WE ARE FAMILY. WE ARE MANY. AFROJEWISH, BORICUA, NATIVE MEXICAN, SEPHARDI, EUROPEAN, PERSIAN. QUEER AND HETERO, AND MORE. WE ARE NOT A RACE, WE ARE PEOPLE.
our community
We are a learning community for Latinx Jewish families and individuals who hold a wide diversity of identities.
At Olamim, we cultivate and enjoy our family identities, and build community through it!
Family leadership
Our families are the core element of our program success.
We are full of talent, vision, and incredible capacity to generate what we want for our children.
Olamim cultivates family participation and cultural responsiveness as the foundation for inclusion and belonging in the larger Jewish community.
We truly are the ones we've been waiting for. For us, self-definition and family leadership is always at the core of program growth and development.
Join us in developing our community offerings!
Ariela Ronay-Jinich
Founder and Executive Director, Lead Educator
Ariela Ronay-Jinich (she/her/ella) grew up in Mexico City, where her family is from. She has been serving Bay Area youth and families since 2005, focusing her work on innovative Jewish educational programs that center nature connection and community-building. Programs she has founded and directed include Urban Adamah’s youth and family programs, B'Hootz (Wilderness Torah), and Edah (Berkeley), and garden programs at Camp Tawonga and Gan Shalom Preschool.
Her signature professional development and consulting project, “Jewish Outside,” has trained over 80 preschool teachers throughout the Bay Area in nature-based Jewish learning.
She most recently served as Program Manager for Project Shamash, a racial justice initiative of Bend the Arc focused on supporting Jews of Color leadership and racial equity work among Jewish organizations in the Bay. Ariela serves on Jewtina y Co.’s Advisory Board, and is a recent recipient of a research grant from the Jews of Color Initiative.
Trained as a qualitative researcher, her current research focuses on heritage language learning and intersectional identity among Latinx Jewish families.
Olamim uniquely blends her equity work with her extensive background in nature connection, early childhood education, and community-building.
Ariela lives in the Bay Area and, along with David Doostan (Octopretzel!), are raising their young daughter, Alma, to delight in speaking Spanish and feel nourished by her Jewish, Mexican, and Persian cultural roots.
Education & Awards
Bachelors in Education Policy and History, Brown University
Masters in Educational Leadership, Mills College
Bend the Arc Selah Leadership Program
Rockwood Leadership Institute
Helen Diller Family Award for Excellence in Jewish Education, 2015
Kevah Teaching Fellowship
Torah Trek Guide
Publications
Liliana Lucia Peliks
marketing & operations associate, and Community Educator
Liliana Lucia Matos-Garcia Peliks (she/ella/mami) is a Mexican-born, Dominican woman, and mother of a Jewish household. She is also the grandchild of a self-taught kindergarten teacher, and an oil artist who shaped her childhood and still informs many of her choices as an adult. Liliana is committed to putting her professional and personal skills to work at the intersection of spiritual fulfillment, social justice and environmental sustainability through educational experiences. She spends a lot of her time learning from her colleagues and senior educators at Jewish LearningWorks.
Liliana and her family take pride in elevating all parts of their overlapping identities. She comes alive listening to her daughters speak in Spanish and Portuguese, praying in Hebrew, dancing Dominican merengue, goofing around with a Brazilian berimbau, being kind to people and other animal friends, and learning the lessons you can only learn in a garden.
Education & Awards
Bachelors in Business Administration (Valedictorian), Instituto Tecnológico de Santo Domingo
Masters in Marketing Management, IE Business School
Marketing for Nonprofits Certificate, Duke University
Vivian Santana Pacheco
Community Educator and PARENT LEADER
Vivian Santana Pacheco is Chicana, daughter and granddaughter of Mexican immigrants, and has worked to retain her ability to speak her familial language and pass it on to her son. Vivian is also an urban farmer dedicated to relearning ancestral food ways, and reclaiming sustainable ways of living on this land. She currently helps run Alemany Farm in San Francisco and was trained at UC Santa Cruz’s Agroecology farm.
Vivian is excited about supporting others in nurturing Spanish in their family and bringing her training and knowledge of early childhood education, farming and nature to Olamim. Vivian is passionate about the role of music in bringing community together, and offers Olamim the best songs and tunes for the party and the playgroup. As an Olamim parent and program educator, Vivian makes families feel welcome in their own uniqueness, and lovingly engages our community in how to creatively merge Latinx and Jewish identity through family life.
Education & Awards
Bachelors in Sociology, Pomona College
Masters in Public Policy, UC Berkeley’s Goldman School
Child Development Certificate, Merritt College
“Olamim is one of the only spaces where our family’s Latin Jewish lineages come together. We are grateful for this opportunity to co-create a container where kids feel accompanied in the complexities of their identities. And we love the orientation to nature as space holder”
— Mer Al Dao