Supporting the Thought Leadership of Women of Color

This year, with the support of a Women of Reform Judaism (WRJ) YES (Youth, Education, Special Projects) Fund grant, the Jewish Women’s Archive (JWA) launched the Pomegranate Writing Fellowship for Jewish Women of Color, a new model for Jewish thought leadership that centers the voices and vision of Jewish women and gender-expansive people of color as writers.  

We began by hiring Marcella White Campbell to JWA as Director of the Pomegranate Fellowship. Campbell is a writer and cultural educator who has spent years developing impactful programs focused on ensuring that marginalized voices — particularly Jews of Color — are heard and valued in the Jewish community. From 2015 to 2021, she advanced leadership and representation for Jews of Color at Be’chol Lashon, and since 2021, she has worked as a freelance writer and consultant.  

With the support of a compensated DEIA Advisory Council composed of a racially and ethnically diverse group of Jewish women, Campbell designed a robust program that provides our inaugural cohort of Pomegranate Fellows with a stipend, the structure to focus on their ideas and craft, a peer cohort, mentorship, and resources to develop their voices and confidence.  

When we began recruiting for the fellowship, we thought an ambitious goal would be 50 applicants. Instead, we received a whopping 120 applications for just five spaces. Applicants ranged in age from 18 to 80 and reflected the rich diversity of the contemporary Jewish community, self-identifying as Black, Asian, Sephardi, Mizrahi, Bukharan, Latina, and much more. Our five fellows self-identify as Gambian American, Black, multiracial, Native, Latina, and Asian and are Jews by birth and by choice. They write in a wide variety of genres and on a broad range of topics, representing perspectives that are urgently needed but too often overlooked.  

Our five inaugural Pomegranate Fellows are:

• Sai Jallow Edelstein, who was born and raised in The Gambia, has lived in Africa, Europe, Canada, and the United States, and found her spiritual home in Judaism;
• Rachel Faulkner, a community organizer, social justice advocate, and anti-racist educator who serves as the Senior Director of National Campaigns and Partnerships at the National Council of Jewish Women;
• Emily McDonnell, a member of the Navajo Nation, a self-described “NavaJew,” and a PhD candidate at UNC Chapel Hill, researching Indigenous geographies, tourism, and identity;
• Anjelica Ruiz, Director of Libraries and Archives at Temple Emanu-El in Dallas and an alumna of the URJ’s JewV’Nation Fellowship and Bend the Arc’s Selah Leadership Program; and
• Hannah Joy Sachs, an experiential educator who has worked around the world, leading immersive programs for young adults and emerging change makers.

Each Fellow was matched with a mentor, herself an outstanding established writer, who provides support, writing feedback, coaching, and professional advice. The 2025 mentors are:  

• Sabrina Sojourner, a Black writer, poet, spiritual leader, and longtime advocate for inclusion who serves as a cantor and educator;
• Jennifer Stempel, a Cuban-American producer and writer about food, family, and her Latinx Jewish heritage and author of With a Needle and Thread: A Jewish Folktale from Cuba;
• Rabbi Georgette Kennebrae, a Black rabbi and community builder who serves as spiritual leader of Mikvé Israel-Emanuel in Curaçao;
• Dr. May Friedman, a Mizrahi writer, scholar, and professor of social work based in Toronto whose writing and research explore themes of identity, motherhood, and body image;
• Sigal Samuel, a journalist, novelist, and essayist of Iraqi Jewish descent who is a senior reporter at Vox and author of The Mystics of Mile End and Osnat and Her Dove.

Since March, the Fellows have been meeting regularly for whole cohort sessions, one-on-one conversations with Campbell and their mentors, and group writing gatherings. They are writing powerful pieces in genres including poetry, op-eds, and narrative non-fiction that explore their own lived experiences as Jewish women of color, as well as larger themes around politics, indigeneity, and identity. Published both in JWA’s online publication and in other outlets, Fellows’ writing will shape a fresh and important narrative for the Jewish world.  

The Pomegranate Fellowship is structured for long-term cultural impact. Over time, the Fellows, mentors, and DEIA Advisory Council members and program alumnae will form an expanding community of Jewish female writers of color. Public events such as our recent “Women’s Anger as a Creative Force: A Writing Workshop for and by Jewish Women of Color” bring fellowship applicants and the wider public into this network. Readers of the work of this growing community will expand their conceptions of who is a thought leader in the Jewish community and of the diversity of Jewish narratives, experiences, and identities.  

At a time when DEI initiatives are under attack, funding for programs that center Jews of color is shrinking, and book bans disproportionately target women, Jews, and writers of color, such an ecosystem is more important than ever. We are working toward a world that fully values the voices, experiences, and perspectives of Jewish women and gender-expansive people of color, a population that navigates interlocking forms of marginalization. We hope the model we have built will serve as a replicable model for how established Jewish institutions, even if they are white-led, can build meaningful and lasting initiatives that center the leadership and needs of Jewish women of color, from the inside out. The Jewish Women’s Archive is grateful to the WRJ YES Fund for its support of the Pomegranate Writing Fellowship for Jewish Women of Color.

*JWA embraces expansive understandings of Jewishness and gender. We include Jews from all backgrounds and those who are non-binary, genderqueer, or gender-questioning.