Some Highlights of Jewish Liberation
Excerpts from the annual Rosh Hashanah letter written by Cherie Brown, International Liberation Reference Person for Jews, to her constituency
Dear beloved Jews,
What a year this has been! We continue to face a worldwide pandemic that has changed all our lives forever. COVID 19 has presented us with enormous challenges but also many new opportunities. And just when we thought we could finally burst free of Zoom life, new variants have been forcing us to proceed with caution and continue our RC life on Zoom once again.
But we Jews are a resilient people. We are certainly having many new opportunities to discharge and are finding ways to adapt and flourish under difficult circumstances. (I, for one, without a rigorous travel schedule, have been able to enjoy and find rest and renewal by observing Shabbat each week.) I hope each of you has been able to make hopeful changes during this difficult time.
Besides COVID, our challenges have included violence between Israel and Gaza; increasing anti-Semitism, particularly on the right; and the climate emergency. As we have discharged and taken new actions, we have found the strength to make Jewish liberation work keep growing and developing. Our relationships with each other and our allies are stronger than ever.
We Jews are just the people [are well suited] for these challenging times. I continue to love doing this work with you. I wish you and your family and loved ones a joyous, healthy, and re-emergent New Year. L’Shana Tova [“Good Year” in Hebrew]. May we grow closer to one another in the New Year. May we make time to prioritize our sessions and our re-emergence. And may we all be more engaged than ever, together with each other and with allies, in building Jewish liberation and transforming society. Hag Sameach (“Happy Holiday” in Hebrew).
JEWISH LIBERATION IN RC
Here are some highlights of Jewish liberation in RC this past year:
Diane Shisk [International Commonality Reference Person for Care of the Environment] and I led the second Jews and the Climate Emergency Workshop. I gained a deeper understanding of the discharging we Jews need to do on ancestral loss to take our place alongside others working on climate justice. Working on climate justice with a Jewish voice and Jewish symbols (for example, blowing the shofar to start each day of a workshop) makes the work more accessible for many Jews.
This past year we launched a project to bring RC to the work of Dayenu Circles, a non-RC Jewish climate project.
We held workshops on Jews and Climate Justice as part of Sustaining All Life. We learned more about what it’s like for Jews to do climate justice work and ensure that anti-Semitism isn’t used to divide the climate movement.
I led the fourth Black Gentiles and White Ashkenazi Jews Workshop with Barbara Love [International Liberation Reference Person for African Heritage People]. We continued to build a stronger Black Gentile-white Jewish alliance. We discharged on the intersection of racism and anti-Semitism (the “hook”) and not letting them be used to divide our peoples.
Eighteen Global Majority Jews attended a workshop at which Black Gentiles were paired with white Ashkenazi Jews.
I experimented with a trust-building circle for Israeli and diaspora Jews. We increased our understanding of what it’s like to be a Jew living in Israel and a Jew living in the diaspora. We worked on racism, U.S. imperialism, and other forces that keep us from one another.
There were bimonthly meetings with the leaders of the Jews and Allies United to End Anti-Semitism project.
I keep increasing my understanding of the significance of the work on being female.
JEWISH LIBERATION OUTSIDE OF RC
Outside of RC, I am working with Jews on college campuses. They are facing enormous challenges with anti-Semitism and issues related to Israel-Palestine. I am advocating a bridge-building approach to taking on [challenging] anti-Semitism.
I co-led a program on intergenerational issues for young adult Jews who are working on Israel-Palestine issues and ending the Occupation. They, and elders they’d invited, had interesting answers to the following question: “Does the existence of Israel make the world a safer place for Jews?” Almost all the elders said yes, and all the young adults said no.
All the young adults had been born after 1967, when the Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza was entrenched. Israel’s oppressive policies and actions had made them ashamed of being Jewish.
I was born in 1949, four years after the Holocaust and one year after the foundation of the state of Israel. It was always clear to me that no matter how oppressive the policies of the Israeli government were, Israel was still of key importance for me as a Jew.
We need to discharge and resolve the intergenerational differences if we are to build a unified Jewish liberation movement.
Silver Spring, Maryland, USA
Reprinted from the RC e-mail discussion list for leaders of Jews
(Present Time 206, January 2022)