The Participants

ADVISORY BOARD

Zaid Ali is a Mizrahi Jew who grew up in Fiji, with grandparents from Afghanistan and India. He is a co-founder and listserve moderator of Mizrahi Shabbat, a Bay Area MultiCultural Jewish community promoting Mizrahi heritage. Ali plays percussion from North Africa and the Middle East and is a student of San Francisco's acclaimed percussionist Mary Ellen Donald. Ali is a computer engineer by profession, specializing in network design and computer security. He is currently Vice President of Engineering with D-Fensive Networks. In his spare tim, Ali researches the community of Jews who were forcibly converted to Islam in Afghanistan.

Katya Gibel Azoulay Katya Gibel Azoulay was born in New York and moved to Israel as a young adult. She holds dual citizenship and returned to the U.S. to pursue a doctorate in 1991. Her mother was a Jewish refugee from Nazi Austria, and her father immigrated from Jamaica to the U.S. Gibel Azoulay's three children have diverse lineage - Ashkenazi, Carribean, and Mizrahi. Gibel Azoulay is a Professor of Anthropology at Grinnell College, in Grinnell, Iowa. She is the author of Black, Jewish and Interracial: It's Not the Color of Your Skin but the Race of Your Kin, and Other Myths of Identity (Duke University Press, 1997). In additon, her articles have been published in various journals including Cultural Studies, Identities, Research in African Literatures, Jerusalem Post, New Outlook, Noga, and the 2001 "Jewish Women of Color" issue of Bridges: Journal for Jewish Feminists.

Alamu Baleta was born and raised in Ethiopia and immigrated to Israel a decade ago. He is the founder and director of Tesa ("Hope"), an activist group for Ethiopian youth in Ahdod, Israel. Tesa teens sponsor peer education programs on the history, culture, and religious traditions of Ethiopian Jews. Through workshops, conferences, and direct activism, Tesa teens also work to raise consciousness about and fight discrimination facing Ethiopians in Israel - such as segregation in Israeli school systems. In addition, they work to support Ethiopian youth at risk, offering peer support for teens struggling with drug problems and discipline issues in school. Baleta plans to expand Tesa to Ethiopian communities throughout Israel. Meanwhile, Baleta also serves as the Programs Coordinator for Matnas Bet Livron, where he works with Ethiopian adults in navigating through professional and educational systems in Israel.

Andree Aelion Brooks is the Project Director of Out of Spain , the first curriculum published about Jews of Spanish-Portuguese heritage. Brooks, a Sephardic Jew, is a journalist, author, teacher, and lecturer. She is a former contributing columnist and feature writer for The New York Times, author of the award-winning book, Children of Fast-Track Parents (Viking, 1989), and an Associate Fellow of Yale University. Brooks regularly writes and lectures to community groups about Jewish history. She is currently working on a biography of Dona Gracia Nasi, the 16th century Jewish woman banker and converso leader. In the spring of 2001, Brooks was honored with a special award by the Consulate General of Israel and the American Sephardi Federation, for her work in Jewish history.

Jen Chau is a Chinese-American Jew of Ashkenazi heritage. She works as a full-time art teacher for children with special needs, while pursuing her Masters in Special Education. She is the founder and Director of Swirl Inc., a non-profit organization dedicated to serving as a support, social, and educational network for trans-racial adoptees, inter-racial couples, mixed race adults, and mixed race families. As part of her efforts to unite the different mixed race communities of New York, Chau served as the Outreach and Planning Assistant for the Jewish Multiracial Network last year, and she now serves as one of their Steering Committee members.

Nadav Davis is an African American Jew of Cuban Sephardic heritage. He conducts independent research on the history of Judaism in the African American community, and seeks to strengthen and organize its members. He has led discussions on racism and classism at the Washington Heights Neighborhood Coalition, and has taught bilingual education in the Bronx. Nadav has also worked as a volunteer with the North American Conference on Ethiopian Jewry, Sephardic House, and the Yemenite Jewish Federation of America. He is currently working to start havurot (learning groups) for Jews of Color around New York City, to study Torah and Talmud, as well as to promote Sephardic heritage.

Marjan Keypour Greenblatt was born and raised in Tehran, where she experienced the tumultuous events of the Islamic Revolution and the subsequent Iran-Iraq war. As the increasing pressures of Islamic regime afflicted Jewish life, Greenblatt fled Iran and lived with relatives in France, until she was reunited with her immediate family in the U.S. in 1988. Greenblatt received a Masters of Education from Harvard University, with a specialization in Administration, Planning, and Social Policy. Today, she serves as the Associate Director of the Anti-Defamation League, working with community leaders and activists in promoting civil rights and human relations and responding to cases of discrimination, hate-crimes and extremism.

