February 13, 2025 • 68 mins
From a Zionist upbringing in Cincinnati to radical political organizing in New York City, Rabbi Alissa Wise takes us on a vast educational journey. Across time and space, she remains devoted to tending to Jewish people and Jewish life. Our conversation touches on her years working for Jewish Voice for Peace and pushing the organization to support BDS and become explicitly anti-Zionist. Rabbi Wise also shares intimate stories of learning with Palestinian shepherds and people tending to Jewish graves in Ukraine.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Welcome to Another Education is Possible, a podcast about education's radical potential.
(00:06):
I'm your host, Jordan Corson.
Apologies to listeners for my voice.
I'm getting over a bout of COVID and I'm a little exhausted and a little foggy, but
I'm very excited to share.
Our guest today is Rabbi Alyssa Wise, an organizer and educator based in Philadelphia.
(00:27):
And since Alyssa is a Rabbi, I thought initially on this short introduction, I would talk about
my own relationship to synagogues.
And strangely, though, I'm going to talk about something else that's in my head.
And I'm recording this the day after the Philadelphia Eagles just won their second Super Bowl.
(00:50):
And of course, sports are very complicated to talk about on a podcast about radical education.
But I bring this up not to just say go birds, but of course, go birds.
I actually bring up, because there's this very small moment, hours and hours after the
(01:11):
game, we were stuck inside and we're still watching, my partner and I were still watching
TV at like 1.30 or 2 in the morning and the news was just desperate to find anybody.
They could still interview and they went to a like a Dick's Sporting Goods where people
were buying Super Bowl merchandise and there are a few stragglers who were still in the
store and they found this one man and they said, how do you feel about the Super Bowl?
(01:35):
And they said, oh, I feel so wonderful.
We did so great tonight.
We were on our game on defense.
We were doing this and then this person pauses and it's like, you know, of course I'm doing
the thing that all Philadelphia fans do, which is we use we as if we're every person in
the Philadelphia region is an active participant in the on the Eagles roster.
(01:59):
But then he pauses again and he looks at the report and he's like, yeah, but Philadelphia
is a we city.
And in that strange kind of delirious euphoric moment as I'm watching TV, something hit me
so hard that I think gets at the the core of what today's episode is about.
(02:22):
You know, we talk a lot on this podcast about the notion of doikite of of here in us.
And you know, I don't want to ruin the specific stories that Rabbi wise shares, but they're
full of this notion of caring for a place and building a place with those around you.
(02:47):
And what it means to be a rabbi by caring for and tending to the people around you and
how of course this notion of we is always very complicated and who gets to count as
we is very complicated.
But how building in other world, the the making other worlds possible is a project about building
(03:11):
a home and building place and rooting yourself in time and place through kind of collective
through the work of making a we.
And so with that, let's listen to Rabbi wise.
(03:52):
So I was born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio.
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And I was part of a kind of small, very traditional Jewish community and very Zionist Jewish community.
I was raised at a Jewish day school, where my education really consisted mostly of Holocaust
in Israel.
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That was kind of the bedrock of the education that I got.
And you know, the Jewish day school obviously taught, you know, regular schools topics,
but then half the day was reserved for Hebrew language and Jewish studies, which all of
which really reinforced Zionism.
(05:01):
And this kind of logic that the legacy of the Holocaust was that the world turned its
back on the Jews, and that's why we need Israel because you kind of can't trust your neighbors
or other people to take care of Jews, and we have to take care of ourselves and the
(05:21):
way that we do that is by having this nation state of Israel.
And I think I didn't realize at the time, but in retrospect, right, that like all of
the interpretation of Jewish holidays and the way that Hebrew language was taught to
us was refracted through a Zionist lens, you know, and it's kind of amazing how complete
(05:49):
that was.
I think I was at kind of at the heyday, right?
Like I was in elementary school from the mid 80s to the mid 90s.
And I think that, you know, because of the ways that the Jewish community post 1967 kind
of really took on support for Israel and Zionism as like the main bedrock of Jewish identity,
(06:13):
right?
Like the Jewish education I got really was a product of that.
All my Hebrew, all my teachers who taught me Hebrew were Israelis who are now living
in the U.S. And then I got a lot of my Jewish education also at home, right?
So we had a very kind of vibrant Jewish life.
(06:37):
Like our life as a family really revolved around the Jewish holiday cycle on Shabbat.
And I had a wide circle of family that I, you know, spent almost every Shabbat with and
every Jewish holiday and kind of that was, you know, was very much like we lived very
(06:57):
much a Jewish life in Cincinnati, right?
And it wasn't till I was in high school when I went to public school that I started to
have, you know, friends and community who weren't Jewish.
Actually I think the beginning was when I joined Community Soccer League, right?
And was the first time I started having non-Jewish friends.
(07:20):
And then I also went to Jewish summer camp, which was the same of the Holocaust and Israel
education.
And there the education that I got was really, you know, they had a kind of, I don't want
to put like Paulo Freire type educational philosophies in their mouths.
(07:43):
I don't know that that is exactly what they had in mind, but it was very embodied in that
way of, you know, I remember at summer camp doing, you know, reenactments of Arab Israeli
war.
There was actually like one letter that I found in a box in my mom's house.
(08:04):
We were looking through some stuff where I wrote a letter from camp that she saved, where
I said, you know, today we've played Arab Israeli war.
I was an Arab frowny face, but luckily we lost.
You know, just like terrible amounts of anti Arab racism that I was indoctrinated with
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and a kind of idea that Jews living by the sword was just a fact of Jewish life, right?
Like that that was kind of our only option for survival.
And so when you ask about Palestine, I mean, one of the things that's important to say
is that there was the word Palestinian and Palestine was never uttered in my upbringing.
(08:52):
You know, the myth of a land without a people for people that a land was really strong.
Arab was the word that right.
That was what I said in my letter home, right?
And my family took us to Israel multiple times growing up.
I went on a tour of concentration camps when I was 16 with my camp.
(09:15):
And then we went from the concentration camp tour to Israel for six weeks, you know, and
part of it was, you know, it was very, it was like, it was not very subtle, right?
It really was like, go to this, you know, place where Jews were decimated.
And then I remember like landing in Israel then and like, you know, we all like, kiss
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the ground and we're so happy to have this Jewish state where we could be safe, you know,
and it wasn't until I decided to go to spend my junior year abroad at Hebrew University
in Jerusalem, because I was still a Zionist at that point.
And it was only then that I learned about Palestinians and I learned about the Nakba.
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And that was the moment where my politics shifted was that year that I spent there in 1999 to
2000, where I felt really betrayed and lied to by my family and by my, the educators who
taught me growing up.
And you know, over the years, I've really struggled with that.
(10:25):
Like that was a dominant feeling, was I felt very lied to and misled.
And I've come to understand that my family didn't know, right?
Like they about the Nakba, they also weren't taught it.
I still hold them responsible for having the responsibility to educate themselves about
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that and know it, right?
Like it doesn't leave them off the hook for the fact that they, you know, did pass on
a education of that was incomplete and kind of absolve themselves of responsibility for,
(11:08):
you know, the crises on the ground in Israel, Palestine.
And so that was really formative, you know, of that sense that the way that I was taught,
right, it was, you know, was manipulative, right?
And I felt manipulated into feeling a certain way about Israel and about Jewish life.
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And so it was from that point on that my politics really shifted.
There's something so interesting there about it sounds like what we in education would
call a hidden curriculum, right?
You're being taught Hebrew, but you're actually being taught Zionism.
You're being taught math, but you're being taught Zionism, which is strange because
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normally the hidden curriculum doesn't have a converse, which is the explicit curriculum
because nobody needed to hide it because they were also saying also be a Zionist also Israel
is your history, your present and your future.
It's your refuge.
It is your destiny, your birthright, all of these things.
(12:17):
And you know, I don't want to create too much of a linear path, but before we get into this
moment of rupture, I'm wondering if we could stay for just a moment if you have any memories
of anyone during this time in Ohio during summer camp of people challenging that Zionism
in any way or even just speaking.
(12:37):
No, I really, I really don't.
I mean, it really like in my memory, it wasn't until that Hebrew University experience when
I wasn't being handheld by counselors or parents or something in my trips to Israel because
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a previous to that, like my times that I was in Israel where I might have been able to
learn because Palestinians are there, right?
And Palestinian history is there, but I was being led by people who were deliberately
hiding it for me.
I remember understanding during that time, I started to understand, for example, the
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role of the Jewish National Fund, the JNF in the erasure of Palestinian land and villages.
And I toured with this was actually later when I was in rabbinical school, I took some
tours with the Jewish Israeli group, which means remembering, and they're a group that
brings the history of the Nakba into Israeli society.
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And I remember going to some of the JNF forests that I had gone to as a young person and been
told like those are Roman ruins underneath this village, right?
And like, you know, like there was like an actual like complete erasure, right?
That was part of it.
And I remember knowing that the planting of the trees that we were encouraged to do through
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the Jewish National Fund and, you know, the little boxes that we would fill with coins.
And, you know, I got trees planted in my honor when I was born and again in my Batmitsvah,
right?
And so it was, and then that was actually a tool of erasure of Palestinian life, you know?
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And so I think there wasn't anyone to go against the grain of the Zionist narrative that I
had at that time, you know?
And it's kind of, and I've struggled over the years to think about kind of what was
it?
What was the mix of things that was happening for me where I was open to hearing another
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perspective, you know, at that time, you know?
Because I really was raised to be a Jewish Zionist woman and defender of the Jewish people,
which I, you know, it's interesting because my work now, like I still feel that I became
a rabbi for that purpose is to tend to the Jewish people and our spiritual and political
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and moral health, right?
So I have a trajectory from my childhood, but it was that Zionism piece that felt that
needed to be excised in order for me to feel kind of in alignment.
But it really was, I really didn't have those, that pushback until college.
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Yeah, I was pretty, I was pretty contained.
So what is it that drew you to Israel?
Because, you know, some of us, US Ashkenazi Jews feel like, oh, we should make Aliyah.
I'm going to join the Iowa.
I mean, I don't think you say the IOF when you're thinking of doing that.
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And some folks are like, no, Israel's a great place to visit with family.
But what drew you to want to go to Israel?
Yeah, it's, from what I remember, you know, I was raised in this, in a traditional Jewish
environment.
I grew up in an Orthodox synagogue and was very gender segregated, right?
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And as I grew up, I kind of moved away from, like, I didn't have any models of liberal
Jewish life, religious life, but I had this understanding of secular Israeliness, right,
as a way to be Jewish and outside of religious life.
And so, and I also was like, I remember growing up, I always would challenge my family of
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like, if we support Israel so much, why don't we live there?
Like it didn't make sense.
Like, I was like, that's the whole point, you know?
And so when I moved to, in, to Hebrew, you, my, in 1999, I kind of imagined that I would
stay and make aliyah.
Like, that's kind of how I understood what I would do because it, like the way that I
internalize it, it was like, if we really mean this, then we need to mean it, you know,
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and live there and be part of building it.
