Day: June 26, 2024

“If I commit to equity, won’t that mean I will lose out on opportunities or need to give something up?” This is a common anxiety among people with relative privilege. And internalizing this idea often leads groups to engage in the “Oppression Olympics” — a competition against other minority or marginalized groups for a share of equity. Equity isn’t pie, but it feels like it may be when we are taught to believe that it is a resource, and we understand resources to be finite and scarce, much like slices of pie.

What would it take to reimagine equity as renewable and abundant? Equity is a Jewish value because expanding access to resources and opportunity for everyone is a Jewish value. However, Jews scarcely make up 2.5% of the United States population (under .5% globally), making Jews a small minority group. We have every reason to be concerned about Jewish safety. But because whiteness is the dominant racial group in the United States, Jews who can access whiteness have done so, which leads to a misunderstanding that all Jews are white. This misunderstanding harms, isolates, and erases the nearly 20% of Jews in the United States who are not white, many of whom do not have access to whiteness (read: safety) under any scheme of race. (Need proof of the internalized belief that all Jews are white? Ask any non-white Jew how often their Jewishness is cross-examined in a Jewish setting by white Jews.) Jews of Color are the minorities within a minority.

But when leaders in the Jewish community compete for resources against those they believe to be in the outgroup, we often don’t realize that we are competing against ourselves — we are competing against Jews. When we talk about Black, Latin, Asian, and multiple other intersections of identity, we are talking about Jews. We cannot think about these minority groups as if they are wholly separate from the Jewish community. We are Jews. And, when our community competes for equity as if it is a finite resource, we are denying Jews slices of the pie.

“Moving Through the Wilderness: Recommitting to Equity After 10/7” is a collection of brief essays born out of Elevate: An Executive Leadership Equity Accelerator. Elevate launched in May 2023 and its first cohort consisted of eleven CEOs of influential Jewish institutions, who are committed to the Jewish value and responsibility of equity within our community. The idea for this project emerged in Montgomery, Alabama during one of Elevate’s in-person convenings in early 2024. To learn more about Elevate and the program’s co-founders and leaders, Gamal J. Palmer and Catherine Bell, click here.

Moving Through the Wilderness is presented in partnership with the Forward, the leading voice in Jewish journalism. Read more essays in the collection.

The post More Than a Slice of Pie appeared first on The Forward.

While definitions of equity vary, my most elementary understanding of it is best illustrated by a graphic created by artist Angus Maguire for the Interaction Institute for Social Change. The widely shared graphic draws a simple distinction between equality and equity through three people watching a baseball game over a fence. On the side of the image demonstrating “equality,” each spectator has a crate to stand on. Each crate boosts the tallest and middle-height individuals high enough to view the game, but leaves the shortest person stuck below with no line of sight. 

In the “equity” version of the scene, the shortest character gets two of those crates while the tallest goes without. This configuration places all their heads at the same height above the fence; all of them can see the diamond. Purposeful, unequal distribution of tools — that is, the crates — provides equal access to the aim: enjoyment of the game. I’d argue that it produces an even greater benefit. Beyond the enjoyment of watching the game, they now share the experience of watching the game together, with the potential to build a relationship through a shared experience.

What is community but the shared experiences, shared relationships, shared practices, stories, or values across time and space? What is our Jewish community’s aim if not to be the foundation for shared living, to offer those very times, spaces, and sacred things through which Jews engage in the relational act of being Jewish? 

Rabbi Mordecai M. Kaplan’s work, which has deeply influenced modern Jewish thinking about peoplehood, insists that community is just as vital to the fulfillment of the individual as the individual is to the community’s existence. What does it mean, then, if our communities are not equitable — if the people who make and come into contact with our movements and congregations find unequal access to the sources of connection and meaning they seek?

