An Interview with Ilana Kaufman of the Jews of Color Field Building Initiative
Photo by Aviva Levine
The work of Ilana Kaufman, the founder of the Jews of Color Field Building Initiative has been encouraging and inspiring me so much lately. I can’t remember the first time I heard about Ilana because I have admittedly read every single article about Ilana and her work on the Internet; what she does is very near and dear to my heart.
This year, The Jews of Color Field Building Initiative announced the results of Counting Inconsistencies, “a new report commissioned to answer two simple questions: How many Jews of color are there in the US, and in the coming decades, how many will there be?”
Despite discovering that Jews of color are consistently undercounted, miscounted, or not counted at all by most major Jewish population studies, the report estimates that of the United States’ 7.2 million Jews, at least 1 million are Jews of color. This is very likely an undercount! That’s 12-15%, and even 20% (at least!) in some communities, especially in major cities. This reflects the increasing number of people of color in the greater US population.
Since so many Jewish institutions are predominantly white in America, being the only Jew of Color in the room can be lonely and at times. That’s why I am so grateful for the work that Ilana does, and why I’m so honored to share her wisdom with you today.
With Ilana at the San Francisco release of the 2019 demographic meta-study of Jews of Color, developed for the Jews of Color Field Building Initiative* in partnership with a Stanford University Graduate School of Education team. Photo taken by Angel Alvarez-Mapp.
On growing up in San Francisco…
I grew up in a housing co-op in the Western Addition. It was a super low-income neighborhood and we had very, very modest means, but I didn’t have any idea. I knew I was poor relative to rich people, but it was the Western Addition; where the sun always shines! We had solar in the 1970s. I was part of a Yard Birds crew when I was seven (and still love to garden). My neighbors were amazing: African-American civil rights activists, communist Jews, and people who had been incarcerated in the Japanese American concentration camps. My babysitters were Mr. and Mrs. Imamoto. Alice Walker lived across the way, Tille Olson lived across the way. Every year we had an annual picnic where 300 families came together and had a potluck. Our community was really wonderful— in some ways it was like an urban kibbutz.
In the late 1960’s the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union started the housing co-op we lived in. You had to be in the union to live there. It was a way to give union members a chance at a little, tiny patch of something. The 30-year lease on the co-op ended in the ‘90s. But for 30 years, if you just bought a share, you bought into the co-op, and you could own a three bedroom, two bath (with super thin walls, but the best neighbors). I now know colleagues in the city who own as condos the exact spaces that were our co-op apartments, and they pay 25 times what we did then! It’s a great neighborhood.
On her career in education…
I did my undergrad in Humboldt, California. After college, I pursued education and lived in D.C. for a year, then I came back here and went to Mills for my Masters in Education. I spent 20 years in education as a history teacher and administrator.
When my daughter was younger, I realized I wanted to be home more than I was able to be as an educator. I transitioned to working in the Jewish world, starting at the San Francisco Federation and Endowment as a Program Officer. I had a very traditional portfolio of day schools, synagogues, JCC’s, and small organizations. I had the portfolio from the Golden Gate Bridge to Mendocino County. I am trained as an educator and designer of content knowledge. I’m so glad I still get to teach in my current role. Instead of middle and high school students I get to work with university students, fellows, and Jewish communal leaders.
Eric Greene (UCLA), Angel Alvarez-Mapp (the Initiative’s Programs and Operations manager), Danielle Natelson of UpStart, Leili Davari (Bend the Arc Selah Fellowship Director) and Ilana Kaufman.
On diversity and inclusion in Jewish institutions…
I don’t know why I was surprised, but I was surprised that there wasn’t more racial diversity in the Federation building. Since I live in a multiracial Jewish world in the Bay Area and I knew many non-white Jews and Jewish community professionals, it didn’t make sense to me that they wouldn’t also work at the Federation. It’s an institution that’s supposed to be part of and representative of the community. But our Jewish communal systems were never designed to consider, let alone include, Jewish people of color.
“In the U.S., who we think of as Jews skews intensely Ashkenormative, and we skew intensely nostalgic of the Ashkenazi Jewish story. ”
The context in which we tell our story as U.S. Jews, is one where we came from Europe, and we helped Black people in the South in the Civil Rights Movement. I’m of course being very reductionist about it, but we’ve oversimplified our entire story at the cost of resilience, texture, and our capacity to hold more than one reality at any given time. We’ve missed the fact that we are multiracial.
