| ADDRESSING THE ISSUES: |
| THE JEWISH MULTICULTURAL PROJECT |
| from Jewish Education News, 2003 |
Up through 1990, American Jewish agencies, community centers, schools, synagogues, and media were based quite exclusively on the Jewish experience from Central and Eastern Europe. Entrenchment in this Ashkenazi narrative resulted in ignorance of and devaluation for anything outside its scope, and as a result, attempts to diversify community representation usually were met with resistance and hostility. In response, non-white and non-Ashkenazi Jews were divided into two camps: those who assimilated into an Ashkenazi reality and those who became part of separate, even separatist, organizations. Almost all chose the former. My family was among the latter. My parents often wondered if they made the right choice raising my sister and me well-versed in our Iraqi heritage. Aware of our difference, we grew up feeling alienated from other Jewish children. In addition, we frequently were the target of ridicule and racist remarks, based on the way we celebrated holidays, spoke Hebrew, chanted prayers, and so on. I kept reassuring my parents that the problem was not in their teaching our traditions; rather, the problem was in the community’s resistance to incorporating them. Not yet four feet high, I already was plotting a Jewish multicultural revolution. As a junior at Columbia University in 1990, I started Student Organization for Jews from Iran and Arab Countries (SOJIAC) Although contemporary terminology lumped all such Jews together as “Sephardim,” I consciously avoided use of that word. My goal was to present a new vision for the words “Jew” and “Jewish,” one that would bring to mind the rainbow of our people’s faces and experiences. The tendency to call “Sephardic” anything that was not Ashkenazi, I felt, perpetuated the notion that African, Middle Eastern, Latin American, Mediterranean, and Central and East Asian Jewish heritage was “other” -- implicitly a less valid, less important part of the Jewish experience. My intuitive sense was that community transformation needed to begin through a shift in language. Presenting programs as being about “Jews from X” had a measurable impact. Back then Ashkenazim rarely, if ever, showed up at anything “Sephardic.” At SOJIAC programs, however, Jewish students of all backgrounds participated -- both at Columbia University and throughout the greater Los Angeles region, where I expanded the organization upon graduating. Though I was pleased with this step in the right direction, I still felt frustrated by the habit of Ashkenazim to speak in terms of “you” (meaning non-Ashkenazim) and “us” (meaning Ashkenazim and implicitly meaning “Jews”). How, I wondered, could I convey the message that all Jews are “us”? The question became my obsession. In 1993, I was asked to speak at the Women’s Division of the Jewish Community Federation in Los Angeles. My presentation happened to fall between Purim and Passover, and I was eager to incorporate a message from the holiday into my presentation. Suddenly I was struck by an idea of how to solve the problem that had been keeping me up at nights. “What holiday did we just celebrate?” I asked the women gathered before me. “Purim,” they answered. “Where did Purim take place?” I continued. “Persia,” they replied. “Where is Persia today?” I pressed. “Iran,” they answered. “How many people here know how Iranian Jews celebrate Purim?” Nobody raised a hand. I presented the same dilemma with Passover: Passover took place in Egypt, but how many of the women knew the Egyptian traditions for celebrating Passover? Without my offering commentary, heads started nodding in comprehension. “As we go story by story through the history and heritage of the Jewish people,” I elaborated, “we find that Judaism is rooted deeply in the Middle East and North Africa: Abraham and Sarah, Moses and Miriam, the Talmud, the first yeshivas, and the Hebrew language all come from the Middle East. Purim tells the story about Iranian Jews, Passover tells the story about Egyptian Jews, and so on. So whether your family is from Poland, Germany, Morocco, Yemen, or wherever, the Middle Eastern and North African Jewish heritage is a part of your Jewish heritage. But how much do you know about this part of your Jewish identity?” When I finished my presentation twenty minutes later, a woman raised her hand. With deep concern in her voice, she asked, “How do we solve this problem?” I had discovered the magic words to shift community consciousness, and I was elated. She said “we”! From then on, I incorporated the same introduction into all my workshops. Participants responded enthusiastically, often remarking they never had connected the obvious dots before. “We teach about Egypt and Persia like they were some mythological faraway places,” one Hebrew teacher commented. “But you’re right, they are concrete places where Jews lived until recently.” During this period where I fine-tuned my approach to reaching the minds and hearts of the Jewish mainstream, “multiculturalism” was all the rage. The Jewish community was actively involved in multicultural work, and Jewish leaders and activists were at the forefront of the multicultural movement. Somehow, however, these same individuals remained clueless about and even resistant to multiculturalism within the Jewish community. As a matter of course, Black Jews were not invited to speak on panels about Black-Jewish relations, and Jews from Arab countries were not invited to