So I think it was that the thing that drew me was that it was such a focal point of my
identity.
And I was a Jewish studies major in college.
And at that point, I think I actually thought that I would become, I had an idea for like
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a more, I don't know that I would say progressive, but I think I don't know exactly what I had
in mind, but a kind of a innovative way to do Jewish day school.
I imagine being like a day school principal, but doing it in a more interesting way than
what I had, that was kind of my idea of what I was going to do with my life when I started
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college.
I had done, I had been an educator in local synagogues in Cincinnati throughout junior
high and high school, right?
Because I went to Jewish day school.
So then I was put into being an educator, right?
And so I was a leader and I was a leader in my community.
And so I was really kind of encouraged to take on raising the next generation of American
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Jewish Zionists, right?
And I kind of took that on.
And so that's kind of what drew me was that I felt that sense of this is a way that I
can contribute to my community and kind of live the values that I was taught, right?
Was through making Aliyah, becoming an Israeli citizen.
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That's kind of what I imagined for myself.
But the year I spent there turned out quite different.
And so let's zoom in.
What happened?
Was this rupture a single moment at the Hebrew University?
Yeah.
I mean, I have a memory, I know it probably didn't work this way, but I have a memory
of like the first moment, which was a protest on the campus from the Palestinian Israeli
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students with a flag that I had never seen talking about an occupation that I had never
heard of.
And I remember I went up to them and said, it's so embarrassing.
But I did say like a land without a people for people.
I was like, what are you talking about?
And they were like, no.
What the fuck are you talking about?
We've been here.
Yeah.
It was it's pretty humiliating.
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But that's what I was taught.
You know, like that's how that's what I came with.
And that was pretty early on.
I remember that being like in the first couple of weeks that I was on campus there.
And I one thing that to take a step back is one thing that I think was like primed me
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to be open to what happened next after I said that was that the year before I had just started
to understand leftism.
Like I wasn't a leftist and I wasn't even in college.
Like I wasn't really exposed to left organizing until like just like the few months before
I moved to I moved to Jerusalem when I took part in some anti WTO protests.
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There was like a G8 summit in Cincinnati where I'm from and I took part and I was like, I
was really had no idea.
Like I was like very seek getting my sea legs, right?
But it might have been that that kind of like opened a little bit of a crack for me.
Just that experience.
And then basically what how I remember it is that there was kind of layers to the to
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the unraveling.
So after that interaction, the students who I said that to were actually really generous
with me and engaged with me and I started basically re educating myself.
And it started what I remember first reading that was really that I feel like open kind
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of open the floodgates was actually Ben Goryeon's diary.
Davi Ben Goryeon, who was the first prime minister of Israel, and he spoke really explicitly
in his diary about that there was this indigenous Palestinian population there that they would
have to displace.
And it wasn't he wasn't necessarily apologetic about it.
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It just was like a fact of and I remember that's what kind of started me on this feeling
of betrayal, right?
Because I was like, it's right here in the diary.
Right.
It's like it wasn't like it was like some hidden somewhere hidden, right?
It was like very explicit and very plain.
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And so I started going into the West Bank with rabbis for human rights, which I felt
like was, you know, a kind of good mix for me of like still in a Jewish framework, right?
And what we were doing was actually teaching English as a second language to Bedouin children
in the West Bank.
It wasn't necessarily just an understanding Palestinian civil society or anything like
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that.
But it was like seeing how these Bedouin lived or these like, orgated cardboard boxes and
the just how stark the differences are between within the green line and outside the green
line, right?
So that started, you know, and then just kind of being starting to be exposed.
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Just through rabbis for human rights and through these Palestinian students that I befriended
eventually just kind of reading and relearning and unlearning everything that I had been
taught.
You know, one of the other formative things that year was I had a scholarship through the
Jewish Federation that took me that year during Passover to the Ukraine, where we were
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put in a van with Ukrainian college students and a couple of us American college students.
And we traveled around the Ukraine leading Passover satyrs and kind of these stettles
like small villages.
And I ended up being assigned to Southern Ukraine, which is actually where my mother's
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side of the family is from and was in the like ended up going to where she was from
like the actual shtetl.
And that was actually a really, that was like another layer for me, right?
I had already I've been starting to understand Palestinians, right, as the primary victims
of Zionism.
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But then here I was in this land that my ancestors came from.
And what I was being encouraged to do was to encourage the people that we met and any
young people that we met to immigrate to Israel, right?
And I started to and something just didn't work for me of like, why are we not trying
(24:16):
to still remain tethered to these ancestral places where we were?
Like why are we abandoning them for Israel?
And it wasn't like I had like a sophisticated understanding of like settler colonialism
or anything at that point.
Like I just was like, it felt off to me, you know, and I remember a conversation with one
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of the young people we met, a Ukrainian Jewish person in Southern Ukraine who we were like,
why don't you move to Israel?
Like there's so many more young Jews there.
And he said, well, who will take care of the Jewish cemeteries if I leave?
And I think that was very formative for me.
And I remember that really clearly.
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It's like one of the main things I remember from that trip.
And it's kind of in the decades since then, it's reverberated at different moments, right?
I remember in the Trump years when Jewish cemeteries were being desecrated here in the
US, like I thought about that a lot, like, and it kind of fed into my own sense of responsibility
(25:24):
to ancestral places.
And it became a, I started to understand that there's a loss of Jewish communal life and
spiritual life through focusing all of our communal energy on this hyper militarized
ethno state.
(25:45):
And you know, the Ukrainian college students that I was traveling around with, a lot of
them had just learned they were Jewish when they started college, because the Soviet era
fear around Jewish identity was so ingrained in their families that they kind of kept it
a secret, right?
And so part of the time that I was, we were traveling around, we were like explaining
(26:08):
Judaism to them and Jewishness, you know, it was a really deep experience.
And I think to me that I like think about that a lot as like in parallel that year of
what I was doing was kind of like understanding Palestinian dispossession as the core violence
of Zionism, and then understanding that there is like understanding the need to tend to
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diasporic Jewishness, you know, and that there's a loss for Judaism and Jewishness when we,
you know, homogenize ourselves, right into into Zionism.
Yeah, that story is just, well, if anything teaches the notion of doikite of making,
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yeah, that is, you may not have had the vocabulary for it yet, but the, but that is just kind
of stopping me in my tracks thinking about as somebody who wants to kind of further in
practice, particularly on a podcast about education, the idea of like learning and teaching,
embodying doikite, it's that's, wow.
(27:20):
So I'm, I'm imagining then maybe you after this year, you go back and you're like, Hey,
did you all know we should be fighting for Palestinian liberation?
Actually, and, and I think that might even tie into how this continues to be a relationship
to family and friends and folks who amidst this current genocide, what, what happened
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when you came back and brought this new knowledge and this unlearning to your communities?
You were still in college at the time?
Yeah, I had one.
So I, what I didn't stay, obviously, I was like, Okay, I got to go back.
I ended up being there for 13 months.
So like a pretty long junior year.
And when I came back, the second and defaata was breaking out.
(28:08):
And I, the fellowship that I had actually required me to do some things that year back
on campus.
I was at Indiana University in Bloomington.
And I thought to organize a peace vigil, which also was like, now I'm like, there's
(28:30):
all these cringey parts of my, of my political beginnings.
But I, you know, I was like, Oh, it was like really like, right, because it's the second
day defaata broke out like literally when I got back, right?
And to that early 2000.
And I was like, let's have a rabbi and a priest and the Imam.
And, you know, and my scholarship was threatened that I had because I was like supporting the
(28:57):
enemy.
And I was like, that was then the next layer on top of my learning was like, you know,
because this wasn't a time when the kind of repression that we now know as so commonplace
in the Jewish community was really like part, I had no idea, right?
Like I was like, feeling this out kind of for like, for myself, like I didn't, I broke,
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you know, I didn't go back to the same friend group that I had when I left because I had
gone through such a transformation and I did was part of like the Hillel before I left.
But when I came back my senior year, that wasn't a home for me anymore.
And kind of unders and it was so confusing to me because these are the people that raised
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me like I was active in the Jewish Federation as a child and I was as a young person, like
I learned organizing through that.
Like I learned like the brass stacks of how to organize as a teenager through being a
Zionist educate and like it didn't make sense.
Like I feel like I was like applying the values that I thought I was being taught and applying
(30:01):
them to what I was seeing and then I was being faced with such resistance, right?
That that also was radicalizing for me.
So I ended up understand like basically my next move was to go somewhere where there
I was there was going to be other Jews like me because it was a very isolating experience.
(30:22):
I was in I spent that that year in Jerusalem, a cousin of mine had graduated high school
and she decided to come and we went through this transformation together and she did a
gap year before going to college.
And she and I went through this transformation together, which was actually really important.
Like I like it was like me and her against the world, you know.
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And so we kind of like but it doesn't quite work to do it just you and a friend.
I'm like how you really can like steal yourself for this.
So I decided to move to New York City where I knew there would be all kinds of crazy Jews
including Jews who thought like me.
And I was right and I found a group called Jews against the occupation that and I joined
(31:09):
them.
But right when I moved to New York City, of course, two weeks after was September 11.
And so, you know, I had the next layer, right for me was before like basically the story
goes that then I was like on a fast track to becoming a leftist right when they moved
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to New York City.
I do want to talk about where this led you and maybe I'm jumping over a bunch.
But for me, the reconstructionist rabbinical college, the RSC has this kind of mythical
and unknown factor.
But I believe you went there.
(31:53):
So what led you there?
And maybe we could get into a little bit like what what is this place?
I just my partner.
Yeah, yeah, please.
It's an interesting.
Yeah.
I had no idea about reconstructionism until that year that I was in Avodah, the Jewish
service corps program where part of the program is that there is like some programming that
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happens on the weekends or in the evenings.
And one of the programs that year was a talk about revelation, right?
So like the receiving of Torah at Sinai.
And they had rabbis, an Orthodox Rabbi, a conservative Rabbi, a reform Rabbi and a reconstructionist
Rabbi come and talk about their perspectives of revelation.
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And I was so drawn to how the reconstructionist Rabbi understood Jewish history and Jewish
time and relationship to contemporary considerations, right?
Like I had never quite like it just like worked for me.
Right.
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And I was really seeking at that point like what, you know, I was in a such a like an internal
crisis of like, who am I and what am I?
Right.
Like I was having this huge break from my family of origin and also at the same time,
still very deeply rooted and associated with like Jewish life.
And then reconstructionism was presented to me as this way of understanding that Judaism
(33:29):
is a religious civilization that over time has evolved consistently.
Right.
So there's some, it's not a dynamic, it's not like a static tradition where it stopped
evolving.
Like it's always been evolving.
Right.
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And so that was very empowering to me so that because I think I kind of understood was that
like Judaism was something that happened in the past and then it stopped and now you
just enact it and receive it.
And you don't, you're not part of shaping it.
But the way that reconstructionists understand Jewish time, which I think is true is that
(34:11):
it's always been an in process of evolution that in every generation and Jews engage with
the tradition, but then also are part of the world.