There’s a cost to what we’ve done as a community. We did it because it’s what we thought we knew. We did it because we are a people who are targeted; it is a way to create insulation around a vulnerable community. We did it because if you’re white in the U.S., despite all one’s best efforts and intentions, it’s like being a teabag being steeped in the water of racism; you can’t escape it. And racism doesn’t just affect white Jews. It affects us all.
On growing up Reform and developing a love for Torah study…
I grew up Reform and when encountering Jews trained in other denominations felt really ill-equipped to do anything technically Jewish. I wasn’t familiar with the Parshot, the structure of Jewish text, and how to make sense of various translations of Jewish text. As a child I went to religious school for what felt like a trillion years and wasn’t skilled beyond chanting basic prayers. As my daughter trained for her Bat Mitzvah at one point I mentioned to the Rabbi that there’s an irony that all this training will result in the ability to project manage, accomplish an enormous task, deepen relationships with Jewish ideas and people, and still won’t equip her to go toe-to-toe with those more traditionally learned.
In 2015, I was starting to feel fatigued sitting on panels to speak about being a Jew of color. I was happy to talk about being a program officer and grant making and interesting Jewish ideas about our multiracial community, but I was done being reduced into just being a Jew of Color. I was part of the planning committee for an event to activate our community leaders around making our Jewish more racially inclusive. We would begin the day with a D’var Torah, so I asked if I could take that on. A white Jewish colleague said to me, “So what, now you’re a rabbi or something?” That quip made me question my capacities and confidence. And I wondered if she said that because I was a Jew of Color. But isn’t giving each Jew access to Torah one of our highest goals as Jews? I asked a friend to coach me for the D’var Torah, and when I got insecure she’d say, “Just go teach, that’s what a rabbi is. That’s what you do. Just go teach your lesson.” I was so nervous in front of all those Rabbis and leaders! It was May, during the Omer. So I tied in that day of the Omer into my comments. When I finished all of the colleagues and rabbis in the room said “yasher koach, yasher koach.” It was awesome.
On her ELI talk…
We had to tie into our talks to Jewish wisdom and text. My first draft referenced a well known quote from Rabbi Tarfon that says “it is not your responsibility to finish the work, but you are not free to desist from it….” My ELI Talks coaches came back to me and said, “With all due respect, you’ve really got to bring it with the Toarh. You’re our first Jew of Color to deliver an ELI Talk, you can’t just use the same old stuff, you’ve got to go back and find Torah that no one will expect of you.”
My first stop was to Afikomen in Berkeley, which my good friends own. Nell, one of the co-owners introduced me to Nehama Leibowitz’s work and pulled Bamidbar off the shelf for me. I started studying and came across this amazing quote from Nachmanides that says the purpose of a census, of counting people, is about God being able to see you, and to reflect back to you your worth. It was just perfect.
“The most important purpose of a census is to impress upon each one of us the value and sterling worth of our soul. The census is not for the census takers. It is for those being counted, so that they know they matter to someone.”
Each person delivering an ELI Talk is given a coach, and they invite a live audience in when it’s your turn to speak. When you’re on deck (you’re literally in a little batters box off from the stage), you watch the person ahead of you. There were all these people who I follow and admire delivering their talks ahead of me, and I started thinking, “What the hell am I doing here?” But I delivered my talk anyway. When I was walking off stage, Rabbi Jessy Dressin from Baltimore looked at me and said, “Damn girl, you know some Torah.” You want to talk about an unforgettable affirmation?!
On studying Torah today…
It is because of Jessy that I have since then made it a point to pursue Torah study. It was a professional development goal for me at the JCRC, as a Schusterman fellow, and in my current role. My professional experiences are enhanced and strengthened by text study. It also is good for me spiritually. Studying text grounds me in my work— I love studying it. I’m also an introvert, so I like to put my head down and get into text (or data!)
On growing into herself…
It took me a long time to grow into myself. In a Jewish context, when you grow up around almost exclusively white Jewish tweenagers/teenagers, there comes a point when you realize nobody shares your experience. It is also an age and stage when there is mocking of other races and identities. People try on various personas that often get expressed as caricatures. It was isolating. Sometimes offensive. When I went on my first trip to Israel at 16 I thought, “At least I won’t be the only Brown person.” But I remember being on the bus when an Israeli guy approached me and said in Hebrew, “Oh you’re Black, you’re like American Black.” He found me curious, compared to the others in my group. Who wants to be seen as a curiosity at 16?
