Tova’s poetry explores both Judaism and her identity as a Black queer woman. To do so, she often turns to seemingly mundane experiences and reveals how everyday moments hold deeper meaning.
In December, Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz and Eddie Chavez Calderon asked our Executive Director, Ilana Kaufman, to speak with their community on Jews of Color and inequity.
Building pathways for Jews of Color to be decision-makers in Jewish communities—not only for matters of diversity and equity, but all facets of Jewish life—can ensure that we build a beautiful second chapter that will sustain and transform the Jewish people.
Changing our institutional structures can be an overwhelming task. Perhaps many of the innovations that come from brainstorming sessions, workshops, and meetings end up as crumpled paper, forgotten, or labeled too challenging to legitimately undertake. We want to change that.
As the selection of fellows for our Jews of Color Initiative Leadership Fellowship in New York comes to a close, we sat down to talk with Riki Robinson, Program Director of our New York Hub, about how the Fellowship was developed. This conversation revealed how communal learning is at the core of the Fellowship’s design, paving the way for fellows to confidently enter the Jewish professional ecosystem.
Before we even announced the August 12 launch of Beyond the Count, Ilana Kaufman and Dr. Harriette Wimms, Founder and Executive Director of the Jews of Color Mishpacha Project, held a conversation on why this study matters and how it might impact the Jewish community.
Spanning a variety of religious backgrounds, the speakers discussed not only how racism rears its head in their communities, but also how faith traditions can offer road maps for advancing racial justice.
Arielle Korman and Yehudah Webster decided to build an organization free from prejudice, and where Jews of Color can learn in community with others who know first-hand the beauty and challenges of being a Jew of Color.
Faced with the reckoning with racism across time and the call to action from the Black Lives Matter movement in our present moment, Kaufman tasked any white Jewish webinar attendants and viewers to ask themselves: “What am I willing to give up? What am I able to learn, and what am I willing to contribute to halt the perpetuation of racism and white supremacy in this country?”
