S4 Ep 4: In the Same Place, As the Same Person

Amanda Mbuvi, Ph.D., is the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College’s new vice president for academic affairs. Mbuvi, a Hebrew Bible scholar and nonprofit leader, is the first Jew of Color to hold such a leadership position at an American rabbinical seminary. We delve into Mbuvi’s desire to deepen how people and communities think about diversity and identity. Mbuvi shares her enthusiasm for using the Bible in general, and Genesis and Exodus in particular to explore questions related to community and identity. Mbuvi and Lawson talk what it means to be women of color and leaders in the Jewish community, reacting to the findings of the Jews of Color Initiative's latest study, “Beyond the Count: Perspectives and Lived Experiences of Jews of Color.” (Eight in 10 respondents said they have experienced discrimination in a Jewish setting.) “So I think for a lot of people, when they say Jew of Color, they think about it like a child with divorced parents: on the weekends, you're Jewish and then during the week you're Black. It's like, you sort of go from one to the other, but not that you were both at the same time, in the same place as the same person. I think that's just something people have had a lot of difficulty getting their minds around,” Mbuvi says. The episode was recorded the week before Rosh Hashanah and Lawson, Mbuvi and Waxman share their hopes for the High Holidays and the coming year.

You can listen to S4 Ep 4: In the Same Place, As the Same Person online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

S4 Ep 4: In the Same Place, As the Same Person is an episode from Hashivenu by Reconstructing Judaism.

This episode is 33:10 long.

This episode was published on Sep 10, 2021.

Yes. Use the heart button on the episode page to add it to your favorite episodes list.

Yes. This page shows related episodes from Hashivenu when more episodes are available from the podcast feed.