On inclusion, diversity, and representation in Jewish institutions…
There’s a great article by my colleague and friend Mollie Breger, who now works at Camp Tawonga, but used to be the marketing and communications director at the East Bay Federation. The piece is about representation in images. She created some marketing materials with a Brown person in a multiracial family. A colleague chimed in with concern about whether or not the donors would recognize that image as Jewish. Mollie’s piece is a discussion around this essential question of representation, recognition, and what our roles are as leaders in navigating these questions. Mollie asked me to read the piece when I was in the office one day. I though the piece was fantastic! She captured what I already was experiencing in my current work. Not only are multiracial expressions of Jews recognizable to Jews, they are meaningful. Compelling. Reassuring (since so many of us are part of multiracial families). Mollie so beautifully captured this truth in her piece. Not only is it untrue that donors don’t recognize people of color as Jewish, it’s the opposite. It affirms what we know and love.
For institutions including Jews of color in marketing efforts…
Today, at least 20% of families are multiracial. Whether you see them or not, this is the data-driven reality. People have partners at home, kids, kinfolk, cousins who are people of color (and Jewish). It is only the institutions who continue to operate as if we are all white. In San Francisco, we are very much situated in a multiracial context. Our walls that maintain division should be much more porous. Many foundations and big organizations are realizing this and are real partners in this work. Here are two steps we can start with:
The first step is a long-term strategy to train marketing and communications teams to see the multiracial community as it is. Many people on these teams might not see the diversity that’s already there. They don’t know how to look for it, affirm it, or be in the right places, because they are trained in an Ashkenormative, white-presenting Jewish world. The first step is training to see us better. To see us as we really are.
The second step is to go out to the spaces where the multiracial families are and capture real, un-staged images— through the eyes of Jews of Color— and those Jews who are deeply connected to our multiracial Jewish community. Those images enable to building of a photo bank, for example.
And pay people for their time, expertise, consulting, and image if they agree to be a model (if you will). Avoid mining Jews of Color for knowledge, images, and expertise. We all need to be compensated when sharing that about which we are experts. Paying them says no one is doing anyone any favors, which is particularly important for people of color and others for whose labor has been unvalued.
With Rabbi Gershom Sizomu, Chief Rabbi of Uganda.
Why each minyan should include AT LEAST one Jew of color…
When we commissioned Counting Inconsistencies with Stanford University, we did a meta-analysis of Jews of color in the United States, analyzing, among a number of other Jewish demographic studies the Jewish communities, 15 most significant and robust community studies. The data tells us (as an aggregate) that at a minimum, 12-15%, one in seven, a million of our 7.2 million U.S. Jews, are Jewish people of color. This does not include Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews.
“Those same numbers tell us in an aggregate that at a minimum, one in five Jewish families have people of color in them and are multiracial families. That means when we are davening, at least one member of our minyan should be a person of color. ”
We’ve been counting Jews Since Exodus and our first census. A minyan is a bedrock of how we congregate as Jews. Every minyan should be open to whomever is drawn to gather. If our miyanim are not representative of the data, we need to be asking ourselves, “Where are our community members of color, and why don’t they choose to daven in this space?” Perhaps the space is just not welcoming. Or maybe the journey from home to shul is harrowing in some way. Can you imagine being racially profiled on the way to Shul or on the way into Shul?
I used to run a queer women’s Torah study group and sometimes half my group would be women of color. There are real headwinds keeping people out of our community spaces, and sometimes the way we express communal spiritual space can be very unwelcoming. If you invite somebody to come daven with you and they don’t feel welcome, that’s really important information. It’s up to the community to figure out how to be more welcoming.
Bekkah Scharf, Leili Davari, Ilana Kaufman, Tonda Case and Lexi Laban (ED of the JFI)
On JoC Leaders who are inspiring her right now…
Yavilah McCoy from Dimensions, Leili Davari from Bend the Arc, Tonda Case, who’s on the board of Bend the Arc and a project Director for Dimensions, Bekkah Scharf, an educator, and SooJi Min-Maranda, from the Renewal Movement, a rad Asian sister running the Renewal world. Then there’s Rabbi Mira Rivera in New York, who is amazing. Rabbi Sandra Lawson. Rabbi Isaiah Rothstein. My daughter. The list goes on.
