Our Commitment to Racial Equity

At JUFJ, our commitment to advancing racial equity means cultivating relationships with Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC)-led institutions and together building power through multiracial, multifaith coalitions; broadening understanding and deepening engagement in the Jewish community; and working toward concrete policy changes — all of which will help uproot racist and white supremacist systems and culture across our region. It also means continually educating our staff and community to identify and shift the behaviors in ourselves and our organization that reinforce racism. As with a garden, in order to see the fruits of our labor, we must first plant our seeds and carefully tend to them, knowing that while some may never grow as we hoped, others will sprout and flourish. Like the prophet Hosea, we intend to fill our garden with justice, harvest goodness, and hope that one day righteousness will rain down upon all people.

In our issue and legislative campaigns, we strive to listen to and follow the leadership of Black and Brown people and those communities who are most affected by systems of oppression — and to develop our advocacy agenda in partnership with them. 

Over the last decade, JUFJ and the JUFJ Campaign Fund have received valuable feedback from partners and community leaders when we have fallen short in our commitment to racial equity. This feedback has included:

• JUFJ has taken up too much space in coalition and political spaces.
• JUFJ has focused too much on building its own power and not enough on building the power of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC)-led institutions and BIPOC-centered organizing.
• In public communications, JUFJ and the JUFJ Campaign Fund have perpetuated racist narratives and claimed as ours the work of Black organizers.
• The JUFJ Campaign Fund has done more to support white candidates than Black candidates.

These critiques have led to moments of critical organizational growth and an investment in the work we have to do. We are committed to addressing them in an ongoing way. 

In 2021, JUFJ selected Wayfinding Partners to support us in a systematic and intentional process of organizational racial equity growth. Wayfinding conducted a discovery process that engaged partners, volunteer leaders, staff, and other stakeholders; recommended key areas JUFJ should target for improvement; and provided an organizational development rubric to diagnose our current racial equity development level and identify areas of potential growth. JUFJ board, leaders, and staff created a plan for our racial equity growth based on this rubric. The implementation of this plan is led by our Program Director, Lindsay Morris. 

Our goal is for JUFJ to assess concrete and ongoing organizational growth in four key areas: 

• Transparency and Clarity in Communications
• Continuous Learning & Integrating Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Skills
• Engaging Stakeholders & Responding to Stakeholder Feedback
• Selecting Issue Areas and Campaigns.

At JUFJ, we are religious and secular Jews, non-Jewish fellow travelers and allies, people of many genders and sexualities, white Jews and Jews of color, people with a variety of economic means, synagogue members and people for whom JUFJ is their primary Jewish home. We ground all of our work in relationships and partnerships across these differences. We strive to be an informed, passionate, inclusive community that empowers everyone to turn our values and our relationships into action. 

Our racial equity growth is guided by a group of staff, board members, and volunteer leaders from across the JUFJ community:

Ben Shnider | Carlos Jimenez | Claire Landers | Ed Lazere | Fran Zamore | Hilary Klein | Jacob Feinspan
Laura Wallace | Lindsay Morris | Margo Harvey | Michelle Sternthal | Nikki Cole | Sam Baltimore
Sarah Hiller | Seth Johnson | Tara Huffman | Tracie Guy-Decker | Whitney Porter

Under the leadership of this team, JUFJ will assess progress annually, identifying continued and new areas of growth to incorporate into the following fiscal year’s goal setting and budgeting. There will also be opportunities for community stakeholders to offer feedback. 

Some specific racial equity growth steps we’re focusing on in 2024 include: 

1. Building and deepening relationships among staff, leaders, and partners 
2. Updating our campaign selection criteria and process with input from partners and leaders
3. Launching Dismantling Racism from the Inside Out for leaders, staff, and board. This course applies the wisdom of the Mussar tradition (Jewish ethics) to the work of strengthening our capacity for subverting racist hierarchies in ourselves and in the world 
4. Incorporating information about our racial equity process into our staff onboarding
5. Standardizing our hiring process and incorporating best practices around equity
6. Setting shared expectations with partners about our roles/capacity in coalitions and campaigns

The work of aligning our actions with our values of racial justice is ongoing. We are dedicated to intentionally nurturing what has already been planted in our organizational and individual racial equity growth, as well as sowing seeds for the future.

To learn more about JUFJ’s racial equity initiative, please contact Program Director Lindsay Morris at lindsay.morris@jufj.org.