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Friend,
In this moment, we are being called as a country to dismantle the
centuries-old structures of white supremacy that dehumanize and
terrorize Black people — and to build a more just America in its
place.
Many white people and non-Black people of color are taking this
opportunity to educate themselves about the experience of Black people
living in America, including on anti-Black racism and police
brutality.
As a multiracial Jewish community, we must also do that work. We
call for our Jewish community, especially white Jews, to rise up for
Black lives using all of our spiritual, political and intellectual
resources — and to also work to dismantle racism and white supremacy
in our Jewish community.
Here are three reflections by Black Jews that we invite you to read
right now to understand the impact of anti-Black racism on members of
our community:
This moving reflection from Shekhiynah Larks shows us what the
Jewish practice of shiva (Jewish mourning after a death) can teach us
about reaching out in love to Black people and Black Jews in this
moment.
How are we listening, caring for, and offering tangible support to
our Black Jewish family? How are we honoring Black Jewish grief
“without trying to constrain, correct, or fix it?” This is part of how
we collectively shape a world where Black and Black Jewish children
are fully free and thriving.
Read
Shekhiynah’s piece in full at My Jewish Learning — “Black Jews Are
Grieving, and We Need You to Help Us Mourn.”
Shekhiynah Larks is the program coordinator and a diversity
trainer at Be’chol Lashon, as well as a Jeremiah Fellow with Bend the
Arc.
Last week, JTA asked multiple Black Jewish leaders, artists, and
thinkers to share their reflections in response to the murders of
George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Tony McDade and the powerful
uprisings in Minneapolis and across the country.
Ginna Green, Bend the Arc's former Chief Strategy Officer and
current board member, called for our Jewish community to “embrace
radical possibility” — channeling grief and rage to right our
country’s systemic wrongs.
Read
more from Ginna, April Baskin, Yitz Jordan, Anthony Russell, and more
Black Jewish members of our community in JTA’s ”’Believe us': Black
Jews respond to the George Floyd protests, in their own
words.”
Ginna Green works in the Jewish community and the progressive
movement — including with Bend the Arc — and sits on the boards of the
Jews of Color Initiative, the Jewish Social Justice Roundtable, and
Political Research Associates.
Over the past few weeks (and decades), we’ve seen multiple
examples of how white people call and rely on the police to protect
“white space” — places where Black people and people of color are
viewed as threatening or unwelcome.1
Rebecca Pierce names and explores how this policing of white space
exists in Jewish communal spaces — and how we “must actively work to
dismantle the barriers that the white space creates for Jews of color
seeking to engage in Jewish communal life.”
Read
the full piece, “Jews of Color and the Policing of White Space,” at
Jewish Currents.
Rebecca Pierce is a Black Jewish filmmaker and writer from the
San Francisco Bay Area and a contributing writer for Jewish Currents.
Her writing has been published in The Forward, The Nation, and +972
Magazine.
These are just three reflections from Black Jews in our community.
Black Jewish organizers and thinkers have been sharing their lived
experiences and doing this work for generations — and it is crucial
for our entire Jewish community, especially white Jews, to learn,
listen, and act.
As Enzi Tanner, a Minneapolis social worker and leader with Jewish
Community Action, shared with JTA:
“As the Jewish community reaches in and
says how do we support their cause and how do we support the black
community, it’s really important that people reach in to black Jews
and other Jews of color and realize that we’re here. And we need our
community.”
Our Jewish community must continue to fight for Black lives and
Black liberation. That also means looking inward, supporting and
following Black Jewish leadership, and committing to ridding our
communal spaces of white supremacy and anti-Black racism. Bend the Arc
is committed to that journey, to learning from our mistakes, and to
seeking our collective liberation with love and justice.
Thank you for joining us in this work,
The Bend the Arc team
Sources
1. Elijah Anderson, “The
White Space.” Sociology of Race and Ethnicity.
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