Ayecha
Yavilah McCoy founded and directed Ayecha for eight years. With offices in New York City and St. Louis, Ayecha provided training and educational resources for building greater sensitivity toward differences in the Jewish community. The organization also served as a support group and network for Jews of color and multiracial families. McCoy says: "Ayecha taught people how to understand their Judaism through the lens of race, age, gender and economic status. When most people think of Jewish, they think white and they think European. But Jews of color have been alive and well for thousands of years in parts of the world. McCoy said recent research estimates that there are about 20,000 Jews of color in the United States. In 2009, when asked by the Forward how she felt about being a representative for Jews of color, McCoy acknowledged her own accomplishments but also underscored the need for increased visibility and representation, within the media and Jewish leadership, of a spectrum of Jews of Color: I’ve stepped back from being “the one,” because in a way I had become an icon of this work. The idea of associating diversity with a person as opposed to it being a movement within the Jewish community was starting to bother me. So, I made the decision about a year ago to spend more of my time supporting fellow Jewish leaders of color so that when the conversation re-emerged, it would be a conversation along the lines of, maybe, 10 different stories instead of one."
In 2010, when interviewed by the New Vilna Review, McCoy stated that present challenges to the Jewish community include the challenge of racism: One challenge that I address in is racism. By virtue of the valuable strides that Jews in America have made since our initial immigration to these shores, we and our children are not as deeply connected to the issues of race and class that our history in this country ought to make us vested change agents against. We do a great job of celebrating the heroes among our ranks who marched in the Civil Rights movement and worked to make equal rights a constitutional reality, but in many cases, we have neglected the every-day work of not taking privilege and societal access for granted and doing what we can in our personal lives to stay connected to the issues of oppression that still plague so many other identity groups in our country. My Judaism fuels my connection to these issues, and it is my hope that through this show I can share some of the ways that my African-American family has been inspired to work for change through the Torah and Jewish tradition. http://www.newvilnareview.com/homepage/an-interview-with-jewish-educator-activist-and-performer-yavilah-mccoy.html
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