participate in Arab-Jewish dialogue. Program facilitators regularly would stretch themselves trying to find common bonds between two given communities, when the natural link was so obvious -- and yet, so absent. Nonetheless recognizing an entry point, I actively rode the multicultural wave, coining the term “Jewish Multiculturalism” and dubbing myself a “Jewish Multicultural Educator.” Initially, Jewish leaders and lay people unfailingly assumed I was teaching Jews (meaning white Ashkenazim) about multiculturalism (meaning non-Jewish people of color). As I continued speaking about and publishing on the subject, however, people came to understand the meaning. The term caught on, and in the mid-1990s, the “Jewish Multicultural” movement was born. As teachers became increasingly interested in Jewish Multiculturalism, they also became increasingly aware of and frustrated by the dirth of Jewish Multicultural resources available to them. I spent time analyzing what exactly was standing in the way of Jewish Multicultural education and developed the following critique: 1. Cycle of ignorance: American Jewish community leaders and educators were a product of their own Jewish education, which de facto was Ashkenazi education. As a result, they were ill-equipped to pass on information about Jewish communities around the world, thus creating a cycle of ignorance. 2. Lack of Accessible Resources: Most books and videos about non-Ashkenazi Jews -- especially those written by non-Ashkenazi Jews -- were not in English. They were in Hebrew, Amharic, Farsi, Arabic, French, and Spanish. Where information was in English, the materials were not easily accessible to the general Jewish community. With rare exceptions, Jewish book stores, libraries, and museums purchased little or no materials about Indian, Brazilian, Tunisian, Ethiopian, or Greek Jews. As such, one already had to be part of these individual communities to know where to find the resources. For a teacher outside of these communities, it was nearly impossible to know where to begin looking -- no matter how enthusiastic she was about teaching Jewish Multiculturalism. 3. Impracticalities: With the advent of the internet, English information about Jews around the world suddenly was available. Typing in “Iranian Jews” or “Turkish Jews,” one would find links to hundreds of sites about each community. While the accessibility of this information was a giant step forward, very few community leaders and educators had the time or energy to sift through hundreds or thousands of pages of information, just to put on a simple program. What’s more, without previous training in Jewish Multiculturalism, community leaders and educators were ill-equipped to decipher accurate and inaccurate information, or to sense which materials were written from a respectful or a patronizing perspective. Without guidance, there was a danger of perpetuating misinformation and stereotypes through using internet resources. It was clear to me that the Jewish community desperately needed a step-by-step, easily accessible Jewish Multicultural curriculum -- one written and edited by Jews of each community represented. In addition, it needed a Jewish Multicultural resource guide linking mainstream Jewish organizations to those of underrepresented communities; and it needed a Jewish Multicultural resource center -- replete with staff offering guidance and a library featuring books, videos, music, photographs, artwork, and Jewish ceremonial objects of international Jewish communities. In 1995, I began speaking and publishing about the need to create these vehicles for promoting Jewish Multicultural education. I also began looking around for an organization to sponsor manifesting my vision, which I came to call the Jewish Multicultural Curriculum Project (JMCP). Over the years, Jewish leaders regularly had informed me that Jewish Multicultural education was irrelevant for their communities. “Everyone here is Ashkenazi,” was the refrain. “Community members don’t know enough about regular Judaism. We’re not ready to add other things,” they said. I was convinced that learning about Jewish diversity from the onset actually would serve to boost interest in Jewish history and heritage, and I was eager to dispel the notion that Mizrahi, Sephardi, and Ethiopian Jewish traditions were an extracurricular activity for Ashkenazim. I scouted out an Ashkenazi-dominated community to launch my project, eager to prove the value of Jewish Multicultural education for Jews of all backgrounds. In the Summer of 1998, I pitched my idea to the director of a local Hebrew school -- part of a synagogue with the population I wanted and the resources I needed. The director was an Ashkenazi woman enthusiastic about teaching multiculturalism in a Jewish context, and she offered me full reign of the fifth grade -- my laboratory for testing out curriculum ideas. By the Fall, the JMCP was on its way. I tailored all my tried-and-true workshops to fifth grade level, combined their content with materials from existing Jewish curricula and general multicultural curricula, and expanded the program from there. I did thousands of hours of research on Jewish Multicultural materials, collecting that which was authentic and discarding that which was exoticizing or patronizing. Friends and community members helped me rewrite information at the level I was teaching it, and I put together a raw curriculum book. I decorated the classroom walls with pictures and artwork of Jews around the