On books and literature she recommends…
Read Black Power, Jewish Politics. Also, Nylah Burton does a lot of writing for the major publications and has a very strong voice out there. It gives you a sense of the politics and the pain — she’s doing great work. Hey Alma is great. Watch Shais Rishon’s ELI Talk. Stacey Aviva Flint also did an ELI Talk. Fantastic! Watch Gamal Palmer’s five minute ELI Talk, he’s a senior leadership vice president at the Federation of Los Angeles. Leah Donnella is doing great work in the NPR world. She hosted me for a Code Switch episode, and she was brilliant. We also have to send a shout out to Leah Penniman, who is the head of Soul Fire Farm in New York. She is an eco activist farmer and badass Jew of Color doing amazing things. Her farm is beautiful and I recommend going to see it in person! Wait wait, did I mention chef/historian/James Beard winner Michael Twitty?! His book, The Cooking Gene!!
On meaningful rituals in her life…
Besides going to the gym and meditating, I have the privilege of having a beautiful garden. It’s little bit weird that many of the plants are Biblical like grapes, figs, and pomegranates. I hadn’t really planned it that way. I try not to wear a watch on Shabbat. As a person who runs very fast and hard all day, I can be obsessed with time, so I try to break my obsession with time during Shabbat.
I also always kiss my mezuzah. I don’t know why, but we double kiss in our family. The mezuzah on my doorpost at home is the mezuzah that I brought my Mom back from my trip to Israel when I was 16. It was on our little apartment door in the Western Addition co-op until we left that property. It’s super ugly, but it was my Mom’s. And what’s with all the mezuzah kissing? I am a person of faith, and I believe there’s a power greater than myself, so I’m good with the idea that God is going to watch out for me when I’m out there in the world, because it’s a dangerous, crazy place we live in. When I’m home, I mean, I could trip and fall. Who knows what’s going to happen to me, you know what I’m saying? I’ve got a child to take care of. I might cut myself with my chef’s knife, so who knows. I could slip in the tub, God forbid. I could trip in the middle of the night! I’m totally superstitious so kissing my mezuzah is just a way to seal the deal on the way in and on the way out of the house.
On how we can all engage in the work…
First I would say, in whatever ways feel authentic to you, be involved in Jewish life.
“Show up, engage, participate, ask questions, take up your space. Don’t forget your birthright is Torah, your right is Torah, however you find Jewish, our faith is our right.”
Challenge the people you’re with. If you’re in a minyan and there’s no JoC in the space ask, “Have you read the data? Let’s dialogue about this afterwards.” Do it in a way that’s authentic to you and appropriate for that space.
On the first day of my fellowship, I don’t think they told me I would be the first Jew of Color, or the first person of color, ever, in the space. We had fine educators, leaders, and incredible people giving us incredible knowledge, but I was surprised to not find one single person of color in any resource anywhere. Our world is so much bigger than that. If we’re going to read about leadership, why wouldn’t we be thinking about diverse perspectives on leadership? That’s just pedagogically sound and useful. Why are we operating as if we’re not in a multiracial Jewish world? I politely waited around until everyone had left the room and I asked. They simply hadn’t thought about it in that way before, and that’s where the work began. We need to ask, and if we can, we need to ask in ways that are accessible and thoughtful and collegial, because we are in this together. Then, we have to take risks. If you’re in a leadership role and you have the opportunity to lead from that role, do it. If you’re a c-suite person, put it out there that this is the work you’re doing and bring your colleagues along with you. If you are an influencer, deploy your tool of influence. I have the privilege of working in a philanthropic environment where we have a really important tool, which is financial resources, to deploy and create change; it’s amazing. Deploy your tools out there.
Thank you so much, Ilana for sharing your wisdom with us! Words can’t begin to express how grateful I am for the work that you do in our community. Knowing that you and your work exist gives me so much fuel, inspiration and encouragement to keep going, and to remember that I’m not nearly as alone as it can feel at times.
You can check out the Jews of Color Field Building Initiative’s web site here. Counting Inconsistencies, the study mentioned above can be found here. And send Ilana and her team some love here.
If you enjoyed this interview, check out this post about my adult bat mitzvah, this interview with the Instagram rabbis behind Modern Ritual, or this interview with Rabbi Angela Buchdahl.
Thank you so much, Ilana for sharing your wisdom with us! Words can’t being to express how grateful I am for the work that you do in our community. Knowing that you and your work exist gives me so much fuel, inspiration and encouragement to keep going, and to remember that I’m not nearly as alone as it can feel at times.
If you enjoyed this interview, check out this post about my adult bat mitzvah, this interview with the Instagram rabbis behind Modern Ritual, or this interview with Rabbi Angela Buchdahl.