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.
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.
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.
Linda C. Jum is a Jew of Chinese-American heritage. She most recently
served as the Director of the Jewish Multiracial Network, guiding its
formal development from a volunteer grass-roots network to a
professionally-staffed national organization. She works as an
independent Jewish family educator and consultant to non-profit
organizations across the country, and she serves on the boards of
numerous Jewish community organizations - including the Jewish
Educational Association of MetroWest, Bat Kol: A Feminist
House of Study, and the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation. As an
advocate for social change, Jum develops and facilitates workshops and
curricula exploring Jewish identity, with a specific interest in
addressing the needs of marginalized and underserved communities. In
addition to serving as the Regional Outreach Director for the JMCP,
she is on the JMCP Advisory Board.
Shahanna McKinney is an African-American Jew of Ashkenazi and Sephardi
heritage. She holds a Masters Degree in Social Justice Education from
the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. She is the High School
Program Director at the Milwaukee Jewish Federation, and she works
full-time as an English teacher at a public high school in the city.
In addition, she is the Chair of the Beyond Racism committee of the
Inter-faith Conference of Greater Milwaukee. McKinney also works
nationally as an organizational consultant, facilitating programs that
explore Jewish multiculturalism and social justice in education. She
recently curated a museum exhibit on Jews of African heritages,
through America's Black Holocaust Museum, and she served on the
editorial board of the 2001 "Jewish Women of Color" issue of
Bridges: Journal for Jewish Feminists. In addition
to serving on the JMCP Advisory Board, she is also the organization's Regional Outreach Director for the Midwest.
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.
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
multiculturalsm 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.
©2002 by the Jewish
Multicultural Curriculum Project.
All rights reserved. No portion of
this article may be copied without the permission of the Project
Director.
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.