And so bring their contemporary influences to understand how to have Jewish life continue
to move, right?
And evolve.
Right.
(34:31):
So you have, for example, like ultra orthodox Jews who froze Jewish time at a certain point
in like the 17th century Europe.
Right.
And that's, you know, the clothes that they wear are, were from, weren't Jewish necessarily.
They were like, what was worn at that time in Poland when they kind of froze Jewish time.
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But everybody else in Jewish time continued to evolve.
And so that really drew me to, to reconstructions and that understanding that we all are responsible
for making sure Judaism endures as a tradition through which people can make meaning, find
(35:14):
connection, find solace, right?
And be tethered to history while at the same time not having to abandon contemporary values.
And I was also really struck by how reconstructionists, you know, did that evolving like in really
practical terms, right?
(35:34):
So they were the first to take the chosen people language out of Jewish liturgy, understanding
that there actually is an impact, right?
Where you, if you repeat a certain idea over and over again, it kind of can confuse, right?
For yourself about like what, who we are, and that we need to be really diligent, that
(35:59):
our words match our values.
And that, you know, reconstructionism has been at the forefront of challenging American
Jewish orthodoxies and integrating feminism and queerness into study and practice and
that.
So it felt really ripe for me that that would be the place where, of any place to become
(36:21):
a rabbi that I could bring, like when I started rabbinical school, I was already an anti-Zionist.
And I was actually urged to become a rabbi by my Jews against occupation comrades who
were like, you know, you're an organizer, you have all this Jewish knowledge, there's
no rabbis that represent us, like go be that rabbi for us.
(36:47):
And that's kind of how I got nudged along.
And I mean, I think I also had a self interest in going to rabbinical school of like owning
Judaism for myself and relearning it without Zionism.
Like it was a chance for me to kind of redo the Jewish education I had as a child, like,
and to get a liberal arts education, honestly, which I didn't get quite at is at IU where
(37:10):
I went to college, because it was at the reconstructionist school that like there was like feminist
and queer theory that was integrated into the education, right?
Like that I didn't have, I didn't get exactly where at IU for whatever set of reasons.
And the way that the curriculum has changed since I was there, but I really loved the
(37:33):
curriculum when I was there.
I'm sad that they changed it because I thought it was really brilliant.
And the way that it worked was in, it was a five year program.
And over the five years, each year went through Jewish time.
So the first year was biblical.
The second year was rabbinic.
The third year was medieval.
(37:54):
The fourth year was modern and the fifth year was contemporary.
And so in each of those years, you studied the traditional texts of that time, but also
the social history of that time, right?
So you kind of under, like they understood that like you can't just read a text without
understanding what people were, what the, like the life experience was, right?
(38:15):
Like of the people writing these texts, right?
Like because you don't think it was like divinely written, right?
You understand that they're, and so you had to understand like what was the life of the
rabbis when they started writing the Talmud.
And actually the first reading from my rabbinic thought class that I had was actually a work
(38:40):
by Edward Said from this collection of essays on exile.
And because exile is such a central experience for Judaism, right?
Like my, what I got out of my education at the Reconstructionist Reubenical College was
this understanding that in the, before the destruction of the second temple, you could
(39:04):
talk about Israelite religion.
And after that, that you could talk about Judaism.
Judaism is a tradition that was born in diaspora and for the spiritual experience of exile.
And so the teacher wanted us to ground us in this experience of exile and like what
does that feel like to understand before, as we go into study Talmud, like this is the
(39:28):
spiritual on psychological experience that the rabbis are in.
And that was really, that was really powerful for me.
So it like helped me like I, I feel like my, you know, the education I got there was really
a stellar educational environment where I was like able to like reassemble my own sense
(39:51):
of Jewish history and Jewish time and, and, and have all this Jewish knowledge that I
had like put into context when it felt like it was a little bit floating before.
Yeah.
And that, I mean, unlike your, I think you sort of summer camp or, that is explicitly
(40:13):
faring to me the idea of truly reading the word by reading the world.
So it sounds like at this time you're outside of the RRC reading, engaging with Palestine,
Palestinians, Palestinian literature, was that written into the curriculum or their
(40:35):
other anti Zionist organizers at the RRC?
No, when I was there, I mean, now there are so many, but when I was there, I was, this
is kind of like a theme for my early life is that I was kind of like a little bit of
a like a little solo, like on my own kind of like forging these like in different spaces.
(40:59):
I was the only one with my politics when at the time, but I spent, which was significant.
It was really challenging, even though I had this really, a really great educational experience
or also these really challenging elements, which is one of them is that there's a requirement
that you spend a year studying in Israel for in rabbinical school.
(41:22):
And most every rabbinical school has that requirement.
And I negotiated with them that instead of spending a year in Israel, which means like
living in occupied West Jerusalem study, you know, like I just like wasn't going to go
study in a Yeshiva in West Jerusalem, like that it wasn't going to be what I was, I didn't
(41:45):
feel up for that.
I negotiated with them that instead I would spend every summer there.
And I spent the summers living in the West Bank in this with this group called the International
Women's Peace Service, where Palestinian nonviolent coordinating committee kind of set up this
house for women from all over the world to come and do human rights monitoring.
(42:11):
And so I did that every summer of rabbinical school.
And that was, you know, a very, I mean, this was through the years 2004 to 2009.
And those were the years when the apartheid wall was being built and snaking through.
And so every summer I would consecutively see the way that it was cutting off Palestinians
(42:36):
from each other, stealing land, had really intense experiences of it was a the where
we lived in the West Bank was proximate to a lot of these were like really outpost ideological
Jewish settlements where I had a lot of intense encounters with Jewish settlers and army.
(42:59):
And at a certain point, the school got a lot some got went outside people outside the school
got wind of me and put pressure on the school to kick me out not ordain me.
And I was able to prevent that from happening, obviously, but it was, you know, without getting
(43:23):
into all the gory details of it was a really unsettling experience and challenging experience.
And at the same time, like when I went into rabbinical school, I knew it was going to be
challenging.
And one of the things that I think I felt at the time was, which we haven't discussed
(43:45):
yet is that, you know, before I went between the years 2000 and 2004, when I started rabbinical
school when I was in this like fast track, like relearning unlearning, you know, kind
of re understanding myself and my place in the world.
I had like a really big break with my family.
(44:07):
And and so by the time I got to rabbinical school, I felt like, even though I knew it
was going to be challenging, I was like, I already did the most challenging thing, right,
of having to break with my family.
So it was like, nothing was going to be as painful as that was going to have been.
So I started to build what has ended up being what I needed to do this work for so many
(44:32):
decades now is, you know, a very thick skin of being able to not let stuff get at me,
you know, and that's a really hard way of being in the world.
But it ended up being a, you know, a self protective mechanism, you know, that I needed,
I needed to protect myself with in order to live my life in accordance with my own values.
(45:00):
And it's in addition to that, you're also building family, building community, building
home, which I think is maybe a great entry point to I love these moments when, you know,
you've you and your co author have kind of been with me all weekend.
As I pour through this is a podcast, people can't see I'm holding up your book.
(45:25):
Yeah.
Which part of this is about building?
Yeah, political home.
Yeah.
And I have many questions about this and many comments and I know you're one author and
one prominent part of this larger movement.
(45:45):
But since this is an educational podcast, I thought we could start with the educational
aspect.
Normally, when I, when I speak to somebody, I have to kind of read education into it and
think about where that intersects, but lessons is literally written into the subtitle.
And I'm wondering where that came in, because this is not, this is the story of JVP.
(46:09):
And this is the story of how Jews can study and struggle in solidarity for a free Palestine.
But, but this isn't, this isn't your or Rebecca's story.
It isn't an oral history.
Like I, I heard about this one was coming out and thought like, oh, cool, like that organization
(46:30):
I'm in, I can, I can hear like the history of it.
And that's in there, but it's not, it's not like a collected oral history of JVP 2000
present.
Um, so why, why is it a, you know, I could talk about, I highlighted some of the, um,
questions for, um, reflection at the end of chapters, like why is it constructed in this
(46:56):
kind of pedagogical way?
Yeah.
Um, thank you for that question.
Yeah, I think, you know, when we decided to write the book, we decided to write it for
a few reasons.
One is that, and in that way is because we have each really benefited from organizers
(47:18):
who have written, um, reflect, reflected on their years of organizing and what worked
and what didn't work.
And so we felt we had learned the hard way, a lot of really important organizing lessons.
So we kind of felt a responsibility, right, to contribute to, um, organizing craft through
(47:40):
sharing those lessons, right?
And that part of it is that the JVP story isn't over.
JVP is continuing, it's like an ongoing organization.
So it wasn't time to write, um, a definitive history, right?
What it was time for was understanding that she and I were leaders of this organization
at a critical 10 year period where JVP really evolved to being a political force to reckon
(48:05):
with in the U S.
And it's important to note that we finished the manuscript in September, 2023, um, which
is wild to think about.
We had no idea the world that the book was going to come into.
And it's actually like so much more relevant now, right?
Obviously about what the lessons were because of, you know, the moment that we are, that's
(48:30):
political moment we're in of, um, organizing against genocide, right?
Like the worst case scenario of how, what the next, um, the next phase of this horror
was going to be.
So we wanted it to be focused on lessons that other movements can use as well as our movement.
(48:51):
And we wanted it to be contributing to organizing as craft.
We really feel like organizing is a really important tool and it's actually really different
than mobilization with, um, and different than activism, right?
That organizing is a really essential tool to world, to world building, um, making the
(49:12):
new world.
And, and, you know, I am an educator.
I identify in part as an educator.
That's how I got my start, right?
And then throughout my years at JVP, I helped put together two curriculums, first called
Facing the Nakba and the second around Islamophobia.
(49:33):
And so we did feel like we wanted it to have like really be like a workbook that organizers
from any movement could pick up and learn something about the Palestine solidarity movement
and learn something about the Jewish wing of the Palestine solidarity movement.
But more importantly, have concrete lessons that they could use to like not make the same
(49:56):
mistakes that we did or make them in a different way or learn from the things that really worked
for us.
And I think like the final pieces that we are actually we're trying to like embody what
we taught, like when, when we would do leadership development institutes and do these like weekend
long trainings for JVP organizers.
(50:17):
I would always emphasize that a campaign or a project isn't complete until you've done
debrief and evaluation, right?
That's actually an essential part of a life cycle of any campaign or project.
And so even with something as massive as running an organization for a decade, like we also
needed to do that debrief and evaluation so that we could like that actually is an essential
(50:40):
part.
And so this book was that evaluation process for us.
And I again, I'm going to try to not just delve into all my questions about this book.
And also I apologize that I do have a couple of questions that I hope that these are connecting
to fighting and ending the genocide and the broader lessons.
(51:04):
But as I wrote them out, I thought, oh my God, I'm being like, Rabbi wise as a police
teacher.
So I don't want to make this my therapy session.
But I think there's no, but you can do that a little bit.
I want to have nothing to do with this.
But I do.
I just have this.
I think there's one story in here.
