4 January 2018

Members of LJY-Netzer, the youth movement of Liberal Judaism, have vowed to spend the next year exploring the traditions and cultures of non-white Jews.

At their annual Veidah decision making event, the youth group’s older members chose ‘Minorities within Minorities’ as their Theme of the Year.

Movement worker Ellie Lawson explained: “The thinking behind Minorities within Minorities is due to the fact that one thing that LJY-Netzer never talks about is race, and especially non-Ashkenazi non-white Jews.

“We have yet to tackle the intersections of Judaism, not only within our Liberal community but also within the wider Jewish community: in the UK, Israel and across the world.”

The idea originally came from Kinus – a similar forum for younger LJY-Netzer members in year 7-10 – and will see all ages spend the next 12 months looking at different Jewish communities from across the world, including Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews.

Ellie added: “LJY-Netzer has always been at the forefront of political change, and raising awareness for current issues, and we hope to do this once more. We intend to do it with integrity and care for the sensitivity of the issue by bringing in those voices and experts from those communities, as we continue to educate ourselves and those around us.”

Veidah also saw LJY-Netzer members debate the movement’s ideology, write new Jewish music, learn about topics ranging from Zionism to direct social action, and enjoyed a Skype chat with the movement’s gap year participants: the largest group of individuals we have had on our Reform Zionist year programme for 10 years.