I’ll speak from experience, as a half-Filipino, transgender Jew who has walked into synagogues and seminary classes that thought themselves inclusive. It’s profoundly obvious when a space, either physical or metaphorical, was not built with me in mind. You might not have a way in — literally, for many with visible, invisible, and financial disabilities or who find themselves turned away. And even if you’re waved in the door, even if you’ve been warmly enveloped among your people for ages, a careless comment — or, worse, long-term thoughtlessness, programs that do not take your needs and experiences into account, barriers built on assumptions—might knock you out of the project of community. Suddenly, the fence is in your face. Sometimes, it’s possible to get back in the groove, but the realization forces you to recalibrate your understanding of who you are while the group continues to etch in the we experience. Sometimes, for some people, there is no going back.

This is why I hope every community, every people, every organization and institution — both Jewish and civil — commits consciously to justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion. Even knowing that we recreate community every time we come into it, we still live in buildings, peoples, idea-spaces, and patterns of thought that do not offer us equal access to our own belonging and self-value within them. Unless we actively choose to address those inequities, we fall short of Jewish community’s basic mission. “Salvation is possible only through a community based upon the pursuit of the common good in a spirit of justice and equality,” Kaplan writes in Judaism as a Civilization. When we distribute our crates with an eye toward a shared experience of life, we all stand a much better chance of seeing it.

“Moving Through the Wilderness: Recommitting to Equity After 10/7” is a collection of brief essays born out of Elevate: An Executive Leadership Equity Accelerator. Elevate launched in May 2023 and its first cohort consisted of eleven CEOs of influential Jewish institutions, who are committed to the Jewish value and responsibility of equity within our community. The idea for this project emerged in Montgomery, Alabama during one of Elevate’s in-person convenings in early 2024. To learn more about Elevate and the program’s co-founders and leaders, Gamal J. Palmer and Catherine Bell, click here.

Moving Through the Wilderness is presented in partnership with the Forward, the leading voice in Jewish journalism. Read more essays in the collection.

The post The View from My Crate: Calling for Equitable Jewish Communities appeared first on The Forward.

As Jews, our foundational values are justice and equity. Yet the heartbreak of the last few months may prompt the question, “why should we be focused on the dire needs of those in Global South countries when we feel on less than steady ground here?” Yes, we must speak up for ourselves, but this doesn’t excuse us from the fight for global equity.

In the Kenyan coastal city of Mombasa, trans people leave home each day with a few extra bills tucked in a side pocket. Ready money for a bribe can hopefully prevent a humiliating and dangerous sequence of abuse: interrogation, harassment, arrest, and prison. In neighboring Uganda, where a new law punishes homosexuality with life imprisonment or the death sentence, brutal treatment of gay people has been proclaimed the law of the land.

Intolerance toward the LGBTQI+ community is just one example of accelerating prejudice that prevents vulnerable people in Global South countries from living with dignity, if living at all. The United States is certainly not immune. Ongoing race-based discrimination here draws on centuries of slavery, sanctioned theft of Native American lands, and the perennial abuse of Latin American and Asian migrant workers. We stand speechless, although not powerless, as we watch a resurgence of anti-Semitism here and abroad. As the only American global Jewish organization focused solely on advancing human rights outside of the United States and Middle East, American Jewish World Service sees the consequences of centuries of prejudice in every country where we work.  

In the Dominican Republic, Dominicans of Haitian descent, even those born there, have been stripped of their citizenship because of government sanctioned racism. They are the largest stateless population in the Western Hemisphere with no access to education, employment, or healthcare in their home country. India, with the world’s third-largest Muslim population, has institutionalized a religious bias, exposing more than 200 million Muslim people to decades of discrimination. Since the 2014 election of Narendra Modi, Muslims in India are subject to extreme violence, a scenario likely to worsen with Modi  re-elected president this spring. 

When historically marginalized groups face oppression, when reproductive health is controlled, when democratic institutions are threatened, we need to believe that each one of us can make a difference, and then set out to do something. Jews, who for centuries have understood what it means to be ostracized, judged, and denied, are naturally suited to this call even amidst a resurgence of antisemitism. 