(51:27):
For me, anti-Zionism meant untethering from Judaism for a long time.
And I really, really struggled with what that meant.
And I'm not doing it justice, but there's this beautiful story that I had my own version
of recently.
And I think many, many other Jews as well have talking about protesting TIA craft.
(51:57):
And this person named Jethro who had resisted and then was emotional.
And I had, there was a JVP action that I participated in at the beginning of the high holidays.
And I'm still kind of in this process of like, like my partner, I've been talking about going
to Colesettic since we moved back to Philly during the pandemic.
And I'm always resistant.
(52:18):
But so beyond my process, it's just in that moment that I had, I had struggled and thought
more of JVP as a mechanism to help organize and fight in solidarity for free Palestine.
I heard the shofar and I looked over at these people huddled behind banners and just kind
of, I was overcome with emotion.
(52:41):
And I think there's something that no matter how far I get from my Jewish upbringing and
no matter how much I want to break from it.
The second I hear lojado D, there's something in my DNA that just is activated.
So I'm wondering maybe just thinking out loud about the kind of relationship, any ideas
(53:05):
of why for you this feeling of I need to fight the apartheid state, I need to fight this
ethno state.
Was that a recommitment to Judaism and why, why fight as Jews perhaps?
Yeah, it's a really powerful and important question.
And I think, you know, I feel, I want to say a thing just for listeners who might, this
(53:30):
might benefit them, their own understanding it, just to say it very explicitly, which
is that Judaism is a religious civilization that's thousands of years old.
Zionism is a political movement that it's only over 120 years old.
It started in the late 19th century.
And Judaism has been kind of hijacked by Zionism.
(53:56):
And Judaism, as I understand it, is fundamentally anti-Zionist, meaning Judaism, as I was saying
before, is a tradition of that was built for the experience of exile and the experience
of diaspora, right?
It's baked into the religious kind of tools of Judaism is being away from center, right?
(54:25):
There's this longing, right, for a reunification in a messianic time.
But Judaism really isn't messianic in the way that Christianity is, right?
Like it's like a perpetual longing and a really articulation of like a human, the human experience
of being separated.
(54:47):
So I think that for me, I say all that because I think it's really important to me, like
I feel very mother-berry about Judaism, like I want to protect it, right?
And I feel really angry at the ways that Zionism, which by the way is a tradition, is a political
(55:10):
ideology that was fomented first by Christians and then kind of given to Jews as a way out
as a really flawed and horrific mistake of a way out of Christian anti-Semitism, that
the ways in which it has kind of like taken and so many Jews have allowed our traditions
(55:35):
to be used to justify violence, right?
And so for me, I feel like there is, like I feel like it's a little bit delicate, right?
Like how to talk about this because at the one hand, I don't want to be, I don't want
to reify the idea that Judaism and Zionism are synonymous, right?
And so I want to be able to hold Judaism is separate from Zionism and I need to be able
(56:00):
to hold at the same time, right?
That the way that Judaism has evolved in this moment is that most Jewish communities still,
though this is changing, are a legion to Zionism, right?
So it's like holding these contradictions at the same time, which I think is really hard,
right?
(56:21):
And I think we need to rebuild our skills of that on the left.
And I think this political moment is teaching us that.
So I think that for me, here's a story that I think encapsulates it for me.
There was this moment when I was doing that work I mentioned when I was in rabbinical
school of protective presence work in the West Bank.
(56:45):
And I was assigned, basically the logic is that if people who are not Palestinian are
around Palestinians, people will be less violent to Palestinians.
So I was assigned one day to accompany a Palestinian to graze his sheep on his land,
where recently Israel had made a road cut through his land where Palestinians aren't
(57:08):
allowed to be on.
So anytime he would step across the road to his own land, he would be shot at by settlers
or military.
So I was assigned to kind of spend the day with him so he could graze his flock.
And we didn't have much language in common to speak.
(57:28):
So it was kind of a quiet, solitary day with him.
And at a certain point, I was kind of just thinking about how unpredictable it is that
I was going to be there.
Just like middle class white girl from Cincinnati, like raised in the Zionist family, spending
(57:48):
or like putting my life on the line.
Like I don't think I really thought of it that way, but I understood there was some
risk there to protect this Palestinian shepherd.
And the golden rule came into my mind.
You know, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.
And in Hebrew, it's the Haftal Re'cha Kamolcha.
(58:09):
And the Re'cha is like what is translated as your neighbor.
But it actually also means that word also means shepherd.
So it's like, you shall love your shepherd as yourself.
And I was like, that's literally what I was doing in that moment.
And it was this crystalist.
I was like, that was my like, I think that was the moment where I really settled in deeper
(58:33):
into myself of understanding how intertwined the fight for Palestinian liberation is for
ensuring that there is a Judaism that's worthy to be passed down to future generations.
Right.
Like I feel very, I feel an understand that many generations of my family continue to
(58:58):
be Jewish when it really would have been easier to not be.
Right.
And there are many moments throughout my family's history where converting to Christianity and
leaving Judaism would have meant a much safer and happier and healthier, comfortable life.
And they didn't do that.
And I feel like it's not, in my time, it's not I am responsible for making similar choices.
(59:23):
You know, and so I feel that when we as Jews oppose.
Zionism and acting this kind of violence in the name of Judaism, you know, we are doing
healing, right?
Healing work.
(59:43):
And I also feel like you don't need to be Jewish to do it.
Right.
Like I think the most of those things at the same time, like there's like, there's nothing
like I think that part of this work of separating Judaism from Zionism, which I feel like it's
like a dogged commitment.
Like you have to be doing it at every moment because they're so intertwined that like you
have to literally be like sifting through all of that at every moment.
(01:00:06):
And I think that, you know, it makes sense to me that when you hear the shofar, right,
like this ancient sound that I feel like is like one of the oldest practices, right, Jewish
tradition, right, that it would stir something in you, right.
And that it would remind you of your responsibilities and your sense of accountability in the world.
(01:00:32):
And I think that's what my hope is to inspire a broader and successive generations of Jews
that when they hear the shofar, they hear the a half dollar reacher kamochah.
You should love your shepherd as yourself.
(01:00:52):
I have a few quotes from your book.
I'm going to just read this one.
So we hope that these reflections, this is for anybody who buys the book, which everybody
should.
It's on page 29.
You say, we hope that these reflections on JVPs organizing successes and failures can
offer to every social justice movement opportunities to draw crucial lessons and strategies for
(01:01:14):
the ongoing collective work of building hope, justice and power, always rooted in love.
And for me, these entwined notions of love and rage are so important.
And since I've been an anti-Zionist, I have, I would say at least for since October 7th,
(01:01:38):
the rage part has come so easily and so fully.
And I have had a very difficult time when I see so much of the genocide unfolding every
day, tapping into any form of love.
(01:02:00):
And I wonder if you have any rabbinical guidance, any personal guidance, any organizing guidance
for those who are, who are only doing the rage part, if the love can still come into
that resistance and struggle.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, it's a good question.
(01:02:22):
And I, I assume that what you're saying though, is that it's hard for you to feel love for
Jewish people broadly.
Right?
Is that what you're saying?
Like what is like, because I feel like maybe say another sentence about that.
Yeah.
Because I care about.
I think what is, you know, sometimes in the, like, I'm in a couple of committees in JVP
(01:02:48):
that are, you know, get into the, I think a great pairing to your book is, I'm sure
folks have said this to you, let this radicalize you.
And so much of that helps you get into the mundane, everyday aspects of organizing work.
And for me, sometimes what keeps me going, I need to be, I need to be fueled by something,
(01:03:11):
right?
And a commitment to liberation should be driven by, by love and care and connection.
But when I think about like, why do I, why do I show up when I'm exhausted?
Why do I, you know, do anything?
Why do I, you know, I, I enjoy doing this podcast because I connect to people and get
to do interviews, but like, if it does anything, I'm driven by a deep sense of rage at the
(01:03:37):
Israeli state and a deep sense of wanting to fight that through my rage, which maybe
is very, you know, podcast rage is me doing an ira glass impression and rambling.
But like, but the rage is down here somewhere and the love, I don't know where that is.
(01:03:57):
Yeah.
I mean, I think that, you know, we chose the title solidarity is the political version
of love, which is actually a quote from Melanie K. Cantowitz of blessed memory, who has a
Jewish feminist writer and activist.
And we chose that because it really feels like, and I could just speak for myself that
(01:04:21):
my dedicating my life to Palestine solidarity work is an expression of love, not just for
Palestinians, but also for Jews and for all people, right?
That there is a sense that even when I'm at my most rageful, I'm rageful because I love
the world and don't want to watch it burn, right?
(01:04:41):
I'm rageful because I love this tradition and I hate the way that it's been used to
justify violence, right?
And like, I'm rageful, but it's like, I love my children and I want them to have a future
that's like livable and meaningful.
(01:05:03):
And so I think that for me, they are two sides of the same coin, the love and the rage, right?
And that I, that if I didn't love the world, if I didn't love this tradition, if I didn't
love people, like I wouldn't feel rage, right?
I wouldn't be as angry as I am, right?
And so for me, that's how I, that's how I think about it, you know?
(01:05:29):
And I think part of the, one of the core lessons of the book and just of my organizing life
as you spoke to before is that you, no one can survive doing this kind of work without
having people around them who love them and who you love and who remind you why you go
(01:05:50):
about doing this work, like it would just be impossible, right?
And I think in particular, and Jewish anti-Zionist organizing where for most of us, we have had
to give up some amount of communal comfort in order to do this work, right?
And surrounding yourself with people who remind you, you know, what is the world that you're
(01:06:14):
working for, right?
And I think, you know, it's really hard right now.
It's, you know, and I don't want to sugarcoat it.
Like it's like, you know, I resonate with what you're saying and that it's true, like
am I fueled by rage or love?
But I know when I'm like, and am able to connect to love, I get better results, right?
(01:06:38):
And I get, I get smarter strategies, I get more impactful conversations, I get more meaningful
ways to communicate what I want to say, right?
And so I do think it's two sides of the same coin.
And I think that there is a responsibility to, in whatever ways, right?
(01:07:02):
Even if it's not going to services and praying, but what are the other ways that you could
take time in your life to cultivate love, you know, and to notice what you love, right?
And I think that's one of the things that spiritual life, religious life can offer you
is just moments to pause, to reflect on your life.
And I hope that all people, regardless of their religious inclinations or spiritual
(01:07:30):
inclinations still do that work, because I think it's a very grounding, it's a very
grounding practice to be able to like be in gratitude and notice what it is you love
and what it is that you're fighting for.
(01:08:01):
Today's episode was produced by Yardana Raan and Samantha Haley.
If you like our podcast, please give us a rating on whatever you use to listen to podcasts.
Also please follow us on another Ed is possible.
We're on Instagram.
We're also going to continue to share lots of mutual aid campaigns there.
Highlight those and we encourage listeners to donate and support in many different ways.
(01:08:28):
We'll be back soon with a new episode of another education as possible.
Welcome to Another Education is Possible, a podcast about education's radical potential.
