Diversity in Our Community

Play a classroom-diversity game; start identity maps.

Children wonder and discover; you facilitate more than you lecture.

• How are Jews a diverse people, and how does that diversity show up in my community?

Jews are diverse in race, heritage, family structure, ability, and practice — right here in our own community. Identity maps let each child show the many parts of who they are.

• K’lal Yisrael — the whole Jewish people
• Zehut — identity

“Can you be Jewish and ___?”

Yes — Jews are every color, background, and kind of family. All are fully Jewish.

• Children identify what they want to know about diversity in their local Jewish community.
• Children create identity maps.

Center mirrors and windows: every child sees themselves and meets others. Handle each child’s identity with care and consent.

Folktale. Joseph’s Coat of Many Colors (Tanakh) — one family, many colors — and a coat that celebrates difference.

Changemaker. Rabbi Capers Funnye — a prominent African-American rabbi who embodies the multiracial Jewish people.

Whose stories are missing when we picture a ‘typical’ Jewish family?

“We made identity maps celebrating who we are. Try at home: make a family identity map together — heritage, languages, traditions.”