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Hi Friend,
Today is George Floyd’s yahrzeit, and tonight is Shavuot, when we
study all night in community to observe and celebrate receiving
Torah.
Three years ago George Floyd’s life was taken, and my city,
Minneapolis, and the nation were activated as a part of a resistance
movement demanding a fundamental shift in the way we imagine public
safety. This wasn’t the first time that our communities and
movements have had to confront the consequences of generations of
racism and violence against Black people.
In May of 2020, I was working with unsheltered folks as a social
worker. By October, I was organizing my local multiracial Jewish
community with Jewish Community Action to build our practices of
community safety. 2020 was not the first time our community wrestled
with the question of how we keep one another safe. In 2015 and 2016,
when Jamar Clark and Philando Castille were murdered by police, I saw
my local Jewish community choose to shift its understanding of who we
are accountable to, expanding our circle of care and concern.
In the last decade we’ve learned to be more prepared and to reach
for one another. There are lessons we’ve learned in the narrow places
that we’ve carried forward to build more possibility in the wider
community. Over this period, we’ve also felt new threats as a Jewish
community with the increase in antisemitic rhetoric and right-wing
violence. We’ve learned to choose solidarity because we know
that choosing isolation will not keep us safe. We’re learning that we
need one another.
Tonight, as I join my community for Tikkun Leil Shavuot (a
night of study), I look forward to leaning into the ways in which
choosing one another can help us repair and prepare for our collective
future. If you’d like to lean with me, I invite you into a couple of
texts that help me practice that choice. I encourage reading the full
books, but I wanted to offer a smaller bite of each that you could dig
into today:
Tonight, I’ll be dedicating my study to George Floyd and all those
who have had their lives taken by systems of violence. May his
and their memories continue to be for a blessing.
In solidarity,
Enzi Tanner
National Organizer, Bend the Arc: Jewish Action
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