(00:06):
I'm your host, Jordan Corson.
Apologies to listeners for my voice.
I'm getting over a bout of COVID and I'm a little exhausted and a little foggy, but
I'm very excited to share.
Our guest today is Rabbi Alyssa Wise, an organizer and educator based in Philadelphia.
(00:27):
And since Alyssa is a Rabbi, I thought initially on this short introduction, I would talk about
my own relationship to synagogues.
And strangely, though, I'm going to talk about something else that's in my head.
And I'm recording this the day after the Philadelphia Eagles just won their second Super Bowl.
(00:50):
And of course, sports are very complicated to talk about on a podcast about radical education.
But I bring this up not to just say go birds, but of course, go birds.
I actually bring up, because there's this very small moment, hours and hours after the
(01:11):
game, we were stuck inside and we're still watching, my partner and I were still watching
TV at like 1.30 or 2 in the morning and the news was just desperate to find anybody.
They could still interview and they went to a like a Dick's Sporting Goods where people
were buying Super Bowl merchandise and there are a few stragglers who were still in the
store and they found this one man and they said, how do you feel about the Super Bowl?
(01:35):
And they said, oh, I feel so wonderful.
We did so great tonight.
We were on our game on defense.
We were doing this and then this person pauses and it's like, you know, of course I'm doing
the thing that all Philadelphia fans do, which is we use we as if we're every person in
the Philadelphia region is an active participant in the on the Eagles roster.
(01:59):
But then he pauses again and he looks at the report and he's like, yeah, but Philadelphia
is a we city.
And in that strange kind of delirious euphoric moment as I'm watching TV, something hit me
so hard that I think gets at the the core of what today's episode is about.
(02:22):
You know, we talk a lot on this podcast about the notion of doikite of of here in us.
And you know, I don't want to ruin the specific stories that Rabbi wise shares, but they're
full of this notion of caring for a place and building a place with those around you.
(02:47):
And what it means to be a rabbi by caring for and tending to the people around you and
how of course this notion of we is always very complicated and who gets to count as
we is very complicated.
But how building in other world, the the making other worlds possible is a project about building
(03:11):
a home and building place and rooting yourself in time and place through kind of collective
through the work of making a we.
And so with that, let's listen to Rabbi wise.
(03:52):
So I was born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio.
(04:18):
And I was part of a kind of small, very traditional Jewish community and very Zionist Jewish community.
I was raised at a Jewish day school, where my education really consisted mostly of Holocaust
in Israel.
(04:38):
That was kind of the bedrock of the education that I got.
And you know, the Jewish day school obviously taught, you know, regular schools topics,
but then half the day was reserved for Hebrew language and Jewish studies, which all of
which really reinforced Zionism.
(05:01):
And this kind of logic that the legacy of the Holocaust was that the world turned its
back on the Jews, and that's why we need Israel because you kind of can't trust your neighbors
or other people to take care of Jews, and we have to take care of ourselves and the
(05:21):
way that we do that is by having this nation state of Israel.
And I think I didn't realize at the time, but in retrospect, right, that like all of
the interpretation of Jewish holidays and the way that Hebrew language was taught to
us was refracted through a Zionist lens, you know, and it's kind of amazing how complete
(05:49):
that was.
I think I was at kind of at the heyday, right?
Like I was in elementary school from the mid 80s to the mid 90s.
And I think that, you know, because of the ways that the Jewish community post 1967 kind
of really took on support for Israel and Zionism as like the main bedrock of Jewish identity,
(06:13):
right?
Like the Jewish education I got really was a product of that.
All my Hebrew, all my teachers who taught me Hebrew were Israelis who are now living
in the U.S. And then I got a lot of my Jewish education also at home, right?
So we had a very kind of vibrant Jewish life.
(06:37):
Like our life as a family really revolved around the Jewish holiday cycle on Shabbat.
And I had a wide circle of family that I, you know, spent almost every Shabbat with and
every Jewish holiday and kind of that was, you know, was very much like we lived very
(06:57):
much a Jewish life in Cincinnati, right?
And it wasn't till I was in high school when I went to public school that I started to
have, you know, friends and community who weren't Jewish.
Actually I think the beginning was when I joined Community Soccer League, right?
And was the first time I started having non-Jewish friends.
(07:20):
And then I also went to Jewish summer camp, which was the same of the Holocaust and Israel
education.
And there the education that I got was really, you know, they had a kind of, I don't want
to put like Paulo Freire type educational philosophies in their mouths.
(07:43):
I don't know that that is exactly what they had in mind, but it was very embodied in that
way of, you know, I remember at summer camp doing, you know, reenactments of Arab Israeli
war.
There was actually like one letter that I found in a box in my mom's house.
(08:04):
We were looking through some stuff where I wrote a letter from camp that she saved, where
I said, you know, today we've played Arab Israeli war.
I was an Arab frowny face, but luckily we lost.
You know, just like terrible amounts of anti Arab racism that I was indoctrinated with
(08:26):
and a kind of idea that Jews living by the sword was just a fact of Jewish life, right?
Like that that was kind of our only option for survival.
And so when you ask about Palestine, I mean, one of the things that's important to say
is that there was the word Palestinian and Palestine was never uttered in my upbringing.
(08:52):
You know, the myth of a land without a people for people that a land was really strong.
Arab was the word that right.
That was what I said in my letter home, right?
And my family took us to Israel multiple times growing up.
I went on a tour of concentration camps when I was 16 with my camp.
(09:15):
And then we went from the concentration camp tour to Israel for six weeks, you know, and
part of it was, you know, it was very, it was like, it was not very subtle, right?
It really was like, go to this, you know, place where Jews were decimated.
And then I remember like landing in Israel then and like, you know, we all like, kiss
(09:38):
the ground and we're so happy to have this Jewish state where we could be safe, you know,
and it wasn't until I decided to go to spend my junior year abroad at Hebrew University
in Jerusalem, because I was still a Zionist at that point.
And it was only then that I learned about Palestinians and I learned about the Nakba.
(10:03):
And that was the moment where my politics shifted was that year that I spent there in 1999 to
2000, where I felt really betrayed and lied to by my family and by my, the educators who
taught me growing up.
And you know, over the years, I've really struggled with that.
(10:25):
Like that was a dominant feeling, was I felt very lied to and misled.
And I've come to understand that my family didn't know, right?
Like they about the Nakba, they also weren't taught it.
I still hold them responsible for having the responsibility to educate themselves about
(10:47):
that and know it, right?
Like it doesn't leave them off the hook for the fact that they, you know, did pass on
a education of that was incomplete and kind of absolve themselves of responsibility for,
(11:08):
you know, the crises on the ground in Israel, Palestine.
And so that was really formative, you know, of that sense that the way that I was taught,
right, it was, you know, was manipulative, right?
And I felt manipulated into feeling a certain way about Israel and about Jewish life.
(11:32):
And so it was from that point on that my politics really shifted.
There's something so interesting there about it sounds like what we in education would
call a hidden curriculum, right?
You're being taught Hebrew, but you're actually being taught Zionism.
You're being taught math, but you're being taught Zionism, which is strange because
(11:55):
normally the hidden curriculum doesn't have a converse, which is the explicit curriculum
because nobody needed to hide it because they were also saying also be a Zionist also Israel
is your history, your present and your future.
It's your refuge.
It is your destiny, your birthright, all of these things.
(12:17):
And you know, I don't want to create too much of a linear path, but before we get into this
moment of rupture, I'm wondering if we could stay for just a moment if you have any memories
of anyone during this time in Ohio during summer camp of people challenging that Zionism
in any way or even just speaking.
(12:37):
No, I really, I really don't.
I mean, it really like in my memory, it wasn't until that Hebrew University experience when
I wasn't being handheld by counselors or parents or something in my trips to Israel because
(12:58):
a previous to that, like my times that I was in Israel where I might have been able to
learn because Palestinians are there, right?
And Palestinian history is there, but I was being led by people who were deliberately
hiding it for me.
I remember understanding during that time, I started to understand, for example, the
(13:20):
role of the Jewish National Fund, the JNF in the erasure of Palestinian land and villages.
And I toured with this was actually later when I was in rabbinical school, I took some
tours with the Jewish Israeli group, which means remembering, and they're a group that
brings the history of the Nakba into Israeli society.
(13:45):
And I remember going to some of the JNF forests that I had gone to as a young person and been
told like those are Roman ruins underneath this village, right?
And like, you know, like there was like an actual like complete erasure, right?
That was part of it.
And I remember knowing that the planting of the trees that we were encouraged to do through
(14:05):
the Jewish National Fund and, you know, the little boxes that we would fill with coins.
And, you know, I got trees planted in my honor when I was born and again in my Batmitsvah,
right?
And so it was, and then that was actually a tool of erasure of Palestinian life, you know?
(14:26):
And so I think there wasn't anyone to go against the grain of the Zionist narrative that I
had at that time, you know?
And it's kind of, and I've struggled over the years to think about kind of what was
it?
What was the mix of things that was happening for me where I was open to hearing another
(14:48):
perspective, you know, at that time, you know?
Because I really was raised to be a Jewish Zionist woman and defender of the Jewish people,
which I, you know, it's interesting because my work now, like I still feel that I became
a rabbi for that purpose is to tend to the Jewish people and our spiritual and political
(15:12):
and moral health, right?
So I have a trajectory from my childhood, but it was that Zionism piece that felt that
needed to be excised in order for me to feel kind of in alignment.
But it really was, I really didn't have those, that pushback until college.
(15:34):
Yeah, I was pretty, I was pretty contained.
So what is it that drew you to Israel?
Because, you know, some of us, US Ashkenazi Jews feel like, oh, we should make Aliyah.
I'm going to join the Iowa.
I mean, I don't think you say the IOF when you're thinking of doing that.
(15:55):
And some folks are like, no, Israel's a great place to visit with family.
But what drew you to want to go to Israel?
Yeah, it's, from what I remember, you know, I was raised in this, in a traditional Jewish
environment.
I grew up in an Orthodox synagogue and was very gender segregated, right?
(16:17):
And as I grew up, I kind of moved away from, like, I didn't have any models of liberal
Jewish life, religious life, but I had this understanding of secular Israeliness, right,
as a way to be Jewish and outside of religious life.
And so, and I also was like, I remember growing up, I always would challenge my family of
(16:41):
like, if we support Israel so much, why don't we live there?
Like it didn't make sense.
Like, I was like, that's the whole point, you know?
And so when I moved to, in, to Hebrew, you, my, in 1999, I kind of imagined that I would
stay and make aliyah.
Like, that's kind of how I understood what I would do because it, like the way that I
internalize it, it was like, if we really mean this, then we need to mean it, you know,
(17:04):
and live there and be part of building it.
So I think it was that the thing that drew me was that it was such a focal point of my
identity.
And I was a Jewish studies major in college.
And at that point, I think I actually thought that I would become, I had an idea for like
(17:25):
a more, I don't know that I would say progressive, but I think I don't know exactly what I had
in mind, but a kind of a innovative way to do Jewish day school.
