When Sarah Kolker returned to her hometown neighbourhood in Philadelphia as a young adult, she noticed a run-down park that she grew up around. She remembered how her mom wouldn't let her go to the park at all. But now, the artist and social justice advocate was inspired to help reimagine the public space entirely. She joined in starting petitions, holding community gatherings, and meeting with politicians and block captains—and ultimately wound up painting a large, colourful mural in the...

As an Orthodox Jewish woman of colour, Leah Finkelstein knows what it's like to feel like an outsider. Unfortunately, her kids know, too—like when one of them scored a record-breaking triple double for his yeshiva's basketball team, resulting in the school proudly celebrating the box score on an image on social media... with a photo of a different, white teammate. (She complained; they ended up taking it down—not even reposting it with her son's own face.) Incidents like these, and those...

Devyani Saltzman was born into the arts and culture world, the daughter of two filmmakers—one Jewish, one Indian. Raised on production sets, she went on to write dozens of articles for newspapers and magazines, become the founding curator at Toronto's Luminato festival and work at numerous arts institutions, including the Art Gallery of Ontario, where she was the director of public programming from 2018 to 2021. Her current goal is to change the behind-the-scenes makeup of the arts world....

As the descendent of Holocaust and residential school survivors, Tamara Podemski understands generational trauma better than most. She grew up hearing those stories and internalizing those struggles, and now carries these themes in her work as an actress and singer—along with her personal experiences living in ethnic societies that didn't always accept her, including Jewish spaces. Podemski joins Rivkush, our podcast featuring Jews of colour sitting down for in-depth conversations, to...

When Chaya Lev converted to Judaism, she was determined to move to Israel. Later on, after surviving breast cancer, she decided to transform her dream into reality, making aliyah in 2016 and starting an Afro-inspired dance movement in the Middle East. But after Hamas launched a lethal terror attack on Oct. 7, it changed her life. With rockets being fired and Israeli sirens blaring, she and her synagogue congregants grabbed their building's Torah scrolls and started running through the...

Sara Braun grew up as a Black Jewish woman in a small town in the Netherlands, which was, she says, exactly what most North Americans imagine: windmills stretching up from fields of tulips and delicious smells wafting from rustic kitchens. But that's where the picturesque scenes end. While her Blackness was more or less accepted—treated as exotic, though not demeaned—her Judaism was not. She downplayed her religious identity all through her school years... until she turned 18 and moved to New...

With the third largest Jewish Diaspora in the world, Canada has no shortage of communal organizations: B'nai Brith, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center, plenty of Federations, cross-country campus Hillels—the list goes on. All of them, in some way, claim they are combatting antisemitism. So do we really need another one? Daniel Koren thinks so. After working at The CJN, B'nai Brith Canada and Hasbara Canada over the past decade, this May he founded...

One of Israel's most exciting rappers is Nissim Black, the Seattle-born Hasidic musician whose conversion story is as fascinating—and heartfelt—as his art. Born in Seattle to parents who themselves helped pioneer rap music, Black was always asking big questions and seeking genuine answers, but never found a meaningful connection until he found Judaism. Now living in Israel with his wife and seven children, Black is on a mission to blend rap with his religion, and has emerged as one of the...

Charly Wai Feldman is a woman of the world. Born in Montreal to a Jewish father and mother from Hong Kong, she lived in Jamaica and Vietnam before settling in the United Kingdom with her husband, himself of Indian descent (but grew up in Germany and Singapore). But while her nationality is an evolution, a central underpinning has always been her Jewish faith. As she puts it in this episode of Rivkush, "The whole principle of learning how to exist as a diaspora and being able to exist as a...

When Tamás Wormser, a documentary filmmaker from Montreal, first heard about a small community of Jewish Ugandans who live in a rural village, he knew he had to visit. He was struck by the poverty: no running water, no electricity, no cutlery. And of course, without television for entertainment, they turn to each other. They sing and dance. Wormser was taken aback: this community, which he'd considered "poor" by Western standards, was in fact much richer than any other he'd witnessed in...

During the infamous Sixties Scoop, the Canadian government forcibly relocated tens of thousands of Indigenous children, separating them from their families and placing them in foster homes or adoptive households. Little Bird, a new show by Crave and APTN, which premiered May 26, follows one young woman who was taken from her reserve in Saskatchewan at age five and raised in a Jewish home in Montreal, having her name changed from Bezhig Little Bird to Esther Rosenblum. In her 20s, Bezhig...

Loolwa Khazzoom has been advocating for the acknowledgement of Jewish multiculturalism since the 1990s. It's what led her to start the Jewish Multicultural Project, which works with Jewish institutions to provide resources for raising awareness about diverse Jews, as well as numerous other organizations that spotlight Jews from the Middle East and North Africa. Despite all her years doing this work, she still encounters confusion, resistance and even denial that Jewish diversity is an...

