Jewish Emergent Network

HomeMediaVirtual ProgramsFor The Sin Of...Confessions of the HeartThe Rabbinic FellowshipShmita 5782
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    Section Two

    Welcome to Section Two Of Our Confessions of the Heart Racial Equity Challenge!

     

    We're so glad you're with us on this unique anti-racism journey of Teshuvah and return as we courageously explore our individual and collective capacity for growth, healing and change. If you're just joining us, welcome! Folks new to the challenge might want to head over to Section One before embarking on Section Two...

    Reminder About The Prompts...
    1. Make an Appointment with Yourself: Please plan to set aside between 20-30 minutes each day you engage with the "Confessions of the Heart" resources.

    2. Create a Space for Yourself: It will be helpful for you to find a quiet place daily where you feel comfortable reading, watching, listening and paying attention to what comes up for you as you move through each prompt.

    3. Your journal is your friend: Use your journal to write down any feelings, reflections that emerge from your engagement of the resources--big or small. Your journal will offer you a map for growth as we move forward.

    4. Build support around you: Schedule weekly 15-minute appointments with your racial equity listening partner so that they can joyfully witness, support and celebrate your growth with you. A good question for this listening partnership might be: What are you learning right now and how is it connecting to your life?
     
    Reminder About Differentiated Tracks…
    To uphold equity in our learning approach, we have included both white and Black, Indigenous, Sephardi/Mizrachi POC learning tracks. These differentiated learning tracks are meant to support you in getting to the heart of what comes up for you racially when engaging in anti-racist work. If you're excited for this challenge but are not sure which track to choose, try answering the following questions:

    1. When asked, how do you identify racially?
    2. When not asked, how are you perceived racially “on the street”? (i.e. how do others perceive you will relate to how you experience and navigate systems?)
    3. In an anti-racism learning group, where would you go to be challenged by others without overburdening them? Where would you go because of a shared affinity/lived experience/identity with others?
    4. Which learning track feels most aligned with your answers to 1-3?

    Don't Forget The Al Chet...
    Yavilah McCoy's powerful adaptation of the Al Chet/Confession liturgy offers a frame for this challenge, so take a few minutes to read it if you haven't yet.

     

    Let's continue the journey...

  • Al Chet Section Two

    For the sins of using the “I” voice of individualism when a

    “We” born of collective accountability was called for.

    For the sins of using “We” toward erasure of others and the elevation of a single narrative.

     

    Neither the Jewish Emergent Network nor Dimensions are directly endorsing any of the artists, healers, diverse teachers of faith, or other content creators whose work is linked in this challenge. We are sharing the world of spirit equitably with many people as we endeavor to learn more about our need to work together across diverse faith communities to dismantle racism and white supremacy for us all.​

  • Prompt One

  • White Jews Learning Track

    READ: Rabbi Mira Rivera - “Ricardo Hylton- Say His Name…”

     

    SEE: Conversations of the Heart: An Anti-racism Photo Elegy by Rabbi Mira Rivera of Romemu

     

    LISTEN: Patrisse Cullors Robert Moss and Krista Tippett On Being

     

    REFLECT & JOURNAL: Consider the last several times you used the pronoun “WE” in reference to the Jewish people, how multiracial and multicultural was your intent? How might you use a more inclusive “WE” to embrace the grief and loss of our collective Jewish experience over ongoing racial injustice in the US? Ask yourself this week:

    1. How am I connecting to Black people and Black experiences in ways that enable me to carry their stories with accountability? How am I connecting to the joy, the suffering and the humanity of Black People?
    2. How am I maturing my relationship to Torah and Spirituality by reimagining how I use we in reference to Jewish wisdom, texts and liturgy? See “The Torah of Beyonce"
    3. How might I use “we” differently this week to help me lead out of vulnerability and model imperfection as I seek change?

    Black, Indigenous, Sephardi/Mizrachi and More Broadly Identified Jews of Color Learning Track

     

    REFLECT: How might you use the pronoun I/We differently to connect your JOC identity to a deeper sense of value for yourself, your family, your spirituality, your connections to and your relationships with others? The singer, and star of “The Color Purple” Cynthia Erivo asks you to imagine that your voice is her voice. Read the words here and sing them with Cynthia. What comes up for you that relates to your anti-racist practice of self-love?

  • Prompt Two

     

  • White Jews Learning Track

    WATCH: Rev. Dr. Otis Moss- The Cross and the Lynching Tree: A Requiem for Ahmaud Arbery

     

    READ: Leo Frank Article on Sephardic Communities

     

    LISTEN: Race & US: Yehudah Kurtzer & Yavilah McCoy

     

    REFLECT: How am I deepening my commitment to becoming a lifelong re-learner of history within my anti-racist practice? What do I know about the impact of White Supremacy systems on the formation of Jewish institutions and communities? What commitments have I made to learning more?

     

     

    Black, Indigenous, Sephardi/Mizrachi and More Broadly Identified Jews of Color Learning Track 

    The We of Resisting Erasure and Embracing Our Diverse Entry Points and Cultural Narratives As BIPOC, and Sephardi/Mizrachi JOC
     

    READ: Being Black, Brown and Jewish By Courtney Parker West 

     

    LISTEN: Sacred Conversations to End Racism, Hosted by Tracy Howe Wispelwey & Dr. Valda Love, Indigenous Approaches to Anti-Racism in conversation with Elona Street Stuart and Edgar Villanueva. (Begin Listening at timestamp 9:56)

     

    REFLECT: Dismantling the WE of Racism, Erasure and Genocide Targeting Indigenous People

     

  • Prompt Three

  • White Jews Learning Track

    SEE: Intro to Anti-racism Meditation: Viveka Chen, Teachings for Uncertain Times, Tricycle.org

     

    SEE: Black Lives Matter Meditation: Mona Chopra, Teachings for Uncertain Times, Tricycle.org

     

    REFLECT & JOURNAL: How can I further explore the “I” and “We” of waking up to lovingkindness and Anti-Racism through meditative practice?

