Ten Jewish nonprofits were awarded a combined $300,000 in grant funding this month from the Jews of Color Initiative, a nonprofit based in Berkeley.
The grants are oriented toward combating antisemitism “through a JoC lens,” the Bay Area-based organization announced in a July 7 press release.
“In our current moment of rising antisemitism and deepening polarization, innovative and community-strengthening responses are more essential than ever,” CEO and founder Ilana Kaufman said in a statement.
The grant recipients include the Lunar Collective, a national nonprofit with regional programs, including in the Bay Area, for Asian Jewish community connection and storytelling. The Lunar Collective launched in 2020 as a documentary film series with seed funding from the Jews of Color Initiative.
The grant will support the training of Lunar fellows to identify and address antisemitism, as well as programming to support regional workshops that build bridges among Asian, Jewish and Asian Jewish communities, JoCI announced.
The Braid, a Los Angeles-based Jewish theater company that has performed at Bay Area synagogues and theaters, is another grantee. The funds will allow the Braid to produce “Taste of Resilience,” recipe and storytelling videos with a focus on meaningful conversations around the Shabbat dinner table, accompanied by a nationally distributed Shabbat dinner discussion guide. The conversation topics will explore Jewish lived experiences of bias.
Exploring Judaism through a Latin Jewish lens, the nonprofit Jewtina y Co. is using the funding to develop programs and a multilingual resource guide to explore the history of antisemitism in Latin culture and equip Latin and Jewish communities in Los Angeles and New York with tools to recognize and address it.
The Crown Heights Birth Justice Project, another grantee, aims to address antisemitism and racial bias through the lens of Black Jewish identity.
The batch of grants will also support a program to combat antisemitism at Yale University, which is under federal investigation by the U.S. Department of Education over allegations of widespread campus antisemitism. A JoCI grant will support developing a prototype educational curriculum designed to address antisemitism on college and university campuses.
Additional grant recipients include Tzedek America, Shalom Curriculum Project, Moving Traditions, Mitsui Collective and Correlate JOC.
All grantee leaders will meet quarterly as a cohort for one year, facilitated by the JoCI.
“These projects demonstrate how Jews of Color are not only reshaping the conversation around antisemitism, but also leading the way in building stronger, more connected, and more just communities for all,” Kaufman said.