Sabrina Bahir
What will your new job with the Bureau entail?
As the Community Education Coordinator I will work on both existing initiatives for the community as well as develop new initiatives for families and adults. Some of the existing programs that I will be involved with are: TALIT (Teens and Leaders in Training), Adat Noar (“Community of Youth”), ACL (Advanced Camp Leadership), Panim el Panim (“Face to Face,” The Institute for Jewish Leadership and Values), Chai-Wired, Mifgash, OC Reads, and Operation Promise.
What aspects of your new job are you most excited about?
The position of Community Education Coordinator is new and I am excited to be part of the growth that is taking place at the BJE. I am looking forward to working with such a diverse range of people in the community and am thrilled to be involved with such an amazing array of programs from teaching to Yiddish literature, social action to involvement with the Ethiopian Jewish community.
What qualities do you have that you will be bringing to the Bureau?
As an educator, activist, and musician, I offer my love and passion for our people, my enthusiasm for community work, my desire to connect with others and help them connect, and my conviction towards social action and the pursuit of justice. I am creative and open-minded, and excited about unleashing the possibilities for reaching out to the Jewish community. I bring a unique perspective to the field and to the Bureau, having had an atypical journey into Jewish education. Although I did not attend camp growing up or Jewish schools, youth group, or belong to a synagogue, I reconnected with the Jewish community as a young adult and uncovered a deep love for the Jewish people, a love that I found I could carry with me into a career.
What experience do you have that you will be bringing to the Bureau?
I hold a Masters degree in Jewish education from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Los Angeles, and have a diverse range of experience in the field. I have volunteered with immigration centers in Israel, working with Ethiopian Jews as well as with Jews in the Ukraine, primarily in Crimea. I am an alumna of AVODAH: The Jewish Service Corps, a program that “integrates work for social change, Jewish learning and community building,” and have assisted in the development of curricula for the American Jewish Archives. I have also taught in both religious school and day school settings, grades three through eight, as well as supervised and mentored teens and college students, and have spent the last three summers working as an administrator for DeLeT (Day School Leadership through Teaching) a 13-month fellowship program at Brandeis University on the East Coast and Hebrew Union College Jewish - Institute of Religion in Los Angeles on the West Coast, designed to increase the number of professional teacher leaders who are prepared to teach and support Jewish families in the growing number of Jewish day schools in America.
What would you like the BJE community to know about you?
I am fascinated by history and genealogy, holistic medicine, and religion. Five of the one thousand Jews remaining in Cuba are my family members. Although I have never been to Cuba, I experienced a mix of cultures and languages growing up, from Spanish to Yiddish and plantains to kugel. I’m told I make a good flan!