I imagine being like a day school principal, but doing it in a more interesting way than
what I had, that was kind of my idea of what I was going to do with my life when I started
(17:46):
college.
I had done, I had been an educator in local synagogues in Cincinnati throughout junior
high and high school, right?
Because I went to Jewish day school.
So then I was put into being an educator, right?
And so I was a leader and I was a leader in my community.
And so I was really kind of encouraged to take on raising the next generation of American
(18:14):
Jewish Zionists, right?
And I kind of took that on.
And so that's kind of what drew me was that I felt that sense of this is a way that I
can contribute to my community and kind of live the values that I was taught, right?
Was through making Aliyah, becoming an Israeli citizen.
(18:35):
That's kind of what I imagined for myself.
But the year I spent there turned out quite different.
And so let's zoom in.
What happened?
Was this rupture a single moment at the Hebrew University?
Yeah.
I mean, I have a memory, I know it probably didn't work this way, but I have a memory
of like the first moment, which was a protest on the campus from the Palestinian Israeli
(19:04):
students with a flag that I had never seen talking about an occupation that I had never
heard of.
And I remember I went up to them and said, it's so embarrassing.
But I did say like a land without a people for people.
I was like, what are you talking about?
And they were like, no.
What the fuck are you talking about?
We've been here.
Yeah.
It was it's pretty humiliating.
(19:25):
But that's what I was taught.
You know, like that's how that's what I came with.
And that was pretty early on.
I remember that being like in the first couple of weeks that I was on campus there.
And I one thing that to take a step back is one thing that I think was like primed me
(19:46):
to be open to what happened next after I said that was that the year before I had just started
to understand leftism.
Like I wasn't a leftist and I wasn't even in college.
Like I wasn't really exposed to left organizing until like just like the few months before
I moved to I moved to Jerusalem when I took part in some anti WTO protests.
(20:14):
There was like a G8 summit in Cincinnati where I'm from and I took part and I was like, I
was really had no idea.
Like I was like very seek getting my sea legs, right?
But it might have been that that kind of like opened a little bit of a crack for me.
Just that experience.
And then basically what how I remember it is that there was kind of layers to the to
(20:42):
the unraveling.
So after that interaction, the students who I said that to were actually really generous
with me and engaged with me and I started basically re educating myself.
And it started what I remember first reading that was really that I feel like open kind
(21:07):
of open the floodgates was actually Ben Goryeon's diary.
Davi Ben Goryeon, who was the first prime minister of Israel, and he spoke really explicitly
in his diary about that there was this indigenous Palestinian population there that they would
have to displace.
And it wasn't he wasn't necessarily apologetic about it.
(21:30):
It just was like a fact of and I remember that's what kind of started me on this feeling
of betrayal, right?
Because I was like, it's right here in the diary.
Right.
It's like it wasn't like it was like some hidden somewhere hidden, right?
It was like very explicit and very plain.
(21:52):
And so I started going into the West Bank with rabbis for human rights, which I felt
like was, you know, a kind of good mix for me of like still in a Jewish framework, right?
And what we were doing was actually teaching English as a second language to Bedouin children
in the West Bank.
It wasn't necessarily just an understanding Palestinian civil society or anything like
(22:19):
that.
But it was like seeing how these Bedouin lived or these like, orgated cardboard boxes and
the just how stark the differences are between within the green line and outside the green
line, right?
So that started, you know, and then just kind of being starting to be exposed.
(22:42):
Just through rabbis for human rights and through these Palestinian students that I befriended
eventually just kind of reading and relearning and unlearning everything that I had been
taught.
You know, one of the other formative things that year was I had a scholarship through the
Jewish Federation that took me that year during Passover to the Ukraine, where we were
(23:10):
put in a van with Ukrainian college students and a couple of us American college students.
And we traveled around the Ukraine leading Passover satyrs and kind of these stettles
like small villages.
And I ended up being assigned to Southern Ukraine, which is actually where my mother's
(23:35):
side of the family is from and was in the like ended up going to where she was from
like the actual shtetl.
And that was actually a really, that was like another layer for me, right?
I had already I've been starting to understand Palestinians, right, as the primary victims
of Zionism.
(23:56):
But then here I was in this land that my ancestors came from.
And what I was being encouraged to do was to encourage the people that we met and any
young people that we met to immigrate to Israel, right?
And I started to and something just didn't work for me of like, why are we not trying
(24:16):
to still remain tethered to these ancestral places where we were?
Like why are we abandoning them for Israel?
And it wasn't like I had like a sophisticated understanding of like settler colonialism
or anything at that point.
Like I just was like, it felt off to me, you know, and I remember a conversation with one
(24:41):
of the young people we met, a Ukrainian Jewish person in Southern Ukraine who we were like,
why don't you move to Israel?
Like there's so many more young Jews there.
And he said, well, who will take care of the Jewish cemeteries if I leave?
And I think that was very formative for me.
And I remember that really clearly.
(25:02):
It's like one of the main things I remember from that trip.
And it's kind of in the decades since then, it's reverberated at different moments, right?
I remember in the Trump years when Jewish cemeteries were being desecrated here in the
US, like I thought about that a lot, like, and it kind of fed into my own sense of responsibility
(25:24):
to ancestral places.
And it became a, I started to understand that there's a loss of Jewish communal life and
spiritual life through focusing all of our communal energy on this hyper militarized
ethno state.
(25:45):
And you know, the Ukrainian college students that I was traveling around with, a lot of
them had just learned they were Jewish when they started college, because the Soviet era
fear around Jewish identity was so ingrained in their families that they kind of kept it
a secret, right?
And so part of the time that I was, we were traveling around, we were like explaining
(26:08):
Judaism to them and Jewishness, you know, it was a really deep experience.
And I think to me that I like think about that a lot as like in parallel that year of
what I was doing was kind of like understanding Palestinian dispossession as the core violence
of Zionism, and then understanding that there is like understanding the need to tend to
(26:33):
diasporic Jewishness, you know, and that there's a loss for Judaism and Jewishness when we,
you know, homogenize ourselves, right into into Zionism.
Yeah, that story is just, well, if anything teaches the notion of doikite of making,
(26:56):
yeah, that is, you may not have had the vocabulary for it yet, but the, but that is just kind
of stopping me in my tracks thinking about as somebody who wants to kind of further in
practice, particularly on a podcast about education, the idea of like learning and teaching,
embodying doikite, it's that's, wow.
(27:20):
So I'm, I'm imagining then maybe you after this year, you go back and you're like, Hey,
did you all know we should be fighting for Palestinian liberation?
Actually, and, and I think that might even tie into how this continues to be a relationship
to family and friends and folks who amidst this current genocide, what, what happened
(27:45):
when you came back and brought this new knowledge and this unlearning to your communities?
You were still in college at the time?
Yeah, I had one.
So I, what I didn't stay, obviously, I was like, Okay, I got to go back.
I ended up being there for 13 months.
So like a pretty long junior year.
And when I came back, the second and defaata was breaking out.
(28:08):
And I, the fellowship that I had actually required me to do some things that year back
on campus.
I was at Indiana University in Bloomington.
And I thought to organize a peace vigil, which also was like, now I'm like, there's
(28:30):
all these cringey parts of my, of my political beginnings.
But I, you know, I was like, Oh, it was like really like, right, because it's the second
day defaata broke out like literally when I got back, right?
And to that early 2000.
And I was like, let's have a rabbi and a priest and the Imam.
And, you know, and my scholarship was threatened that I had because I was like supporting the
(28:57):
enemy.
And I was like, that was then the next layer on top of my learning was like, you know,
because this wasn't a time when the kind of repression that we now know as so commonplace
in the Jewish community was really like part, I had no idea, right?
Like I was like, feeling this out kind of for like, for myself, like I didn't, I broke,
(29:19):
you know, I didn't go back to the same friend group that I had when I left because I had
gone through such a transformation and I did was part of like the Hillel before I left.
But when I came back my senior year, that wasn't a home for me anymore.
And kind of unders and it was so confusing to me because these are the people that raised
(29:40):
me like I was active in the Jewish Federation as a child and I was as a young person, like
I learned organizing through that.
Like I learned like the brass stacks of how to organize as a teenager through being a
Zionist educate and like it didn't make sense.
Like I feel like I was like applying the values that I thought I was being taught and applying
(30:01):
them to what I was seeing and then I was being faced with such resistance, right?
That that also was radicalizing for me.
So I ended up understand like basically my next move was to go somewhere where there
I was there was going to be other Jews like me because it was a very isolating experience.
(30:22):
I was in I spent that that year in Jerusalem, a cousin of mine had graduated high school
and she decided to come and we went through this transformation together and she did a
gap year before going to college.
And she and I went through this transformation together, which was actually really important.
Like I like it was like me and her against the world, you know.
(30:45):
And so we kind of like but it doesn't quite work to do it just you and a friend.
I'm like how you really can like steal yourself for this.
So I decided to move to New York City where I knew there would be all kinds of crazy Jews
including Jews who thought like me.
And I was right and I found a group called Jews against the occupation that and I joined
(31:09):
them.
But right when I moved to New York City, of course, two weeks after was September 11.
And so, you know, I had the next layer, right for me was before like basically the story
goes that then I was like on a fast track to becoming a leftist right when they moved
(31:33):
to New York City.
I do want to talk about where this led you and maybe I'm jumping over a bunch.
But for me, the reconstructionist rabbinical college, the RSC has this kind of mythical
and unknown factor.
But I believe you went there.
(31:53):
So what led you there?
And maybe we could get into a little bit like what what is this place?
I just my partner.
Yeah, yeah, please.
It's an interesting.
Yeah.
I had no idea about reconstructionism until that year that I was in Avodah, the Jewish
service corps program where part of the program is that there is like some programming that
(32:18):
happens on the weekends or in the evenings.
And one of the programs that year was a talk about revelation, right?
So like the receiving of Torah at Sinai.
And they had rabbis, an Orthodox Rabbi, a conservative Rabbi, a reform Rabbi and a reconstructionist
Rabbi come and talk about their perspectives of revelation.
(32:41):
And I was so drawn to how the reconstructionist Rabbi understood Jewish history and Jewish
time and relationship to contemporary considerations, right?
Like I had never quite like it just like worked for me.
Right.
(33:02):
And I was really seeking at that point like what, you know, I was in a such a like an internal
crisis of like, who am I and what am I?
Right.
Like I was having this huge break from my family of origin and also at the same time,
still very deeply rooted and associated with like Jewish life.
And then reconstructionism was presented to me as this way of understanding that Judaism
(33:29):
is a religious civilization that over time has evolved consistently.
Right.
So there's some, it's not a dynamic, it's not like a static tradition where it stopped
evolving.
Like it's always been evolving.
Right.
(33:50):
And so that was very empowering to me so that because I think I kind of understood was that
like Judaism was something that happened in the past and then it stopped and now you
just enact it and receive it.
And you don't, you're not part of shaping it.
But the way that reconstructionists understand Jewish time, which I think is true is that
(34:11):
it's always been an in process of evolution that in every generation and Jews engage with
the tradition, but then also are part of the world.
