JAHM 2025

Jewish American Heritage Month 2025

With May being designated as Jewish American Heritage Month, it is an honor to take a moment to pause and celebrate the many Jewish communities, cultures, achievements and creativity represented within all of UCSF. As evidenced with the following pages - what it means to be Jewish, to be a Jew, is varied and nuanced and remarkably diverse.  Identifying as Jewish invokes not only religion, and for some - not all, but ancestries reaching back through the ages and across the many continents, and cultural experiences shaped by different languages, music, food, socioeconomic realities, politics, migration, expulsion, rituals and traditions.

However, May 2024 is unlike any May we have seen before.  What is happening throughout the world today, most notably in Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank, must be named and acknowledged.  The conflict and the loss of life throughout the region has given rise to great pain and anguish; to grief, sorrow, fear, anger and so much more.  We feel it in our own UC homes, as students on campuses throughout the state rise up to use their voices; voices that are not always in unison as this is a very complex time in our lives.   

Anti-Semitism, Anti-Zionism, Islamophobia and Anti-Arab sentiments are on the rise, bringing to the fore just how much diversity and differences can yield pain, as much as they can yield joy. All this, has led to much soul searching among many, who grapple with the complexities of what it means to be a Jew, this May. May of 2024.

Jewish American Heritage Month Zoom Backgrounds

Please download any of these virtual backgrounds and add them to your Zoom by following these steps:

1. In the Zoom.us desktop client, go to 'Settings' as noted above and select 'Visual Background'.
2. Using the (+) icon, upload your new background.

                             ZOOM BACKGROUNDS

Additional info at the UCSF Multicultural Resource Center webpage.