Dear Friend,

This week, we’re reading Parsha Yitro.

The Erev Rav has left Mitzrayim and is remaking itself as a new people unified under a new vision of liberation. Yitro, Moses’ father-in-law, arrives to celebrate the miracles G*d has enacted on behalf of the Israelites and to counsel Moses to expand leadership. Yitro knows the power and possibility of this movement of people. He also knows that leading is too heavy for Moses alone and that the community is stronger when more people lead.

When the people left Egypt, they did so with the knowledge that they were capable of more than they had ever imagined. Yitro’s agitation to Moses is in service to that possibility—a reminder about the sometimes heavy burden of visionary leadership and the necessity of cultivating and including many leaders to build a people.

In the same spirit of being in service to the possibility of liberation, I’m so excited to share this year’s Black Futures Month playlist with you. It’s called L’atidim sh’chorim—“Towards Black Futures.” It is about reflecting on the long road behind and ahead of us and making the choice to build leaderful movements towards Black liberation and liberation for us all.

Like our ancestors, if we can imagine a world beyond oppression, beyond hatred, beyond slavery—and then build toward that possibility—we will have made a better world together. We have seen before what we can do. As you listen this year, I invite you to reflect on your relationship to Black leadership and vision. What does Black visionary leadership mean in your life? How have you experienced freedom through Black visionary leadership?

We are building together—a movement and an America that hasn’t existed in a sustained way before. We cannot do it alone. And we’ve seen before what we can do as a movement and what we can do together.

Listen to the L’atidim sh’chorim: Towards Black Futures playlist.

L’shalom,

Graie
(he|they)