    Black, Indigenous, Sephardi/Mizrachi and More Broadly Identified Jews of Color Learning Track 

    LISTEN: Hannah Lee Sandoval shares her perspective as a second generation Korean American woman, on how Asian Americans can respond on a micro, mezzo, and macro level to the Black Lives Matter movement. Hannah speaks about the necessity of healing for individuals in order to have healing for a community and society.

     

    REFLECT: How is your process for liberation helping you to explore broader cultural narratives and the construct of race itself? How is your anti-racism practice helping you to honor, deconstruct, and decolonize the ways that Supremacy has limited the plurality of JOC voices? How is your anti-racism practice aiding you in “troubling” binary constructs for Whiteness and Blackness and enabling your emergence, healing and repair?

  • Prompt Four

  • White Jews Learning Track

    The We of Talking to our Families About Racism: A Guide

     

    READ: How White People Can Talk To Each Other About Disrupting Racism

     

    REFLECT: One of the most powerful ways for white people to disrupt racism is to engage in brave conversations with the people closest to you. Who is a white person that is close to you that you would like to engage in a conversation about anti-racism? What best practices would you take from this article for setting up that conversation?

     

    ACT: Set up the conversation and have it. Journal on what initiating this conversation was like for you, what you learned from engaging your loved ones and what your next steps might be from here.

    Black, Indigenous, Sephardi/Mizrachi and More Broadly Identified Jews of Color Learning Track 

    LISTEN: The WE of Community Organizing: A Multifaith Panel on Faith Organizing in an election year with Catalina Morales Bahena, Nicole Barnes and Koach Baruch Frazier

     

    REFLECT: What has your experience been as an organizer or participant within Black, Indigenous, Sephardi/Mizrachi and more broadly identified Jews of Color? How have your experiences helped you to answer in a Jewish context: Who are we? Who are we in relation to our people? Who are we in relationship to how our people have been in relationship to other people throughout history? What’s at stake for me/us in the call for deeper equity and justice? In what ways is my Judaism helping me to weave my humanity and the humanity of others together to enact change for our future?

     

  • Prompt Five

     

  • White Jews Learning Track

    Dismantling the WE of Racism, Erasure and Acts of Genocide Targeting Indigenous People

     

    READ: Being Black Brown Jewish in 2016 

     

    READ: Rallying Against Racism

     

    LISTEN: Sacred Conversations to End Racism

     

    REFLECT: What do you know about the Indigenous People of the land you are currently residing upon? How might you connect Jewish traditions to honoring, remembering and being accountable to the worldview, spiritual traditions and survival of Indigenous Peoples? See an example here from the Dimensions JOC-Allies Shabbat service.

    Black, Indigenous, Sephardi/Mizrachi and More Broadly Identified Jews of Color Learning Track 

    Developing A Prophetic "I" In The Context Of An Interconnected "WE"
     

    LISTEN: Rev. Angel Kyodo William- Possibility, Presence, Power, People

     

    REFLECT: Without in any way claiming JOC identity as a monolithic, how are you leaving room in your community building with other JOCs for the nuance and specificity of your own unique experience? Without needing to speak for all who share your identity, how are you utilizing your exploration of Black, Indigenous, Sephardi/Mizrachi and Broader JOC identity to more deeply recognize, appreciate and empower the fullness of your own and others humanity?

     

  • Prompt Six

  • White Jews Learning Track

    Healing Racism With Love

     

    READ: Ahavat Chinam- Healing Racism with Love (below)

    "Equity and justice grows between people when their actions are fueled by an understanding that far from the loving thoughts, prayers and contributions of any individual leader, what people suffering injustice in our world need right now is more LOVE. Not charitable love, but Love that pours down freely like rain. Love that like rain, wants to share itself so bad that it refuses to discriminate, (i.e. giving up that you can love America so much that you can’t love me…) Love that feeds and transforms what has become parched and dried,(i.e. loving the truth out of each other so that there can be healing and reconciliation over the hurts of our shared past) Love that like rain doesn’t judge the recipient of its gift but pours down and lets its waters find their own way. (Love for our children and their safety in schools, love for the immigrants, refugees and homeless among us, love for our mother earth and her care for us despite our abuses, love for those who live regularly with economic insecurity, human love and compassion that transcends politics and borders and gives us the courage to do the right thing and reform systems that are killing us.)" -Yavilah McCoy

     

    REFLECT & JOURNAL: How will you use a “Revolutionary Act of Love” to begin healing historic and present impacts of Racism this week? Consider someone/something that your actions as opposed to your words of love will be best positioned to help/empower? Decide whether it matters that your act of love is known/not known by the recipient. Take action and journal on what this was like for you…

     

    Black, Indigenous, Sephardi/Mizrachi and More Broadly Identified Jews of Color Learning Track 

    The I and We of our Breath… Breathing Our Way to Anti-Racism in Practice
     

    LISTEN: 25 Practice: Grounded Breathing with Teresa P Mateus of Mystic Soul Project

     

    SEE: Spirituality and Anti-Racism: Healing Affirmations for People of Color by Healing Justice.Org

     

    SEE: Healing Steps 

     

    REFLECT: “Love and justice are not two. Without inner change, there can be no outer change; without collective change, no change matters.” What do this call to action from Rev. Angel Kyodo Williams and the Healing Steps of Affirmation (linked above) mean to you and anti-racism practice?

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