And so bring their contemporary influences to understand how to have Jewish life continue
to move, right?
And evolve.
Right.
(34:31):
So you have, for example, like ultra orthodox Jews who froze Jewish time at a certain point
in like the 17th century Europe.
Right.
And that's, you know, the clothes that they wear are, were from, weren't Jewish necessarily.
They were like, what was worn at that time in Poland when they kind of froze Jewish time.
(34:53):
But everybody else in Jewish time continued to evolve.
And so that really drew me to, to reconstructions and that understanding that we all are responsible
for making sure Judaism endures as a tradition through which people can make meaning, find
(35:14):
connection, find solace, right?
And be tethered to history while at the same time not having to abandon contemporary values.
And I was also really struck by how reconstructionists, you know, did that evolving like in really
practical terms, right?
(35:34):
So they were the first to take the chosen people language out of Jewish liturgy, understanding
that there actually is an impact, right?
Where you, if you repeat a certain idea over and over again, it kind of can confuse, right?
For yourself about like what, who we are, and that we need to be really diligent, that
(35:59):
our words match our values.
And that, you know, reconstructionism has been at the forefront of challenging American
Jewish orthodoxies and integrating feminism and queerness into study and practice and
that.
So it felt really ripe for me that that would be the place where, of any place to become
(36:21):
a rabbi that I could bring, like when I started rabbinical school, I was already an anti-Zionist.
And I was actually urged to become a rabbi by my Jews against occupation comrades who
were like, you know, you're an organizer, you have all this Jewish knowledge, there's
no rabbis that represent us, like go be that rabbi for us.
(36:47):
And that's kind of how I got nudged along.
And I mean, I think I also had a self interest in going to rabbinical school of like owning
Judaism for myself and relearning it without Zionism.
Like it was a chance for me to kind of redo the Jewish education I had as a child, like,
and to get a liberal arts education, honestly, which I didn't get quite at is at IU where
(37:10):
I went to college, because it was at the reconstructionist school that like there was like feminist
and queer theory that was integrated into the education, right?
Like that I didn't have, I didn't get exactly where at IU for whatever set of reasons.
And the way that the curriculum has changed since I was there, but I really loved the
(37:33):
curriculum when I was there.
I'm sad that they changed it because I thought it was really brilliant.
And the way that it worked was in, it was a five year program.
And over the five years, each year went through Jewish time.
So the first year was biblical.
The second year was rabbinic.
The third year was medieval.
(37:54):
The fourth year was modern and the fifth year was contemporary.
And so in each of those years, you studied the traditional texts of that time, but also
the social history of that time, right?
So you kind of under, like they understood that like you can't just read a text without
understanding what people were, what the, like the life experience was, right?
(38:15):
Like of the people writing these texts, right?
Like because you don't think it was like divinely written, right?
You understand that they're, and so you had to understand like what was the life of the
rabbis when they started writing the Talmud.
And actually the first reading from my rabbinic thought class that I had was actually a work
(38:40):
by Edward Said from this collection of essays on exile.
And because exile is such a central experience for Judaism, right?
Like my, what I got out of my education at the Reconstructionist Reubenical College was
this understanding that in the, before the destruction of the second temple, you could
(39:04):
talk about Israelite religion.
And after that, that you could talk about Judaism.
Judaism is a tradition that was born in diaspora and for the spiritual experience of exile.
And so the teacher wanted us to ground us in this experience of exile and like what
does that feel like to understand before, as we go into study Talmud, like this is the
(39:28):
spiritual on psychological experience that the rabbis are in.
And that was really, that was really powerful for me.
So it like helped me like I, I feel like my, you know, the education I got there was really
a stellar educational environment where I was like able to like reassemble my own sense
(39:51):
of Jewish history and Jewish time and, and, and have all this Jewish knowledge that I
had like put into context when it felt like it was a little bit floating before.
Yeah.
And that, I mean, unlike your, I think you sort of summer camp or, that is explicitly
(40:13):
faring to me the idea of truly reading the word by reading the world.
So it sounds like at this time you're outside of the RRC reading, engaging with Palestine,
Palestinians, Palestinian literature, was that written into the curriculum or their
(40:35):
other anti Zionist organizers at the RRC?
No, when I was there, I mean, now there are so many, but when I was there, I was, this
is kind of like a theme for my early life is that I was kind of like a little bit of
a like a little solo, like on my own kind of like forging these like in different spaces.
(40:59):
I was the only one with my politics when at the time, but I spent, which was significant.
It was really challenging, even though I had this really, a really great educational experience
or also these really challenging elements, which is one of them is that there's a requirement
that you spend a year studying in Israel for in rabbinical school.
(41:22):
And most every rabbinical school has that requirement.
And I negotiated with them that instead of spending a year in Israel, which means like
living in occupied West Jerusalem study, you know, like I just like wasn't going to go
study in a Yeshiva in West Jerusalem, like that it wasn't going to be what I was, I didn't
(41:45):
feel up for that.
I negotiated with them that instead I would spend every summer there.
And I spent the summers living in the West Bank in this with this group called the International
Women's Peace Service, where Palestinian nonviolent coordinating committee kind of set up this
house for women from all over the world to come and do human rights monitoring.
(42:11):
And so I did that every summer of rabbinical school.
And that was, you know, a very, I mean, this was through the years 2004 to 2009.
And those were the years when the apartheid wall was being built and snaking through.
And so every summer I would consecutively see the way that it was cutting off Palestinians
(42:36):
from each other, stealing land, had really intense experiences of it was a the where
we lived in the West Bank was proximate to a lot of these were like really outpost ideological
Jewish settlements where I had a lot of intense encounters with Jewish settlers and army.
(42:59):
And at a certain point, the school got a lot some got went outside people outside the school
got wind of me and put pressure on the school to kick me out not ordain me.
And I was able to prevent that from happening, obviously, but it was, you know, without getting
(43:23):
into all the gory details of it was a really unsettling experience and challenging experience.
And at the same time, like when I went into rabbinical school, I knew it was going to be
challenging.
And one of the things that I think I felt at the time was, which we haven't discussed
(43:45):
yet is that, you know, before I went between the years 2000 and 2004, when I started rabbinical
school when I was in this like fast track, like relearning unlearning, you know, kind
of re understanding myself and my place in the world.
I had like a really big break with my family.
(44:07):
And and so by the time I got to rabbinical school, I felt like, even though I knew it
was going to be challenging, I was like, I already did the most challenging thing, right,
of having to break with my family.
So it was like, nothing was going to be as painful as that was going to have been.
So I started to build what has ended up being what I needed to do this work for so many
(44:32):
decades now is, you know, a very thick skin of being able to not let stuff get at me,
you know, and that's a really hard way of being in the world.
But it ended up being a, you know, a self protective mechanism, you know, that I needed,
I needed to protect myself with in order to live my life in accordance with my own values.
(45:00):
And it's in addition to that, you're also building family, building community, building
home, which I think is maybe a great entry point to I love these moments when, you know,
you've you and your co author have kind of been with me all weekend.
As I pour through this is a podcast, people can't see I'm holding up your book.
(45:25):
Yeah.
Which part of this is about building?
Yeah, political home.
Yeah.
And I have many questions about this and many comments and I know you're one author and
one prominent part of this larger movement.
(45:45):
But since this is an educational podcast, I thought we could start with the educational
aspect.
Normally, when I, when I speak to somebody, I have to kind of read education into it and
think about where that intersects, but lessons is literally written into the subtitle.
And I'm wondering where that came in, because this is not, this is the story of JVP.
(46:09):
And this is the story of how Jews can study and struggle in solidarity for a free Palestine.
But, but this isn't, this isn't your or Rebecca's story.
It isn't an oral history.
Like I, I heard about this one was coming out and thought like, oh, cool, like that organization
(46:30):
I'm in, I can, I can hear like the history of it.
And that's in there, but it's not, it's not like a collected oral history of JVP 2000
present.
Um, so why, why is it a, you know, I could talk about, I highlighted some of the, um,
questions for, um, reflection at the end of chapters, like why is it constructed in this
(46:56):
kind of pedagogical way?
Yeah.
Um, thank you for that question.
Yeah, I think, you know, when we decided to write the book, we decided to write it for
a few reasons.
One is that, and in that way is because we have each really benefited from organizers
(47:18):
who have written, um, reflect, reflected on their years of organizing and what worked
and what didn't work.
And so we felt we had learned the hard way, a lot of really important organizing lessons.
So we kind of felt a responsibility, right, to contribute to, um, organizing craft through
(47:40):
sharing those lessons, right?
And that part of it is that the JVP story isn't over.
JVP is continuing, it's like an ongoing organization.
So it wasn't time to write, um, a definitive history, right?
What it was time for was understanding that she and I were leaders of this organization
at a critical 10 year period where JVP really evolved to being a political force to reckon
(48:05):
with in the U S.
And it's important to note that we finished the manuscript in September, 2023, um, which
is wild to think about.
We had no idea the world that the book was going to come into.
And it's actually like so much more relevant now, right?
Obviously about what the lessons were because of, you know, the moment that we are, that's
(48:30):
political moment we're in of, um, organizing against genocide, right?
Like the worst case scenario of how, what the next, um, the next phase of this horror
was going to be.
So we wanted it to be focused on lessons that other movements can use as well as our movement.
(48:51):
And we wanted it to be contributing to organizing as craft.
We really feel like organizing is a really important tool and it's actually really different
than mobilization with, um, and different than activism, right?
That organizing is a really essential tool to world, to world building, um, making the
(49:12):
new world.
And, and, you know, I am an educator.
I identify in part as an educator.
That's how I got my start, right?
And then throughout my years at JVP, I helped put together two curriculums, first called
Facing the Nakba and the second around Islamophobia.
(49:33):
And so we did feel like we wanted it to have like really be like a workbook that organizers
from any movement could pick up and learn something about the Palestine solidarity movement
and learn something about the Jewish wing of the Palestine solidarity movement.
But more importantly, have concrete lessons that they could use to like not make the same
(49:56):
mistakes that we did or make them in a different way or learn from the things that really worked
for us.
And I think like the final pieces that we are actually we're trying to like embody what
we taught, like when, when we would do leadership development institutes and do these like weekend
long trainings for JVP organizers.
(50:17):
I would always emphasize that a campaign or a project isn't complete until you've done
debrief and evaluation, right?
That's actually an essential part of a life cycle of any campaign or project.
And so even with something as massive as running an organization for a decade, like we also
needed to do that debrief and evaluation so that we could like that actually is an essential
(50:40):
part.
And so this book was that evaluation process for us.
And I again, I'm going to try to not just delve into all my questions about this book.
And also I apologize that I do have a couple of questions that I hope that these are connecting
to fighting and ending the genocide and the broader lessons.
(51:04):
But as I wrote them out, I thought, oh my God, I'm being like, Rabbi wise as a police
teacher.
So I don't want to make this my therapy session.
But I think there's no, but you can do that a little bit.
I want to have nothing to do with this.
But I do.