Galia Hacco was born and raised in Cochin, India, before moving to Israel as a teenager in 1954. For the past 20 years, Hacco has done extensive research on the Jewish community of Cochin. As part of her research, she re-discovered the song and prayer tradition exclusive to women from the community. This tradition which was nearly lost after the community's immigration to Israel but is coming back to life through Hacco's organization, the Nirit Hacco Project: Revival of Cochin Jewish Women's Songs. Through this group, Hacco works with Cochin-Israeli women on collecting, learning, and recording the songs and prayers of their ancestors' musical heritage of two thousand years. Song and prayer further serve as an activist vehicle, raising consicousness about the dire need to preserve the Cochin Jewish heritage before it is lost. Hacco is a recognized expert on the Cochin Jewish community and travels throughout Israel and India to lecture on the subject. Hacco worked as a social worker for two decades and is now pursuing a Masters in Jewish and WomenÍs Studies, at the Schechter Institute forJewish Studies in Jerusalem.

Julie Iny

Julie Iny is an Iraqi-Indian and Russian-American Jew. She is the Advocacy Director of Kids First, a multiracial organization of youth and adults organizing to transform government systems that serve youth. She co-founded A Jewish Voice for Peace, a grassroots organization in the San Francisco Bay Area promoting co-existence and a just peace for the Israelis and Palestinians. She is a active member of Jewcy, a network of young Jewish social activists working to merge intensive community work with a nourishing and sacred Jewish practice. Through this organization, she promotes Jewish MultiCultural education and diverse ethnic representation, working to manifest a fully inclusive Jewish community. Iny also is a board member of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival.

Yavilah McCoy

Yavilah McCoy is a an African-American Jew of Sephardi heritage. She is a diversity consultant, teacher, writer, and editor. She holds a degree in English Education and Judaic Studies from the University at Albany and has taught Judaic Studies, Hebrew Language and English Literature for the past six years. McCoy develops books for Harcourt Publishing and provides consulting services for Diversity and Anti-Bias Education through her company, Diversity Unlimited Inc. She has written Black-Jewish diversity programming for the State University of New York's Enrich a Child's Life program and for the St. Louis Jewish Community Relations Council's Black-Jewish Dialogue Group. In addition, she is a trained A World of Difference facilitator and board member for the St. Louis Anti-Defamation League. Most recently, McCoy launched an internet resource center for Orthodox Jews of Color, Ayecha.

Mojgan Moghadam-Rahbar is an Iranian Jew of Mizrahi heritage. She is a freelance writer and translator of Iranian and American media, producer and host of Radio Voice of Iran (where she hosted a segment about the JMCP), and the former editor-in-chief of Peyman magazine for young Iranian Jews in Los Angeles. She also is a published author, with articles appearing in publications including Chanteh: The Iranian Cross Cultural Quarterly. In addition, she is the mother of two children.

Tamu Ngina is an American Jew of African descent and Mizrahi/Maghribi heritage. She is the founder of AfrAmJews, a listserve for Jews of African & Asian descent, and she is the Vice-President of the gift boutique for Kulanu , an organization dedicated to finding and assisting lost and dispersed remnants of the Jewish people across the globe. Ngina also is a visual artist, specializing in Judaica and cubist/pop/abstract art. Her artwork can be viewed by clicking here . In addition, Ngina is a mother of three children.

Samuel Thomas is a Moroccan-American Jew of Sephardi heritage and the founder of Jewish Awareness Through Music . He is an active professional musician in the greater Northeastern United States. A saxophonist, clarinetist, percussionist, and composer, Thomas performs a varying repertiore of music including Jazz, Classical, Funk, Hip-hop, and world Jewish music. Thomas holds two Bachelor's of Music degrees in Composition and Performance from Berklee College of Music, and he has studied in various Yeshivot. Thomas has extensive teaching experience and has been appointed as a representative of Birthright Israel to meet with a host of MKs in the Israeli Knesset.

Yolanda Thomas is an African-American Jew and the Outreach and Planning Coordinator at the Jewish Multiracial Network, where she has worked since 2001. To blend her two passions of Jewish MultiCulturalism and visual arts, she is founding a new organization, Member of the Tribe. The mission of this group is to use arts and culture to create dialogue and promote an inclusive Jewish community. Thomas also serves on committees of several Jewish community organizations in New York, including the Arts and Culture committee at the Jewish Community Center of Manhattan and the Emanu-El League at Temple Emanu-El.

Rachel Wahba was born in India and raised in Japan, as the daughter of Jewish refugees from Egypt and Iraq. She is a private-practice psychotherapist, a psychoanalytic self-psychology instructor for women therapists, and a published author. Her essays include "Some of Us Are Arabic," in Nice Jewish Girls: A Lesbian Anthology (Persephone Press, 1982) and "Hiding is Unhealthy for the Soul," in Twice Blessed: Being Lesbian/Gay and Jewish (Beacon Press, 1982). She currently is finishing her memoir on being an Arab Jew in America.

Laura Wetzler is an American Jew of Ashkenazi heritage. She is an ASCAP Award-winning singer-songwriter who tours in over 150 concerts and lectures each year, singing critically-acclaimed World Jewish Roots Music in Hebrew, Ladino, and Yiddish. Wetzler's concerts include a duo show with gospel singer Janiece Thompson called "Jewels of the Diaspora-A Concert Celebration of African-American and Jewish Song." Wetzler began singing professionally at age 15, singing and teaching Jewish music from Africa, the Middle East, the Americas, and Europe. She studied at the HB Studio in New York and became a protege of Joe Elias, a master of Ladino folk song.