Fabulously Answered Questions

Who should participate? Awareness Accelerator is designed for those who could use a firmer foundation for their ongoing racial justice learning, individuals who are early on in their anti-racism journey, and people looking to more fully understand, internalize, and manifest racial justice as a Jewish value. 

Awareness Accelerator is a good fit if you are dedicated to taking concrete next steps to increase your awareness around race, privilege, bias, and systems of oppression. The only prerequisite is acceptance that racism exists in our culture, and a commitment to embarking on necessary internal and external work toward our collective liberation. 

  When does the course start? As soon as you register, you’ll receive access to the course portal and some pre-work/reference material, including the three-video offering, (Joyously!) Moving Toward Racial Justice. The first of the six weekly modules will be made available on Sunday, June 6.

When are the live meetings? There are three virtual live gatherings (that will be recorded and posted in the portal following the live session). All take place at 3 - 4:30 pm Eastern, 12 - 1:30 pm Pacific : 

Kick-off with April and Tracie - Monday 6/7/21
Cohort Check-In with Tracie - Monday 6/28/21
Transforming Takeaways into Action with April and Tracie - Wednesday 7/21/21

What is the time commitment? Awareness Accelerator is a six-week course designed to be largely completed on your own time. For each of the six weeks, you’ll receive access to an introductory video from April and Tracie and three or four other resources for you to work through at your own pace. We make a new module of resources available every Sunday of the 6 weeks, but it’s up to you to figure out when you want to engage. With one exception, no single resource requires more than 30 to 40 minutes of time, though you could dedicate more. We estimate the time commitment at between 3 and 4 hours a week. We encourage you to dive in during the first 6 weeks, but if that time commitment or pacing is difficult for you, you are welcome to slow down. You will have access to the materials for 6 months.

Is this a good fit for a person more experienced in anti-racism conversations? This question is best answered by another question: What are you hoping to get out of it? Are you looking for all brand new concepts? You might be disappointed. Are you looking for opportunities to deepen your existing understanding and hone your analysis? Let’s talk. Through both focused attention and an explicitly Jewish lens, Awareness Accelerator could be a great way to further cultivate and sharpen your skills. 

I’m interested in doing the course with my friend/partner/book club/staff/board. Will it work for us? Yes! We encourage you to connect with a learning partner or havruta, and the more the merrier! Awareness Accelerator is designed to quickly give students a baseline understanding (or deepen their understanding) of core concepts, terms, and lived experiences. Having a shared vocabulary and experience is a great step for a group looking to change their culture and transform their organization. We even recommend occasional group processing meetings--as frequent as works for you--to review the discussion questions together. 

I’m not really interested in working with a partner. I just want to do my own thing. Will it work for me? Sure! We have heard from many students that processing with a partner helps them to deepen the learning, but it’s by no means required. Folks who work better alone can use our “discussion” questions as prompts to journal, engage in hitbodedut (literally “self-seclusion” the practice of speaking, out loud, directly to G-d/Spirit/the Universe), or simply reflect on your own. We also have an online community forum where you can share your thoughts with other Awareniks, and read theirs as well.

On what platform is the Virtual Community Forum? Is it required? The Community Forum is native to our third-party host for the course. You don’t have to be on Facebook, Twitter, Slack, or any other social media platform to participate. The only folks who will be able to see what you post are April, Tracie, and the other Awareniks in your cohort. Participation is highly encouraged. Learning with others is as important as learning from our teachers. 

Who owns my posts on the Community Forum? Will you repost them out of context? We never use the postings of our students without either asking explicit permission or anonymizing what we share, or both. Though technically we do own what our students post inside our portals, relationships are extremely important to Joyous Justice, and we would never assert intellectual property rights at the expense of a relationship.

Do I have to be Jewish and/or white to participate? Not at all. Awareness Accelerator is designed for Jewish and Jewish-adjacent folks of all races and ethnicities. We work to be accessible to folks from all Jewish backgrounds in terms of translating acronyms, Hebrew, or anything else that could feel like insider jargon. When specific concepts are more or less relevant to a specific identity, we do our best to name that. 

What accessibility measures are in place? Joyous Justice is continuously striving to be an organization which models the liberatory and joyful world we want to create. We are building out our capacity in a number of ways, including our accessibility options. Awareness Accelerator features burned-in-captions on all of the videos created by Joyous Justice, LLC, and we do our best to use alternate image descriptions and use other web-based accessibility measures. 

We recognize that this is an area of growth for us. If you have more specific questions about the accessibility of Awareness Accelerator or recommendations for us, please let us know here, and a member of our team will personally respond.

I want to participate but I can’t afford it. What can I do? We have early bird pricing (before 5/21/21) and offer a monthly payment option. You could also consider recruiting 9 friends or colleagues to join you. We give discounts for groups of 10 or more.

What if I can’t complete the 6 week course? You will have access to the resources for a full six months, so you can choose to proceed very slowly, or whenever you do have the time. 

What happens after the 6 week course? That’s up to you. We need you in this work, and trust you won’t treat this as a one-and-done experience. We hope you’ll work to find your next learning opportunity, whether with us or one of the other great offerings in the field. 

What if I still have questions? Please be in touch with us with your questions by contacting us here. Thank you so much for your interest!