Mixed Experience History Month 2016: Linda Jum, Jewish Educator & Activist

Linda Jum ( 1954-2015) was an advocate for multiracial Jewish people.  Her background was Chinese and Chinese-American but she identified as Jewish from a very young age.  In 1990, she helped found the Jewish Multiracial Network.  She founded the Jewish Reconstructionist summer camp in 2001.  “Jews have always been a multi-racial people. I always ask people who think Jews should be Caucasian, ‘What part of Poland did Abraham come from?”” she is quoted as saying in a 2004 interview with the New Jersey Jewish News. She received the Jewish Reconstructionist Federations’ Yehudit Award in recognition of her work with the camp and the Reconstructionist youth movement in 2010.  She died in 2015. –Heidi Durrow

Mixed Experience History Month is the annual blog post series created by The New York Times best-selling author Heidi Durrow celebrating the history of the Mixed experience. Established in 2007, Mixed Experience History Month is an effort to highlight the long history of folks and events involved in the Mixed experience.  Please look for archived profiles of people, places and events of the Mixed experience every weekday of May!  Thanks for reading.  And check out some of the previous year’s profiles: 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012,  2013, 2014, 2015.