Good Thursday morning!

One of the most time-tested ways Jews have identified each other is by looking for mezuzot on each other’s doorposts. But that tactic won’t work at Indiana University Bloomington, where hundreds of new, red mezuzot — without the traditional parchment scroll — have been affixed by non-Jews to the doorways of dorms, sorority houses and university buildings.

The empty mezuzot are a gesture of solidarity following a series of antisemitic incidents on and around the campus, which has some 4,500 Jews. Distributed by the school’s Hillel to non-Jewish students, they are emblazoned with the message, “I stand with my Jewish friends.” Hillel is also giving Jewish students kosher mezuzot with parchment.

So far, the entire first shipment of 500 solidarity mezuzot has been distributed, and orders are already out for 150 more from the second shipment, which arrived this week. “The silver lining has been the support, and it’s mobilized students to learn how to fight antisemitism, and [encouraged] non-Jewish students to support their Jewish peers,” Rabbi Sue Laikin Silberberg, the Hillel’s executive director, told eJewishPhilanthropy.

During the fall semester, at least a dozen mezuzot were torn off doorposts on campus, prompting the initiative. Later, buildings in Bloomington were defaced with swastikas and a Black Jewish student was targeted with racist and antisemitic slurs. Recently, an online forum for the school’s fraternities and sororities saw multiple antisemitic posts, prompting a letter from IU Provost Rahul Shrivastav calling them “cowardly, horrific, and simply unacceptable.”

Hillel has also formed a task force of more than 30 students — including non-Jews — to combat antisemitism. They’re bringing a reformed white supremacist to speak on campus, promoting the mezuzah intiative and running other educational programs.

“I think it is incredible that we’ve found allies who are not Jewish who want to learn and be supportive, and want to help,” freshman Kaylee Werner, the task force’s chair, who grew up in Pittsburgh and whose family used to belong to Tree of Life Congregation, the synagogue that was attacked in 2018, told eJP. “We are a minority, so fighting this fight alone gets pretty challenging.”

Senior Mary Grace Wolfa, a non-Jewish member of the task force, said that joining the effort has allowed her to become “more exposed to Jewish culture, Jewish belief and actually understanding what it means to be Jewish instead of, just, different ideas that are passed around society that may be wrong.” She’s planning to put up a solidarity mezuzah this year.

Werner said she’s surprised by how many students don’t know about the spate of local antisemitism, but said once they learn of it, convincing them to put up the solidarity mezuzot is not a heavy lift. “All I’ve got to do is tell them what a mezuzah is and how many have been torn down,” she said. “For most people, once they know it’s happening, they want to step in and do something.”

BUILDING BRIDGES

Jewtina y Co. aims to create a communal space Jewish-Latino identity in the U.S.

Isabell de la Cruz

Analucia Lopezrevoredo, who identifies as a “Peruvian-Chilean-Quechua (Indigenous)-American Sephardi Jewtina” and who grew up in Orange County, Calif., has found that the Jewish professional world is not always a welcoming place for those with complicated identities. So in 2019 she founded Jewtina y Co. — a nonprofit devoted to eliminating gender-, racial-, or ethnic-based tokenism, and encouraging the larger Jewish community to include what she calls “la familia Jewtina” — in other words, anyone who holds both ‘Latin’ and ‘Jewish’ as parts of their identity. The organization was named one of Slingshot’s “10 to Watch” this year.

Holding identities together: “Oftentimes, in Jewish spaces, I haven’t really led with these other ethnic identities because I felt that they dilute my Jewishness,” Lopezrevoredo told eJewishPhilanthropy’s Esther D. Kustanowitz. “So it’s become very important for me to stand proudly in my different ethnic identities that don’t null[ify] my Jewish identity, but rather complement it and really make it what it is…[to] be able to hold all of these pieces together.”

Navigating diversity and Latinidad: More than 80% of the Jewish community in Latin America is culturally Ashkenazi, she said, while about 20% of Latino Jews have roots in the Middle East and mostly come from Syria. “Our community is so diverse; no two Latin Jews are alike,” said Lopezrevoredo.

Honoring intersecting identities: Jon Cohen, a participant in Jewtina y Co.’s recent Puentes Leadership and Resiliency Fellowship, is half Sephardi and half Ashkenazi. “Growing up with a white dad and a Mexican mom, I experienced a bunch of different ways people react to you based on what they think you are,” said Cohen, the national director of community mobilization for the Jewish LGBTQ+ organization Keshet. During an identity exploration exercise at the retreat, another participant self-identified by writing “queer Jewish Mexican” on the wall. “For the first time ever, I was like, ‘Wow, I could have written that, and so could three other people here,’” Cohen said. “I’ve never been in a space where so many intersecting parts of my identity were all present and honored at once.”

Read the full story here.

