“What I did was actually try to prepare myself for when it happened again is practice saying out loud, ‘You know what, that's not funny,’ so that if it was a joke, that I actually had on the tip of my tongue - ‘That's not funny.’” - Tracie Guy-Decker
Read More“What would it feel like for us to get the healing we need and for us to start to just enjoy and savor the diversity of our religion and the diversity of our communities of all the folks who are Jewish adjacent, who may not be Jewish?” - April N. Baskin
Read MoreWay back in episode 2, April and Tracie spoke about better alternatives to some of the micro-aggressive things white-identified Jews often say to Jews of Color. So what happens if you overhear someone else trot out a micro-aggressive question or comment? What can you do? What should you do? How can you interrupt the oppression without falling into saviorism? April and Tracie dig into this question and offer some strategies for both disrupting the oppression and supporting the person on the receiving end of it.
Read More“In terms of oppression, we're all swimming and navigating through this sea of unhealed harm. And it's a distraction, it's a distraction, and a disempowerment, a tool of disempowerment, for us to say, who has it worse, rather than us working to support each other through this and lift each other up.” - April N. Baskin
Read MoreBut the true reason why I love Spring is because it is messy, and it teaches me that I can be messy too as I grow. Maybe you have never thought about Spring as messy, so think about it; for every warm, glorious blue sky Spring day, there are ones of cold and rain, even snow!
Read MoreApril and Tracie unpack the idea that "publicly addressing an organization's mistakes does more harm than good." Though there are some who would advise against drawing attention to past mistakes, April and Tracie argue that accountability and honesty are the only way to create and maintain trust.
Read MoreIn another episode tied to their "Flip the Script" resource, April and Tracie investigate the notion that the presence of antisemitism in progressive movements disqualifies those movements from Jewish involvement. Recognizing that, like all systemic oppressions, antisemitism is everywhere, Jews Talk Racial Justice wonders why engagement in progressive spaces feels optional to some when engagement in other spaces where antisemitism is equally present is not.
Read MoreHave you ever seen or heard the advice, “be the person you needed as a child”? That’s kind of what the Ko’ach Fellowship is for me. When I was a Vice President at the URJ, I deeply needed a mentor who was Jewish leader of color who had walked that “senior executive at a large establishment institution” path before. That person just didn’t exist.
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 MoreThis week’s portion can be a challenging one. Over the past several parshot (portions), we’ve been reading instructions about how the priests, Aaron’s sons, are supposed to treat different sacrifices offered on the altar of the mishkan, the tabernacle. In this week’s portion, we’ve moved past instructions, and we see Aaron and his sons actually slaughter the calf of sin offering, mark the horns of the altar with its blood, and turn the appropriate bits into smoke upon the altar. We see this happen with Aaron’s sin offering, with the people’s sin offering, and with the people’s offering of well-being. These animal sacrifices happen again and again, pretty much the way we read it was supposed to, with oft-repeated phrases that turn a vegetarian’s stomach, like “the protruberance of the liver.” To be honest, it’s tough for me to to pay close attention or to distinguish between this portion and earlier ones describing sacrifices.
And then something curious happens.
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