I just have this.
I think there's one story in here.
(51:27):
For me, anti-Zionism meant untethering from Judaism for a long time.
And I really, really struggled with what that meant.
And I'm not doing it justice, but there's this beautiful story that I had my own version
of recently.
And I think many, many other Jews as well have talking about protesting TIA craft.
(51:57):
And this person named Jethro who had resisted and then was emotional.
And I had, there was a JVP action that I participated in at the beginning of the high holidays.
And I'm still kind of in this process of like, like my partner, I've been talking about going
to Colesettic since we moved back to Philly during the pandemic.
And I'm always resistant.
(52:18):
But so beyond my process, it's just in that moment that I had, I had struggled and thought
more of JVP as a mechanism to help organize and fight in solidarity for free Palestine.
I heard the shofar and I looked over at these people huddled behind banners and just kind
of, I was overcome with emotion.
(52:41):
And I think there's something that no matter how far I get from my Jewish upbringing and
no matter how much I want to break from it.
The second I hear lojado D, there's something in my DNA that just is activated.
So I'm wondering maybe just thinking out loud about the kind of relationship, any ideas
(53:05):
of why for you this feeling of I need to fight the apartheid state, I need to fight this
ethno state.
Was that a recommitment to Judaism and why, why fight as Jews perhaps?
Yeah, it's a really powerful and important question.
And I think, you know, I feel, I want to say a thing just for listeners who might, this
(53:30):
might benefit them, their own understanding it, just to say it very explicitly, which
is that Judaism is a religious civilization that's thousands of years old.
Zionism is a political movement that it's only over 120 years old.
It started in the late 19th century.
And Judaism has been kind of hijacked by Zionism.
(53:56):
And Judaism, as I understand it, is fundamentally anti-Zionist, meaning Judaism, as I was saying
before, is a tradition of that was built for the experience of exile and the experience
of diaspora, right?
It's baked into the religious kind of tools of Judaism is being away from center, right?
(54:25):
There's this longing, right, for a reunification in a messianic time.
But Judaism really isn't messianic in the way that Christianity is, right?
Like it's like a perpetual longing and a really articulation of like a human, the human experience
of being separated.
(54:47):
So I think that for me, I say all that because I think it's really important to me, like
I feel very mother-berry about Judaism, like I want to protect it, right?
And I feel really angry at the ways that Zionism, which by the way is a tradition, is a political
(55:10):
ideology that was fomented first by Christians and then kind of given to Jews as a way out
as a really flawed and horrific mistake of a way out of Christian anti-Semitism, that
the ways in which it has kind of like taken and so many Jews have allowed our traditions
(55:35):
to be used to justify violence, right?
And so for me, I feel like there is, like I feel like it's a little bit delicate, right?
Like how to talk about this because at the one hand, I don't want to be, I don't want
to reify the idea that Judaism and Zionism are synonymous, right?
And so I want to be able to hold Judaism is separate from Zionism and I need to be able
(56:00):
to hold at the same time, right?
That the way that Judaism has evolved in this moment is that most Jewish communities still,
though this is changing, are a legion to Zionism, right?
So it's like holding these contradictions at the same time, which I think is really hard,
right?
(56:21):
And I think we need to rebuild our skills of that on the left.
And I think this political moment is teaching us that.
So I think that for me, here's a story that I think encapsulates it for me.
There was this moment when I was doing that work I mentioned when I was in rabbinical
school of protective presence work in the West Bank.
(56:45):
And I was assigned, basically the logic is that if people who are not Palestinian are
around Palestinians, people will be less violent to Palestinians.
So I was assigned one day to accompany a Palestinian to graze his sheep on his land,
where recently Israel had made a road cut through his land where Palestinians aren't
(57:08):
allowed to be on.
So anytime he would step across the road to his own land, he would be shot at by settlers
or military.
So I was assigned to kind of spend the day with him so he could graze his flock.
And we didn't have much language in common to speak.
(57:28):
So it was kind of a quiet, solitary day with him.
And at a certain point, I was kind of just thinking about how unpredictable it is that
I was going to be there.
Just like middle class white girl from Cincinnati, like raised in the Zionist family, spending
(57:48):
or like putting my life on the line.
Like I don't think I really thought of it that way, but I understood there was some
risk there to protect this Palestinian shepherd.
And the golden rule came into my mind.
You know, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.
And in Hebrew, it's the Haftal Re'cha Kamolcha.
(58:09):
And the Re'cha is like what is translated as your neighbor.
But it actually also means that word also means shepherd.
So it's like, you shall love your shepherd as yourself.
And I was like, that's literally what I was doing in that moment.
And it was this crystalist.
I was like, that was my like, I think that was the moment where I really settled in deeper
(58:33):
into myself of understanding how intertwined the fight for Palestinian liberation is for
ensuring that there is a Judaism that's worthy to be passed down to future generations.
Right.
Like I feel very, I feel an understand that many generations of my family continue to
(58:58):
be Jewish when it really would have been easier to not be.
Right.
And there are many moments throughout my family's history where converting to Christianity and
leaving Judaism would have meant a much safer and happier and healthier, comfortable life.
And they didn't do that.
And I feel like it's not, in my time, it's not I am responsible for making similar choices.
(59:23):
You know, and so I feel that when we as Jews oppose.
Zionism and acting this kind of violence in the name of Judaism, you know, we are doing
healing, right?
Healing work.
(59:43):
And I also feel like you don't need to be Jewish to do it.
Right.
Like I think the most of those things at the same time, like there's like, there's nothing
like I think that part of this work of separating Judaism from Zionism, which I feel like it's
like a dogged commitment.
Like you have to be doing it at every moment because they're so intertwined that like you
have to literally be like sifting through all of that at every moment.
(01:00:06):
And I think that, you know, it makes sense to me that when you hear the shofar, right,
like this ancient sound that I feel like is like one of the oldest practices, right, Jewish
tradition, right, that it would stir something in you, right.
And that it would remind you of your responsibilities and your sense of accountability in the world.
(01:00:32):
And I think that's what my hope is to inspire a broader and successive generations of Jews
that when they hear the shofar, they hear the a half dollar reacher kamochah.
You should love your shepherd as yourself.
(01:00:52):
I have a few quotes from your book.
I'm going to just read this one.
So we hope that these reflections, this is for anybody who buys the book, which everybody
should.
It's on page 29.
You say, we hope that these reflections on JVPs organizing successes and failures can
offer to every social justice movement opportunities to draw crucial lessons and strategies for
(01:01:14):
the ongoing collective work of building hope, justice and power, always rooted in love.
And for me, these entwined notions of love and rage are so important.
And since I've been an anti-Zionist, I have, I would say at least for since October 7th,
(01:01:38):
the rage part has come so easily and so fully.
And I have had a very difficult time when I see so much of the genocide unfolding every
day, tapping into any form of love.
(01:02:00):
And I wonder if you have any rabbinical guidance, any personal guidance, any organizing guidance
for those who are, who are only doing the rage part, if the love can still come into
that resistance and struggle.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, it's a good question.
(01:02:22):
And I, I assume that what you're saying though, is that it's hard for you to feel love for
Jewish people broadly.
Right?
Is that what you're saying?
Like what is like, because I feel like maybe say another sentence about that.
Yeah.
Because I care about.
I think what is, you know, sometimes in the, like, I'm in a couple of committees in JVP
(01:02:48):
that are, you know, get into the, I think a great pairing to your book is, I'm sure
folks have said this to you, let this radicalize you.
And so much of that helps you get into the mundane, everyday aspects of organizing work.
And for me, sometimes what keeps me going, I need to be, I need to be fueled by something,
(01:03:11):
right?
And a commitment to liberation should be driven by, by love and care and connection.
But when I think about like, why do I, why do I show up when I'm exhausted?
Why do I, you know, do anything?
Why do I, you know, I, I enjoy doing this podcast because I connect to people and get
to do interviews, but like, if it does anything, I'm driven by a deep sense of rage at the
(01:03:37):
Israeli state and a deep sense of wanting to fight that through my rage, which maybe
is very, you know, podcast rage is me doing an ira glass impression and rambling.
But like, but the rage is down here somewhere and the love, I don't know where that is.
(01:03:57):
Yeah.
I mean, I think that, you know, we chose the title solidarity is the political version
of love, which is actually a quote from Melanie K. Cantowitz of blessed memory, who has a
Jewish feminist writer and activist.
And we chose that because it really feels like, and I could just speak for myself that
(01:04:21):
my dedicating my life to Palestine solidarity work is an expression of love, not just for
Palestinians, but also for Jews and for all people, right?
That there is a sense that even when I'm at my most rageful, I'm rageful because I love
the world and don't want to watch it burn, right?
(01:04:41):
I'm rageful because I love this tradition and I hate the way that it's been used to
justify violence, right?
And like, I'm rageful, but it's like, I love my children and I want them to have a future
that's like livable and meaningful.
(01:05:03):
And so I think that for me, they are two sides of the same coin, the love and the rage, right?
And that I, that if I didn't love the world, if I didn't love this tradition, if I didn't
love people, like I wouldn't feel rage, right?
I wouldn't be as angry as I am, right?
And so for me, that's how I, that's how I think about it, you know?
(01:05:29):
And I think part of the, one of the core lessons of the book and just of my organizing life
as you spoke to before is that you, no one can survive doing this kind of work without
having people around them who love them and who you love and who remind you why you go
(01:05:50):
about doing this work, like it would just be impossible, right?
And I think in particular, and Jewish anti-Zionist organizing where for most of us, we have had
to give up some amount of communal comfort in order to do this work, right?
And surrounding yourself with people who remind you, you know, what is the world that you're
(01:06:14):
working for, right?
And I think, you know, it's really hard right now.
It's, you know, and I don't want to sugarcoat it.
Like it's like, you know, I resonate with what you're saying and that it's true, like
am I fueled by rage or love?
But I know when I'm like, and am able to connect to love, I get better results, right?
(01:06:38):
And I get, I get smarter strategies, I get more impactful conversations, I get more meaningful
ways to communicate what I want to say, right?
And so I do think it's two sides of the same coin.
And I think that there is a responsibility to, in whatever ways, right?
(01:07:02):
Even if it's not going to services and praying, but what are the other ways that you could
take time in your life to cultivate love, you know, and to notice what you love, right?
And I think that's one of the things that spiritual life, religious life can offer you
is just moments to pause, to reflect on your life.
And I hope that all people, regardless of their religious inclinations or spiritual
(01:07:30):
inclinations still do that work, because I think it's a very grounding, it's a very
grounding practice to be able to like be in gratitude and notice what it is you love
and what it is that you're fighting for.
(01:08:01):
Today's episode was produced by Yardana Raan and Samantha Haley.
If you like our podcast, please give us a rating on whatever you use to listen to podcasts.
Also please follow us on another Ed is possible.
We're on Instagram.
We're also going to continue to share lots of mutual aid campaigns there.
Highlight those and we encourage listeners to donate and support in many different ways.
(01:08:28):
We'll be back soon with a new episode of another education as possible.
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