CRISIS MODE

Who will teach our children and grandchildren?

Courtesy

“The crisis that we knew was coming is here. Jewish day schools, early childhood centers and part-time congregational schools across the country face a shortage of educators to fill multiple openings for lead teachers, assistants and substitutes. This is no longer simply a ‘challenge.’ Rather, it is a crisis because of continuing trends in the overall job market, exacerbated by the pandemic,” write 15 members of the Association of Directors of Communal Agencies for Jewish Education from around the country, in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy.

Dwindling applicant pool: “In day schools, the teacher shortage is felt deeply in the challenge of finding Jewish studies and Hebrew language teachers. In early childhood programs, where Jewish engagement and connection for families are established, the shortage of teachers is compounded by the low wages typically paid to those in this field. Congregational schools face the same challenges as day schools in finding Jewish studies and Hebrew language teachers, and schools often are left with enthusiastic but untrained members of the community as teachers.”

Unanswered questions: “What can we do to find solutions to this crisis? How might we as a Jewish community work together to ensure that there will be well-trained and inspiring teachers to teach our children and grandchildren?”

Read the full piece here.

POWER OF LANGUAGE

How Holocaust education can change communities

USHMM, courtesy of Jüdisches Museum der Stadt Frankfurt

“Last July a Duxbury, Mass., football player reflected on his visit to the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., earlier that day. What struck him most was the phrase ‘Know Before Whom You Stand,’ which had been scraped off a destroyed ark in a synagogue during Kristallnacht. ‘The Nazis actually took the time to find a tool, and to scratch off those holy words,’ he shared,” writes Sarah Ovadia, director of development at the Lappin Foundation, in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy.

Game-day calls: “The revelations in spring 2021 that the Duxbury varsity football team had been using Jewish and Holocaust terms including ‘rabbi,’ ‘Hanukkah,’ ‘dreidel,’ ‘yarmulke’ and most notably, ‘Auschwitz,’ as audible play calls shocked many in the community.”

Normalization of antisemitism: “The use of these terms over the course of a decade reveals a tolerance for antisemitism that is all too common. As communities like the Duxbury football team grow accustomed to casual disrespect and dehumanization of Jewish people, antisemitism proliferates. Normalization of antisemitism creates fertile ground for graffiti, slurs and violence against Jews. Antisemitism is like a virus: it never fully goes away. It strikes with varying consequences, it catches communities by surprise, and it is pervasive.”

Ignorance rather than hatred: “Some argue that actions like those of the Duxbury football team’s play calls don’t matter because they come from ignorance rather than hatred – but this very ignorance leads to an environment of tolerance for increasing hatred.”

Read the full piece here.

Worthy Reads

Scott’s Support: In a post on Medium, philanthropist MacKenzie Scott shared a list of 465 nonprofits that had received gifts — for an overall total of $3.8 billion — from her donor-advised fund, toward her 2019 promise to give away her fortune in support of underrepresented groups and individuals. “We don’t advocate for particular policies or reforms. Instead, we seek a portfolio of organizations that supports the ability of all people to participate in solutions. This means a focus on the needs of those whose voices have been underrepresented. It also means including others within the system who want to help improve it, harnessing insights and engagement from every role.… I don’t know the best outcome of each debate, but there’s heartening evidence that supporting the capacity of all people to be heard leads to better outcomes for all.” [Medium]

Better Representing Orthodoxy: Allison Josephs, the founder of the “Jew in the City” blog, has launched a “Hollywood bureau” to advocate for more accurate Jewish representation on screen, Sasha Urban writes in Variety: “Currently, the bureau is still in its early stages, with no official Hollywood office or full-time staff yet. Josephs said JITC is currently in the process of organizing an official academic study to track Jewish representation, meeting with network executives at NBC and CBS, and has plans to form writers labs and establish a network of creatives who will further the cause […] Allison said she has found solidarity among the other existing minority bureaus, which have helped her build a framework for JITC’s current efforts. Her goals for the new bureau are vast, and she hopes it will allow JITC to address more nuanced issues, like problematic depictions that come from within her own community and the absence of representation for Jews of color, in addition to being an educational resource for networks and studios.” [Variety]

Pic of the Day

Combat Antisemitism Movement

A new street mural in Greece honors the late Zakynthos Mayor Lucas Carrer and Greek Orthodox Metropolitan Dimitrios Chrysostomos, two non-Jewish Greek citizens recognized by Yad Vashem as “Righteous Among the Nations.” The two men protected Jewish residents on the Greek island of Zakynthos after the Nazis occupied the territory in 1943. The project was an initiative of Artists 4 Israel in partnership with the Combat Antisemitism Movement and was painted by Kleomenis Kostopoulos, creative director of Art in Progress, a group based in the Greek city of Patras.