Rabbi Hillel’s exquisitely prescient and ethical triptych asks us to both look after ourselves but not only ourselves. And to act urgently. I see this as a three-part package, and we can’t choose only one.

“Moving Through the Wilderness: Recommitting to Equity After 10/7” is a collection of brief essays born out of Elevate: An Executive Leadership Equity Accelerator. Elevate launched in May 2023 and its first cohort consisted of eleven CEOs of influential Jewish institutions, who are committed to the Jewish value and responsibility of equity within our community. The idea for this project emerged in Montgomery, Alabama during one of Elevate’s in-person convenings in early 2024. To learn more about Elevate and the program’s co-founders and leaders, Gamal J. Palmer and Catherine Bell, click here.

Moving Through the Wilderness is presented in partnership with the Forward, the leading voice in Jewish journalism. Read more essays in the collection.

The post Our Jewish Three-Part Package appeared first on The Forward.

In June 2022, one month after JPro22 in partnership with Jewish Federations, Gamal Palmer and Stacey Aviva Flint wrote about Jewish Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) at the Jewish nonprofit sector’s flagship conference: 

“Something dramatic happened in Cleveland last month… As Jewish people of color, we saw reflections of ourselves throughout the conference from the co-chairs, speakers, and workshop presenters. That was particularly noticeable in the demographics of the 1,200 attendees, which mirrored the diverse demographics of the Jewish community, likely for the very first time at a major, national Jewish event.”

Fast-forward to 2024 and JPro’s convening in Cleveland feels like a lifetime ago. In the wake of October 7th, the climate for JEDI work is increasingly fraught with challenges. Jewish communal professionals are feeling unprecedented levels of stress and vulnerability as they navigate a landscape that is heavy with fear, loss, and uncertainty. Still, I know we must deepen and expand our work for equity to foster cultures of belonging in Jewish spaces — even when it feels messy and hard. The lessons we learned in 2022 still feel deeply relevant today. 

Go slow and be specific: Even after two years of organizational learning and work on JEDI, with many experts (notably, Imani Chapman, our DEI consultant), we had to build new processes and systems. This included determining how to collect and use participant data. We sweated the small stuff.

Everyone is accountable: We designated one person as our JEDI lead. Their role was to ensure that each member of the team understood how every element of their work was essential to our equity and belonging commitments.

Expect mistakes: During the planning process, the JEDI experts on our team identified errors and missed opportunities. We had to undo decisions and design workarounds, which was challenging and time-consuming. For example, the schedule was fixed before we considered affinity groups. Adding them late meant that the meeting time was not ideal. We did extra work to mitigate the challenge. Happily, after we introduced affinity groups, a registrant suggested an affinity group for non-Jewish participants, a segment of our audience for which we hadn’t yet designed. This evolved into JPro’s first virtual affinity group and led us to launch several others. 

As we plan for JPro25 in partnership with Jewish Federations, happening in Baltimore from May 5-7, 2025, we will begin with the understanding that there is still and will always be much more to learn. More than ever, all Jewish communal professionals deserve to feel seen, safe, respected, and loved. When we commit to equity with rigor and discipline, I know we will get there.

“Moving Through the Wilderness: Recommitting to Equity After 10/7” is a collection of brief essays born out of Elevate: An Executive Leadership Equity Accelerator. Elevate launched in May 2023 and its first cohort consisted of eleven CEOs of influential Jewish institutions, who are committed to the Jewish value and responsibility of equity within our community. The idea for this project emerged in Montgomery, Alabama during one of Elevate’s in-person convenings in early 2024. To learn more about Elevate and the program’s co-founders and leaders, Gamal J. Palmer and Catherine Bell, click here.

Moving Through the Wilderness is presented in partnership with the Forward, the leading voice in Jewish journalism. Read more essays in the collection.

The post Equity by Design, Behind-the-Scenes appeared first on The Forward.

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