https://jwa.org/thisweek/feb/12/2021/first-episode-lunar-jewish-asian-film-project-premieres
Organizer, writer, and non-profit professional Gen Slosberg co-founded and was the executive producer for LUNAR: The Jewish-Asian Film Project, whose first episode premiered on February 12, 2021. The project subsequently expanded into the LUNAR Collective, the first and, as of 2023, only organization by and for Asian American Jews.
Slosberg was born in 1999 to a non-Jewish Chinese mother and a Polish/Lithuanian Jewish father and raised in Southern China, where, as a multiracial child , she was ostracized and sometimes fetishized for her whiteness; she was defined by her perceived foreignness and received (often unwanted) attention or special treatment. Peers grew resentful and jealous of her as they watched her receive uncommon opportunities. In high school, she moved with her family to the United States, where she continued to experience exclusion, including anti-Asian racism and alienation in Chinese spaces, leading to feelings of shame and propelling her politicization.
Slosberg believes everyone deserves wellness and belonging; she views this philosophy as her commitment to olam ha-ba [the world to come]. She has worked towards this goal since 2016, initially taking political action through canvassing and managing social media for two Congressional campaigns. In 2020, she graduated from University of California-Berkeley with a bachelor’s degree in political science, specializing in quantitative methods and Latin American politics.
Slosberg lacked knowledge of Judaism until college, where she found mixed-race Jewish friends. The Bay Area Jews of Color community showed her that her upbringing did not foreclose a relationship to Judaism. She later served as a Jews of Color youth educator at Jewish Youth for Community Action and as a Program Associate at Urban Adamah.
In 2021 Slosberg co-founded LUNAR: The Jewish-Asian Film Project, a film series featuring the unscripted conversation of two dozen Asian-American Jewish adults. The project has since become The LUNAR Collective, which cultivates connection, belonging, and healing through community programming and digital storytelling. As of 2023, Slosberg is also the Bay Area Organizer of T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights.
Outside of her Jewish professional work, Slosberg performs research, aims to improve nonprofits, and pursues creative work like writing and teaching. From 2022 to 2023, she was a Junior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a foreign policy think tank, researching and analyzing China’s relationship to the US and Latin America.
Sources
“Home.” Gen Slosberg 夏夜, April 16, 2023. https://genxslosberg.com/.
Slosberg, Gen. “How I Finally Learned to Accept Both My Chinese and Jewish Identities.” HuffPost, May 23, 2018. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/im-chinese-and-jewish-and-always-wanted-to-claim-one-identity_n_5b044e95e4b0740c25e5e2af.
Slosberg, Gen Xia Ye. “I’m No Longer Hesitant to Say I’m ‘Chinese and Jewish.’” J. The Jewish News of Northern California, November 22, 2019. https://jweekly.com/2019/11/22/im-no-longer-hesitant-to-say-im-chinese-and-jewish/.
“Staff.” T’ruah, January 10, 2023. https://truah.org/about/our-people/staff/.
Webmaster. “Fifteen Jewish Women You Should Follow on Social Media Right Now.” Be’chol Lashon, March 31, 2022. https://globaljews.org/jewishand/fifteen-jewish-women-you-should-follow-on-social-media-right-now/.