world, and I called consulates and embassies to get free posters of countries where Jews lived for centuries -- including Mexico, Egypt, India, Ethiopia, and Turkey. In addition, I posted various geographical maps and timelines around the room -- including those from Mesopotamia and Egypt. The daily visceral message was, “Jews are all colors and come from all places.” At the beginning of the first year, a student pointed to an Ethiopian Jewish wall hanging and asked, “Why are Moses and Miriam black here?” “Good question,” I responded. “Where did Moses and Miriam come from?” I asked, turning to face the class. “Egypt,” students replied. “Where is Egypt?” I continued. One student ran over to a map on the wall. In my classroom, this gesture was encouraged. Once the children figured out Egypt was in Africa, we had a discussion about skin color in Africa and questioned why most Jews assume that Moses and Miriam were white. Throughout the JMCP program, classroom decorations were useful learning tools. In the JMCP’s first two years, eight fifth grade classes went on a year-long journey chronologically following 4,000 years of Jewish migration around the world. We did not do any “Ashkenazim do this, Sephardim do that” type comparisons. Students simply learned about one Jewish people that branched off in different directions at different times. I chose this approach because I felt it would normalize the diversity of the Jewish people, through presenting each community in a matter-of-fact way: First we were here, then we were there. Here we did this, there we did that. Students learned about Jewish history, culture, religious traditions, rabbinical teachings, intelligentsia, and daily life around the world, through methodology including group discussions, independent learning centers, art projects, games, and theatrical presentations. “I don’t understand,” a blonde-haired, blue-eyed student remarked two months into the program. “When we were in Ethiopia...” I barely could concentrate on the rest of my student’s question. She said “we”! Right then, I knew I could pack up my bags and go home; the curriculum already had been a success. Over the next two years, the director was supportive in some ways and destructive in others. Without a peep, for example, she paid for $2,000 worth of books, videos, music recordings, and artwork representing Jewish communities around the world. She put aside time to help me brainstorm on curriculum methodology, and she worked with me on the administrative aspects of JMCP program development. At the same time, she devalued my work in a number of ways, and she
made a number of remarks that inherently undermined the program. For
example, she all but forbade me from focusing on Mizrahi and Ethiopian
Jews the second year, though the curriculum specifically needed fine-tuning
in those areas. “Mizrahi and Ethiopian Jews,” she said,
“just aren’t as important to teach as Ashkenazim and Sephardim.”
She proceeded to inform me that Mizrahi and Ethiopian Jews “didn’t
have as big an impact on the development of Judaism” as the
Ashkenazi and Sephardi communities. In 2002, the JMCP grew into a national, volunteer-run organization, with regional directors in the East Coast and Midwest, and with me serving as organizational director in California. Our leadership represents the faces of Jews around the world -- including Iranian, African American, Spanish-Portuguese, Moroccan, and Chinese-American Jews. Pooling together the work of teachers now on our Staff, Board of Directors, and Advisory Board, the JMCP has tested cutting-edge Jewish Multicultural curricula on students from elementary through high school. In 2003, we expanded the scope of the organization’s agenda and changed our name to the Jewish MultiCultural Project (still JMCP). We now have a formal three-prong approach to increasing awareness and celebration of Jewish Multiculturalism:
The JMCP’s long-term goal is to become a full-time resource center for Jewish educators across the country. Meanwhile, our website provides support for educators seeking quality information about Jews around the world -- replete with background information on each Jewish community (our version of Cliff’s Notes), pictures of Jews around the world, summaries of our curriculum, and links to additional websites with Jewish Multicultural resources. In addition, the JMCP spearheads a coalition of community organizations, including the Museum of Tolerance, Skirball Cultural Center, Anti Defamation League, American Jewish Committee, and synagogues, day schools, and religious schools throughout the country. Coalition organizations have access to our cutting edge curriculum and our exclusive listserve, through which they are able to network with each other in promoting Jewish Multiculturalism. Our coalition has recently grown to include organizations in Israel, such as Almaya Center for Ethiopian Jews, the Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center, and Renanot Center for Jewish Music. JMCP staff is delighted that Jewish Education News has dedicated an issue to the timely topic of Jewish Multiculturalism. We invite Jewish Multiculturalism teachers to visit our website (www.jmcponline.org) and look forward to serving as a growing resource for the American Jewish community. (a shortened version of this article appears in the Spring 2003 issue of Jewish Education News, published by the Coalition for the Advancement of Jewish Education) |
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