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Dispatches from the network and updates from the Foundation.

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Racial Justice


Staying committed as allies to reflection and “an active, consistent, and arduous practice of unlearning and re-evaluating,” will hopefully lead us to taking more smart risks and experimentation over the coming year, and the years ahead.

I belong to many Jewish communities, so it is hard to generalize about the positive changes I have seen in racial representation over this past year. Nevertheless, I see progress that has been made.

If you are tired of talking about racial justice in the Jewish community, good. So am I. However, we are fatigued for different reasons.

Even within our own communities, we can flatten and simplify other people’s experiences and narratives without considering the complexity and diversity among us.

Organizations who value representation over tokenism encourage feedback, see change as vital to growth and empower everyone to feel as if they have a central role in advancing institutional goals.

To walk in someone’s shoes is to feel empathy. I want to take this maxim and go farther – all the way to Ethiopia in the winter of 2023.

Last winter, during the Q&A portion of a panel I’d participated in at B’nai Jeshurun, a synagogue on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, a 5-year-old Black girl’s question punctuated the evening’s conversation with a question that pierced my heart like an arrow.