JIMENA and its Fight for Inclusion

When the international community ignores anti-Semitism, it is sadly not surprising. In fact, it is all too often the status quo. But it is certainly unusual when the welfare of marginalized Jewish people flies below the radar of the Jewish community. Yet that is exactly what has happened to thousands of Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews the world over.

JIMENA (Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa) is doing everything it can to change that. Created shortly after September 11, 2001, by a group of former Jewish refugees from North Africa and the Middle East, JIMENA’s mission is to share their stories of religious oppression, displacement, and dispossession, and to advocate not just for their human rights, but for historical truth. It has not been easy, as ignorance and disinformation abound.

The numbers are as surprising as they are staggering

Nearly one million Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews have been displaced from their countries of origin. In 1948, the combined Jewish population of Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Morocco and Tunisia was 720,000. Today, there are just over one thousand. And, as of 2005, there were virtually no Jews left in Algeria, Yemen, and Libya. And a whopping 50 left in Lebanon.

And, yet, a revival of Mizrahi and Sephardic culture is blossoming both in Israel and in the United States. And no one is as pleased about that fact as JIMENA’S executive director, Sarah Levin.

“There are a lot of people in my generation and younger – people in their early 30s and 40s – who are taking their grandparents’ culture and reviving it,” said Levin from her San Francisco office. “What is great about that is that there is a shift going on. In our parents’ generation, they just wanted to become Israeli, to assimilate and be part of the mainstream – which, unfortunately, meant kind of purging their Mizrahi identity in a lot of ways. But now there’s this real revival and a reclaiming of our heritage and a recognition of how important this is in the Israeli public education system.”

That revival and movement for Sephardi and Mizrahi inclusion has led to a new public school curriculum in Israel that mandates the teaching of Mizrahi and Sephardi heritage and history. Furthermore, that Israeli education legislation, for which JIMENA strongly lobbied, has served as an inspiration behind JIMENA’s own education initiative in the United States. This has been an inspired effort that caught the Federation’s increased attention.

“The Federation has been a huge supporter of ours throughout the years,” said Levin. “But their support of this program on education has been absolutely instrumental for the work we are doing locally.” The support she is referring to is a $90,000 three-year grant intended to serve as seed funding for JIMENA’s “experiential curriculum” focusing on Sephardi and Mizrahi culture and history, to be implemented in local day schools and other educational programs in the United States.

The plan is bold and ambitious and the staff at JIMENA knows it won’t be easy to implement. “The truth is that most Jewish day schools’ teaching in this area is kind of spotty at best. Many of the teachers are not equipped or given the resources to teach on the subject of Mizrahi and Sephardi culture and history. It’s not their fault; they just didn’t have the tools…until now.”

According to Levin, the JIMENA education initiative has two main components: one part includes working directly with the schools, finding the administrators and educators who are interested in bringing the curriculum into their classrooms, and the second part is dedicated to creating applicable content that can be published and distributed nationally. And it’s already underway.

“Elements of it have already been piloted at the Jewish Community High School of the Bay, and the hope is to expand it to seven Jewish day schools in the Bay Area and then beyond that to the entire West Coast, and then nationally. It’s a great program and I think that, with the support of the Federation, it has the potential to serve as a national model. It’s incredibly exciting… we just need to get more funding.”

When asked about the biggest challenges JIMENA faces, Levin shared the obvious need for more funding for their vital work, but also revealed that the hardest part is “getting people to understand that this is relevant, it is important, and needs to be integrated into their Jewish worldview, especially on college campuses. Teaching the story and making people really care and connect to this – that’s what we are about.”

To learn more about JIMENA, or to attend one of their dozens of Bay Area events, check them out online at jimena.org.

The Federation’s grant to JIMENA is part of more than $1.1M in new endowment fund grants to outstanding community partners actively engaged in building and deepening Jewish community.

A total of $90,000 over a three period will help provide seed funding for JIMENA’s Experiential Learning Program, which will create an experiential curriculum on multi-cultural Jewish heritage (with a focus on Sephardi and Mizrahi culture and legacy), to be incorporated into local day schools and other educational programs.