Adela Cojab Moadeb is a Mexican-Syrian-Lebanese-American Jewish activist, published author, and JD candidate at Yeshiva University's Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. In 2019, Adela filed a Title VI complaint with the Office of Civil Rights against NYU for failing to protect the Jewish community from consistent harassment. Her case prompted the Executive Order to include Jewish Students in Title VI protections and ended in the first Title VI settlement openly addressing anti-Semitism as a form of discrimination. Listen to Adela's journey in becoming a student activist and how her Latin-Jewish family and culture grounds her. 

In this bonus episode of the VOCES podcast, we explore with Dr. Mijal Bitton the meaning of Mizrahi and Sephardic, and the importance of giving people the autonomy and respect to self-identify with their preferred ethnic and racial terms.  Dr. Bitton also shares her insight into her family's experience of living as Sephardic Jews in Latin America and what it means to be a trailblazing feminist within an observant community.

Click here to access Dr. Bitton's articles.

Born Edgar Ibañez in Bogotá, Colombia, Dr. David McCarty-Caplan was adopted and raised by American parents in the United States. In this emotional episode, we learn what it's like to navigate life--and Jewish and Latin identity--as a transracial adoptee.  Full of soul, David's story explores loss, belonging, self-discovery and resiliency in relation to the trauma of family separation and adoption. 

This week we learn from Dr. Dalia Wassner, a proud Mexican-American who was the first woman in her family to go to college, and who successfully combined her academic passion for gender studies, Jewish history, and Latin American studies to design what is now known as the Hadassah Brandeis Institute Project on Latin American Jewish & Gender Studies at Brandeis University. In this episode, Dalia talks about her story growing up in both Mexico and the United States, the power of Latino/x mentorship, and the importance of bridging the academic community to the world. 

In this episode of the VOCES podcast, Venezuelan-born content creator and food blogger (@jewtinaeats), Orly Margulis, details her experience of growing up in her beloved Caracas, and what it means to not be able to return to the place her heart calls home. Now living in Tel Aviv, Israel (by way of Philly, USA), Orly gives us an inside look on the virtues of walking this world with curly hair, a strong accent and insatiable hunger. 

Maia Ferdman is an Argentinian-American who grew up in San Diego, California, where dancing salsa at b'nai-mitzvahs and discussing diversity at the dinner table was the norm. An intra and intergroup relations specialist, Maia is passionate about interfaith work, dialogue across difference, and supporting people in exploring the complexities of their own identity. In this podcast, Maia explores what it means to live life as woman who's cultural markers aren't always visibly recognized by those around and how her experience has led her to elevate the textures of intersectionality. 

From the trenches to the coasts and everywhere in between, Eddie Chavez Calderon fights for a progressive movement that works towards a more inclusive, diverse America. A DACA recipient and community organizer, Eddie is a tireless advocate for immigration reform, LGBTQ+ acceptance and inclusion, woman’s rights, economic justice, workers’ rights, citizenship and civic engagement, voter equality, and much more in his home state of Arizona. In this episode we explore what it means to stay grounded as an undocumented American, in a time in which one's future is at the hands of others. 

An anti-racist activist, educator and researcher, Analucía Lopezrevoredo is the Founder and Executive Director of Jewtina y Co., and organization dedicated to giving Jewish-Latino/xs (Jewtinos) the opportunity to celebrate and explore their multicultural identity, connect to other Jewtinos around the world, and widen their understanding of social issues affecting the larger Jewish and Latino/x communities. In this podcast, she shares a chapter of her story, the power of dreams, and how the Jewtina y Co. VOCES storytelling project came to life as a means for which to engage the Jewish-Latino/x community to be collective historians of our  lived experience. 

This episode of the VOCES podcast features Kimberly "Kimmy" Dueñas, a California native with a global spirit. A biracial woman, Kimmy details her complicated journey with owning her Latinidad, as a means to awaken and love her whole self. A bakers daughter, she draws tasty comparisons between her identity and challah.