JIMENA Awarded Signature Grant from The Covenant Foundation


Thanks to the generous support from The Covenant Foundation, JIMENA is expanding our Journey to the Mizrah Education Program to build the knowledge and abilities of Jewish educators to integrate Sephardic and Mizrahi Studies into their learning spaces and to increase their cultural competencies and responsiveness to diverse Mizrahi, Sephardi, Israeli, and Middle Eastern Jewish students and families. To date our curriculum has been utilized by nearly 600 educators around the world and we look forward to providing further enrichment and support to Jewish day schools, synagogues, and educational organizations. 

 

Written by JIMENA’s 15-member Journey to the Mizrah Educator Council, we will produce a comprehensive Sephardi and Mizrahi Studies Curriculum Guide that includes guidance and best-practices for building culturally responsive schools, recommended educational standards, suggested Sephardic & Mizrahi educational content and materials, and additional resources. As traditional Sephardic pedagogy is grounded in values of inclusivity, adaptability, and acceptance of diverse student and educator needs, this plan will be available for free in digital format.

 

We would like to thank the staff and board of the Covenant Foundation for supporting JIMENA's wonderful team of educators as they build a sustainable guide to help build more inclusive Jewish educational spaces. We also would like to congratulate our good friends at SAMi: Sephardi American Mizrahi Initiative for receiving a Covenant Ignition Grant to create campus hubs for Sephardi and Mizrahi Students on three college campuses. 

JIMENA's Sephardic Leadership Institute welcomes First Cohort of Campus Professionals to Leadership Fellowship

 

We are delighted that with the support of JCRIF: Jewish Community Response and Impact Fund, in February JIMENA will welcome a select cohort of twenty Jewish campus professionals to our Sephardic Leaders Fellowship. The cohort includes professionals from Stand With Us, Hillel International, TAMID Group, Springboard Fellowship, and the Jewish Agency. Fellows serve Jewish college students at campuses throughout the United States including: Tufts University, Brooklyn College, UC Berkeley, University of Illinois, Penn State University, Cornell University, UCLA, and many others. 

 

While previous cohorts of our Sephardic Leaders Fellowship have focused primarily on building community and deep-learning for mid to senior level Jewish communal professional and lay-leaders, JIMENA has redesigned the fellowship for this particular cohort to meet the unique needs of campus professionals. As those serving Jewish students on college campuses are on the front-lines of growing antisemitism in the United States, we look forward to empowering and training these emerging leaders with new knowledge and skills to support them and the students they serve. 

 

Subjects covered will include the history of Jewish refugees from the Middle East and North Africa, defining antisemitism, campus-advocacy 101, the Abraham Accords and a shifting Middle East, Sephardi and Mizrahi holidays and rituals for college students, and more. Sessions will be led by top-tier rabbis, scholars, international activists, and Jewish educators. 

 

If you would like to sponsor a care-package to help welcome individuals in this cohort, please consider contributing today.

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JIMENA's Bibliography of Children's Books

 

Representation of culturally diverse identities in children's books builds self-esteem, knowledge, inspiration, and joy for all readers. We are thrilled that in recent years new books have been published that share Sephardi and Mizrahi centered stories and characters. JIMENA is excited to share our latest bibliography of children's books and we ask you to please let us know if there are additional books to be added to this collection. Happy reading!

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JIMENA's mission is to achieve universal recognition of the heritage, history, and rights of the one million indigenous Jewish refugees from the Middle East and North Africa and their Mizrahi and Sephardi descendants.


January 18, 2023 | 25 Tevet, 5783