Michael Twitty is a multiple award–winning chef, author and food historian who is proudly Black, gay and Jewish. His star has been rising for years, from his 2010 blog Afroculinaria to his James Beard Award–winning book The Cooking Gene to his latest work, Kosher Soul. But his success hasn't helped him evade judgment or presumptions—mostly because of his Jewish identity. In this personal interview, Twitty sat down with Rivkush for a deep hour-long conversation about race, religion, politics...

Last week, Joel Etienne made headlines following his clash with the Conservative Party of Canada. Etienne, who was running to lead the party, claimed he raised the requisite $300,000 and garnered 500 signatures, but was rejected by the party regardless. After initially filing for an appeal, he dropped it and resolved the matter privately, broadly throwing his support behind the party. In this wide-ranging interview, Etienne talks about his political ambitions, as well as his careers in the...

When Susannah Heschel was growing up, discussions about civil rights were part of her daily life. They were, in fact, unavoidable—her father, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, was one of the leading Jewish figures of the movement, who walked beside Martin Luther King Jr. on his famous Selma march. But a lot has changed since then. Heschel, now a professor of Jewish studies at Dartmouth College, understands better than most how those deep connections between Black and Jewish communities in North...

If you ask Jared Jackson, founder of the American organization Jews in All Hues, he'll tell you white supremacy has seeped into mainstream North American Judaism. Jackson doesn't use "white supremacy" to refer to swastikas and white hoods, but rather how Jewish spaces are often uncomfortable for Jews of colour, with so much of the community discourse being steered by white-skinned Ashkenazi people. Jackson joins today to discuss these ideas and explain how his organization is helping to...

J-Rob is a Montreal-based musician, poet, video game streamer and Black Jew. He doesn't fit into any single box—even his music, from track to track, sounds radically different. Balancing these multiple identities fuels his art, some of which he shares with us today. Follow J-Rob on Instagram at @halfwhitefullblack. Credits Rivkush is hosted by Rivka Campbell. Michael Fraiman is the editor and prodcer. Our theme music is by Westside Gravy. We're a member of The CJN Podcast Network; find...

At one point during David Ben Moshe's two years in prison, he saw a fellow inmate reading a strange religious book in a foreign language—which he later learned was Hebrew. At that moment, he discovered Judaism, beginning a process that would lead him to an Orthodox conversion, marrying an Israeli woman and raising kids in Israel. At least, that was the plan. But when Ben Moshe tried to become an Israeli citizen, he was slowed down by one bureaucratic hurdle after another, sending him into an...

The ongoing debate over what Jews "are"—a religion? A nationality? An ethnicity?—inevitably gets more complicated when considering the hundreds of thousands of Jews of colour living around the world. Nowhere is this question trickier than in Israel, where a plurality of Jews identify as Mizrahi or Sephardi. Hen Mazzig, an acclaimed Israeli writer of Mizrahi descent, has thought often about how the perception of Jews shapes up against the reality. Jews have been persecuted for thousands of...

In North America, Brandy Shufutinsky might be called a Black Jewish woman, or a Jew of colour. But in Israel, she's just a Jew. It might sound counterintuitive to feel safer in Israel, under threat of geopolitcal tension and terrorism, than in the United States, but that's the truth. Feeling comfortable walking down the street makes a big difference when you were born in a country where anti-Black racism is significantly more pronounced. A social worker and activist with two master's...

When Matthew Fernandez Konigsberg isn't working his day job as an in-house attorney at a large international law firm, he's actively working within the Puerto Rican and Jewish communities, fighting for the rights of Puerto Ricans and against antisemitism. Over his storied career, which included years as a special counsel for ethics, risk and compliance in the New York State Governor's Office, he's held a number of leadership and educator roles within the Jewish and Latino communities, aiming...

Rain Pryor is many things: an actress, singer, performer, comedian, mother, one-time city council candidate in the City of Baltimore... and, yes, daughter of Richard Pryor, the famous comedian. Her mother, Shelley Bonus, a former go-go-dancer turned astronomer, was Jewish; Rain grew up studying torah with her grandfather and learning to make latkes with her bubbe. Rain has been outspoken about her upbringing and cultural identity, which featured prominently in her acclaimed...

Noah Shufutinsky, a.k.a. Westside Gravy, might be the most adamantly Zionist hip hop artist working right now. Raised in California, Shufutinsky is best known for fiery tracks like "Diaspora" and "Angry Black Man"; his music blends identity politics with global politics, calls out double standards and challenges conventional assumptions about what it means to be Black and Jewish. Plus, he recorded the theme song to this podcast, so you know he's a good guy. Relevant links Follow Westside...

How should Jews think about race? Some prefer not to think about it at all—but ignoring problems in our community won't make them disappear. Jews of colour routinely fight for visibility and push for white Jews to think twice before making assumptions, especially in Jewish spaces. Tyler Samuels has felt this personally. As a Jew of Jamaican descent, a recent graduate from the University of Toronto, a summer intern at B'nai Brith Canada and the vice president of engagement at Jews of Colour...