni of Kumi Foundations together in a major city—this year Washington, D.C. “It’s a really great opportunity for teens to reconnect with one another and learn about how they’re implementing their learnings in Jewish justice spaces.”
“Antisemitism doesn’t exist in a vacuum,” Ezersky said. “It’s intertwined with other forms of oppression.” That framing is one of the key reasons why JoCI believes communal efforts to address antisemitism have to include the perspectives and leadership of Jews of Color. “So much of conversations around antisemitism… center the white Jewish experience, which is why I think it’s so important that this program exists,” Ezersky reflects. “We know that experiences of antisemitism are nuanced and based on personal identity and the ways that your Jewish identity might intersect with other facets of your identity and the communities that you’re a part of.”
By grounding antisemitism within a broader anti-oppression framework, Kumi helps teens hold complexity without flattening their identities. It equips them to see their Jewishness not as separate from justice work, but as deeply connected to it.
The urgency of this work has only intensified. Even before officially stepping into her full-time role, Ezersky witnessed how necessary these spaces are. She recalls sitting in on a community-of-practice session (one of Kumi’s virtual learning opportunities) in December, the day after the Bondi Beach shooting in Australia. “It was such an important opportunity for teens to come together in a really hard moment and focus on how to continue the learning they did during the retreat.” The session included a JoC educator from Project Shema, strengthening teens’ understanding of the relationship between antisemitism and racism in real time.
In the wake of October 7th and rising antisemitism globally, Ezersky notes that “the conversations around antisemitism that teens are having are, in some ways, more needed now than they were a few years ago.” Kumi hopes to support teens in thoughtfully and collaboratively addressing issues of our times across their communities.
Kumi’s reach extends beyond its retreats. Moving Traditions brings antisemitism programming into other teen spaces, including NFTY events, synagogue youth groups, Day Schools, and to educators. The curriculum can also be adapted for Hebrew high schools, expanding its impact beyond Jewish institutional life. For JoCI, this scalability represents an important field intervention: equipping institutions to address antisemitism in ways that reflect the multiracial reality of the Jewish community.
As an organization, Moving Traditions’ strategic focus has evolved over the last decade with inspiration from the Jews of Color Initiative. Originally founded with a focus on feminism and gender, the organization expanded its strategic vision in recent years. As Brian Mono, Moving Traditions’ Chief of Advancement reflects, “As we approached our strategic plan earlier this decade, there was a realization that the conversation needed to be expanded.” That expansion—encouraged in part by funder Liz Dunst of the Shards of Light Foundation, whose connection to JoCI underscored the importance of investing in Jews of Color—helped catalyze this work. The Kumi program was then created in 2022 by Chief of Program Strategy Rabbi Tamara Cohen in partnership with Beckee Birger, the original Kumi Director, who is now a program officer for the Crown Family Philanthropies.
For Ezersky, the project, and Moving Traditions’ participation in the Addressing Antisemitism grantee cohort, is deeply personal as well. “From a personal note, growing up as a Jew of color, and not really knowing the small amount of Jew of Color youth programming that existed, it’s so cool now to not only be engaged in an organization that serves Jews of Color, but also doing that in collaboration with other people who are doing similar work.” Her leadership reflects a broader goal of JoCI’s grantmaking: strengthening a pipeline of JoC leaders who are shaping institutions from within.
The cohort model enhances Ezersky’s ability to powerfully propel this project forward. “I think I’m the sort of person that works best in collaboration with other people,” Ezersky shares. “I’m very excited to hear about the work that other grantees in the cohort are doing, and potentially bounce ideas off of one another.” For JoCI, this collaborative ecosystem is essential; by investing in multiple strategies simultaneously, the cohort builds field-wide momentum rather than isolated interventions.
Ultimately, Ezersky’s hopes for Kumi point toward a generational shift. “One of my hopes for this program is that the students that participate in it feel empowered to interrupt antisemitism through a lens that brings in different groups of people.” She wants teens to “see themselves able to work alongside people that are interrupting other forms of oppression.” Beyond analysis, she hopes for connection: “I also hope that the teens connect with one another and meet peers engaged in justice work. I hope it’s fun, too!”
That sense of belonging and agency matters deeply for the future of Jewish life. As Ezersky puts it, “these youth are our future, and they’re going to really shape Jewish institutions and justice spaces… I know we’re all working towards Jewish communities that center belonging, where everyone feels like they have a place.” Her vision is clear: a Jewish world where teens “see their Judaism as not in opposition to other sorts of anti-oppression work that they’re doing, but alongside it.”
Through this investment, JoCI is not only supporting a program. We are strengthening a generation of leaders who understand antisemitism in its full complexity, who refuse to separate intersectional identities from their pursuit of a shared future, and who are prepared to build Jewish communities grounded in belonging. In leaders like Rebecca Ezersky—and in the teens she supports—we see the field evolving in real time.
