Diversity Training

Be'chol Lashon facilitates workshops or more informal community conversations across lines of social identity and difference. Interactive workshops prepare Jewish professionals and others to actively engage in community conversations about diversity within their communities and organizations around a range of issues including:

• Family Secrets
• Identity formation
• Inter-racial relations
• Jewish identity
• Standards of beauty
• Passing
• Race

To better understand our perspective, please click here to read: Diversity In The Jewish Community, Journal of Jewish Communal Service

Consultation, Assessment & Planning
Be'chol Lashon consults with organizations to tailor strategies that best meet community goals. We facilitate assessments to ascertain what organizations feel they are doing well, and identify areas of concern and improvement. Successfully welcoming all kinds of Jews requires that the planning be driven by the community's needs. The American Jewish community is far from uniform-every community, family, and individual has a different perspective on issues of identity, race, and diversity. Meeting the needs of multiracial Jews, families, friends and allies requires a flexible and inputdriven approach.

Diversity Workshops
Be'chol Lashon facilitates workshops or more informal community conversations to create safe spaces to air concerns, gain comfort with being vulnerable, and model how to talk about race. We recognize the need to meet participants where they are. We allow space for participants to understand what they don't know, and explore the root causes and consequences of unexamined bias and prejudice, opening up opportunities for safe, structured dialogue. In the words of one participant, "Your conference helped make me aware of my privilege but not ashamed or embarrassed by it."

The goal is to help Jewish professionals and others communicate more effectively across lines of social identity and difference. Films, books, poetry, or other media can be excellent conversation starters about what roles race, religion, community and family play in identity formation. Workshops may span a few hours, a full day, or a series over a number of months and can be adapted for a variety of audiences and age groups.