Bizarro Torah

For two and a half days in April 2012, members of a progressive Jewish congregation based in Brooklyn participated in an Undoing Racism/Community Organizing workshop with The People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond.

As part of this learning experience, they were introduced to ten principles that have sustained the People’s Institute’s anti-racist organizing for forty years.

But is there a way to link these principles to a Jewish context? As it turns out, there is! And it goes deeper than tikkun olam.

Consider for a moment the phrase ba’al teshuvah, “master of return.” Traditionally, it refers to a person who returns to righteous living through observing mitzvot after a long period of non-observance.

Racism isn’t about individuals being prejudiced, bigoted, or discriminatory. It’s a system that dominates, oppresses, exploits, and excludes people of color for the benefit of white people.

The biggest casualty of racism is our humanity. For racism to do what it does, it requires us to view and treat people of color as less human than white people. Undoing racism allows us to return to our own humanity.

But it’s not enough to simply wish for racism to be over. It takes effort to unlearn harmful attitudes and habits and find new ways of perceiving and interacting with others. Mastering this helps us reclaim our full humanity and transforms us into true agents of freedom, justice, peace, and healing.

Mainstream American culture encourages historical amnesia. Everything that happens before we were born is ancient history and has no connection to people living today. But history matters. It creates the conditions that have effects that continue to this day. The way we talk about history shapes our perceptions about what is happening right now and who it’s happening to.

This is noticeable when talking about race. People seem to forget that Jim Crow remains within living memory. There are people alive today who grew up with separate water fountains, entering buildings through the back door, and sitting at the back of the bus. They also remember the Montgomery bus boycott, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. being alive, and everyday people doing simple things that made a big difference. From their experiences, we know that the past was not just suffering and injustice, but resilience and inspiration.

Aggadah is more than a bunch of old stories from long ago. It’s Jewish history, Jewish folklore, Jewish humor, and Jewish wisdom kept alive for future generations. Rooted in Jewish experiences and perspectives, Aggadah connects anti-racism to the Jewish people’s unique history so that what we do flows from who we are.

Culture is the lifeblood of a community. It grounds us in ourselves and the world around us. It gives us a sense of who we are and how we are connected to one another. In many communities facing hardship, it’s been a key to survival.

It has been said that, “More than the Jews have kept Shabbat, Shabbat has kept the Jews.”

Why is Shabbat so important?

Perhaps it’s because Shabbat is the heart of Jewish practice. Week after week, in the homes of Jews all over the world, Shabbat puts Jewish values and ideas in action: hospitality, joy, peace, dialogue, and fellowship.

Shabbat is more than a sanctuary in time for ourselves. It’s a vision of the kind of world we most wish to see.

Racism didn’t start by itself, and it won’t end by itself. Making undoing racism a reality will require anti-racist leadership. This leadership will not emerge on its own. It must be cultivated. But how?

Kabbalah provides insight. Tzimtzum describes the contraction or concealment of the divine presence, opening up a space where creation is possible.

How do we create space for anti-racist leadership?

As people passionate about social change, our first instinct when we see a problem is to do something about it. Tzimtzum suggests that sometimes the best course of action is not to take up or take over space, but to surrender space.

This doesn’t mean absence or apathy. Creating space for anti-racist leadership takes time and care. It’s like preparing soil to plant crops: cultivating the right conditions for something to take root and grow.

Tzimtzum is a powerful antidote to a common pattern of white people assuming leadership and making decisions while people of color must follow or be left behind. Practicing tzimtzum on a human scale allows people of color agency over the direction of anti-racist organizing in their institutions and communities. It also gives white people a way to contribute without being in charge.

Good intentions are not enough for effective anti-racist organizing. When transforming institutions, it’s vital that the way we organize actually benefits the people most impacted by racism.

A brit is more than an agreement. It’s a sacred partnership that has clearly defined roles and responsibilities. Everyone involved is in it for the long haul.

How do we demonstrate this commitment?

• Adhering to the principles of anti-racist organizing
• Staying engaged through difficulty
• Investing time and resources
• Following through instead of passing through.

The Peoples’ Institute defines networking as “building a net that works.” As movements for racial justice grow, strong nets keep the most vulnerable—the poor, the disabled, immigrants, queer and trans people, and other Others—from falling through the cracks.

Some sources translate tzedakah as charitable giving, but there’s more to it than one person being generous. It’s how Jewish communities over the centuries provided a social welfare system for its most needy. Tzedakah is the Jewish net that works.

Institutions have layers of power. The most visible layers are the personnel, programs, products, constituency, and community. Underneath that are the institution’s formal and informal organizational structures and its mission, purpose, and identity.

Pardes describes the layers of interpretation when studying Torah:

• pshat, the literal meaning of the text;
• remez, the hints or implications of the text;
• derash, the connections within the and beyond text;
• and sod, the secret or hidden meaning.

Together, they reveal the deepest, most complete truths of the Torah.

Focusing only on what’s obvious creates huge gaps in understanding. This limits the growth and power of change agents. Pardes is a reminder that it’s always possible to go deeper.

Every facet of American society bombards people with the message that people of color are inferior to white people. Undoing racism requires freeing people of color from internalized racial inferiority and freeing white people from internalized racial superiority.

The name for the Jewish people is Yisrael, or “wrestles with God.” Internalized racial oppression is a constant struggle. But engaging with what’s difficult, messy, and complex is a persistent quality of Jewish tradition. But we don’t have to struggle alone. We can struggle together.

Individual acts of racism are never isolated incidents. They have roots in societal practices such as militarism and cultural racism. It’s critical for anti-racist organizers to pinpoint the structural and institutional source of specific racist acts in order to solve the deeper institutional problems instead of always reacting to their symptoms.

In the Gemara, rabbis sought to understand the principles behind the rulings of the Mishnah, clarify the intentions of the Rabbis, and resolve halachic contradictions. They ground everything down to its component parts, seeking meaning and understanding in the smallest details.

Racism manifests all the time, in large and small ways. Following the example of the rabbis of the Gemara empowers Jewish communities to dig deep into how racism manifests in order to uproot and dismantle it.