Jewish Community Focus Group
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Jewish Community Focus Group
Date of focus group : December 15 , 2020 Facilitators : Ethan Klos , Charna Blumberg , Dan Blumberg Demographics of the group
• Gender : Female ( 5 ), Male ( 1 )
• Race / Ethnicity : All White
Summary & Quote Highlights :
• The Jewish Focus Group was very interested in the topic placed before them . The group ranged from being residents for 20-50 years in Arlington . The discussion wandered from a history of change in Arlington , to current status , to actionable items .
• Overall , the groups feelings ranged from positive about the current status for Jews in Arlington to feeling somewhat invisible , but not in a negative manner . There were concerns about other minority groups within the City , mainly Muslims and people of color .
• The two biggest concerns for the group as Jews are a Calendar and Youth .
• By Calendar , what is meant is for the City government to both create / utilize a more comprehensively inclusive calendar when scheduling events and meetings . This would respect various groups by not holding these meetings on important holidays .
• As far as the Youth , while the group has not directly encountered prejudice , they all expressed that their children had experienced issues in the schools . The group felt that more can be done by the School Administration to address this issue . And that the City Council could apply pressure or guidance in working with the ISD .
• The group also had a number of actionable items : Calendar , Parade , Holiday events , and Community Outreach . Specific details can be found in the Quotes detailed , but the highlights were :
• “ Wouldn ’ t it be wonderful if the theme of the parade was something to do with diversity and embracing the diversity of our City .”
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• “ I think that it would be really wonderful . Somebody mentioned lighting a menorah . I think that the more visible expressions of acceptance of cultural differences racial differences religious differences that are done by the city , then that will help to cause change in a direction that results in more acceptance of all of those differences . So I think it would be wonderful . I mean to see a menorah . There are so many opportunities for the Muslim holidays and everything for the city to take a leadership role and in that I would love to see that . That would be so great .”
• “ I think that the audience who needs to see these public expressions of acceptance of diversity are located at the Cowboys games and Mavericks games and stars games and baseball games . And so , you know , if we ’ re a sports place you can have 50,000 people in the stands . Why not have a huge celebration at the kickoff of this or whatever . I mean at multiple locations like here at Levitt pavilion . And have the city , say this is our city . And this is what we want . And guess what you ’ re going to go along with it because this is what ’ s going to be . And this is what the right way to be is so we got to go to the people who aren ’ t coming to these automatically . Otherwise , we ’ re just preaching to the choir .”
• How would you describe race and ethnic relations here in Arlington , and why do you feel this way ?
• Well , a fairly decent not perfect by a long shot , but it ’ s a very diverse community . My son ’ s high school friends were like a United Nations . I was very pleased with that .
• The only one thing that I would mention is that the experience we ’ ve had with the schools . I noticed the schools general calendar doesn ’ t even mention Yom Kippur or Rosh Hashanah on their calendars and there have been instances where they may have held City Council meetings or things you know on those holidays of significance , where
Unity Council Report 120