If you’re looking to reflect on this past year and on how you might bravely, yet compassionately practice t’shuvah (return) and healing during the High Holidays, we’ve put together a series of podcast episodes to spur thoughts, ideas, and imagination (and, stay tuned for more episodes!). 💜🍎🍯
Read MoreAs the Jewish new year, Rosh Hashanah, approaches, we think about the year that was, and reflect on ways to improve while still holding ourselves tenderly.
Read MoreIn this week’s episode, we reflect on the meaning of Elul, the month in the Jewish calendar that leads up to Rosh HaShanah and the high holidays. This time of anticipation calls us to prepare ourselves spiritually for the new year. We talk about the symbolic meanings of the holiday and how the ritual of hearing the shofar can be a powerful call to being “awake.”
Read MoreIn this week’s episode April and Tracie reflect on Juneteenth and continue to think about how liberation from enslavement looked different for Jews and Black people. April also shares the ways in which the importance of rest from labour is an important lesson that resonated with her this Juneteenth.
Read MoreJust like Twitty, I’ve had my own recent epiphany about Pesach. While the narratives between Jews and Black folks enslaved in American chattel slavery have often been , there is a crucial difference. For Black folks in America, the sea never parted. They were never able to escape their enslavers and oppressors nor the systems of enslavement and oppression that have held them hostage. So this year, as we move out of the Pesach season, I think that it is important to acknowledge this reality in our work and in future Seders until freedom is actually achieved for all people, and especially for Black, Indigenous, and other folks of the Global Majority. Until slavery and it’s offspring have been uprooted in America, none of us are free.
Read MoreApril and Tracie explore the ways the messiness of spring contributes to its beauty and potential. The also notice how structure--whether the practice of counting the Omer, a vine's trellis or their online course Awareness Accelerator--can support the important and messy work of growth.
Read More“Collective liberation. That's sort of my phrase for what some may call the messianic era, is when we've achieved collective liberation.” - April N. Baskin
Read MoreIn the first of two Passover-themed shows, April shares her epiphany that despite a resonance between the story of the Israelites leaving mitzrayim (Egypt, the narrow place) and the emancipation of enslaved Africans in the U.S., the two stories diverge in important and significant ways.
Read More“Whether it's joy, peace, contentment, power, calm - what if we didn't have to wait? What if that experience could be less conditional on external circumstances? And how many more circumstances could we start to shift over time if we were able to stay in that place?” - April N. Baskin
Read More“I would wanna ask you what's one day's worth of oil in your life? What is one skill, one bit of knowledge you do have that it's easy to overlook?” - April N. Baskin
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