Sharing Stories for Social Justice

By: Hollen Reischer

This post originally appeared on Every Person Is Philosopher here.

Tomorrow night I have the honor of being acknowledged as “Alumni of the Year” from AVODAH: The Jewish Service Corps, the organization through which I did a year of service after graduating from college. In many ways, AVODAH laid the groundwork for me to eventually find my way to the Neighborhood Writing Alliance, by giving me an opportunity to connect to the social justice/nonprofit worlds in Chicago, a city I probably wouldn’t have come to on my own.

Having spent a fair amount of time reflecting on my path since AVODAH in preparation for my remarks tomorrow night, I wanted to share a bit of my personal perspective. I’ve been reflecting on the ways that bringing light to underheard stories is a way to speak truth to power, build community, and enhance movements for social change.

I like to think that storytelling is a theme of my professional career, even though I’m not typically the storyteller. At Duke University I was part of an organization called the Center for Race Relations, through which I facilitated dozens of dialogues about personal identity as it relates to race, class, gender, sexuality, religion, ability, and so on, and I learned the importance of exchanging stories as a way to create deeper relationships and build communal visions for a liberated world. I also studied documentary photography at the Center for Documentary Studies and learned the history and implications of documenting and publicizing the experiences of marginalized individuals and communities. After graduation, in my AVODAH placement at Interfaith Worker Justice, I helped to document, edit, and publish the accounts of low-wage workers struggling to claim their rights to fair and safe working conditions. After a wonderful variety of other professional experiences, I found my way to the Neighborhood Writing Alliance.

When I first learned about Neighborhood Writing Alliance, I was incredibly excited to learn about an organization that honors story-sharing and community building and believes in its power to create change in the world. Working for Neighborhood Writing Alliance was and continues to be a “dream job” for me. One of the many reasons is that I have the pleasure of working with dozens of fantastic writers from all over Chicago. These adults share Neighborhood Writing Alliance’s belief that writing about and reflecting on our personal experiences, family histories, and communities—in community—and then amplifying our words through the Journal of Ordinary Thought, the Every Person Is a Philosopher blog, and dozens of events and readings across Chicago, is important and necessary to bringing us closer to the world as it should be.

One of AVODAH’s core values is to connect Corps members directly with the people served by their placement organizations. I believe the greatest lesson to be learned through this crucial one-to-one interaction is articulated beautifully by Neighborhood Writing Alliance’s motto, Every Person Is a Philosopher. To me, this means that every person is imbued with the right to consider their place in the world, tell their story, and attempt to change their personal circumstances and/or larger community with the dignity and respect afforded our world’s greatest thinkers.

I am grateful that AVODAH gave me the platform to start my professional life as an advocate for social justice, and I am grateful to be able to continue to serve by helping to document and amplify the stories of a diverse, complex, talented, and evolving group of Chicagoans through the Neighborhood Writing Alliance.

Hollen Reischer participated in AVODAH’s year-long program in Chicago in 2006-2007, working at Interfaith Worker Justice. She is currently the Assistant Director of the Neighborhood Writing Alliance. On Wednesday, May 22nd, Hollen will be honored at AVODAH Chicago’s Partners in Justice event along with Rabbi Sam Gordon, Jackie Kaplan-Perkins, and Advisory Council Members Lauren and David Grossman.

A Call to Action: Young Jews Building Justice-Focused Jewish Communities

By: Rachie Lewis

This is adapted from a call to action Rachie gave at the JOIN Jewish Organizing Summit in NYC on April 30th conveying that young Jews have an important role to play in reinvigorating Jewish community and making justice and organizing work central pieces of it.

AVODAH alumni along with Marilyn Sneiderman and Cantor/Rabbi Angela Buchdahl at the JOIN for Justice Summit.

Over the past few years, I have had the privilege of participating in AVODAH in New Orleans and in the Jewish Organizing Fellowship in Boston. Both of these experiences have allowed me to synthesize my commitment to Jewish tradition and justice work, connect to a community of like-minded people and be taken seriously by the surrounding mainstream Jewish communities.

The JOIN Jewish Organizing Summit, that occurred April 29th-30th in NYC, offered an opportunity to weave together these worlds and think together about what young Jews committed to these things might be able to accomplish together. Together, we participated in a young adults workshop where we created an advisory council to help create more residential social-justice-focused, young, Jewish collectives. Sound familiar AVODAH alumni? This is a great opportunity to think about how to let the AVODAH experience live on beyond the year!

We also decided to continue a conversation about how to welcome various groups of young Jews who have traditionally felt alienated from the mainstream community. I have found that  this is an issue near and dear to many AVODAhniks hearts, due to the experience of feeling alienated by the established Jewish community in the past on the grounds of patrilinial descent, Israel/Palestine politics, queer identity etc. Yet many of us have been lucky enough to experience Jewish community that, in some way, has affirmed these aspects of ourselves and lives, thanks to AVODAH.

My AVODAH/JOI(N) experiences have taught me that in order for this vision of justice-focused Jewish communities to be lived out, a vision that most attendees of the summit came to flesh out, we all need to work together – young adults, rabbis and members of the mainstream Jewish community.

We young adults need the established Jewish community’s resources and built up power. The established Jewish community needs the creative thinking, critical eyes and enthusiastic energy of young Jews. And we young Jews need each other to build power and develop a stronger voice within the mainstream.

And as AVODAH alumni, it seems that we have a crucial role to play within this process. As young Jews committed to justice and connected to larger Jewish institutions, we have the potential to create meaningful bridges between different generations, politics and mentalities; we have the potential to help clarify a new shared language and objective within the community about our own power and the injustices that plague our communities, our cities and our world.

We, and I believe we are one we, make up a diverse community that does not exist within a vacuum, but reflects the evolution of time that forces new faces and new strategies to emerge while remembering and sustaining those of old. We are pulling a millennia old thread and must include the voices of every Jew in thinking about the broader community we are building and the shared language of justice we are trying to insert within it.

Do you think that seemingly disparate Jewish groups can create a shared language of justice and harness collective power? And if so, what role can AVODAH alumni play in this process?

Rachie Lewis participated in AVODAH’s year-long program in New Orleans in 2009-2010. She then spent a year studying Jewish traditional text at Yeshivat Hadar in New York City. She is currently living in Boston, MA, after having participated in the Jewish Organizing Initiative and working as a community organizer for the Massachusetts Senior Action Council.

The “Ten Commandments” of Affordable Housing

By: Elise Goldin and Cea Weaver

This post originally appeared on The SurRealEstate here.

On a long drive back to New York City from Upstate New York, I was listening to reruns of “This American Life” and happened to catch an episode called “The Ten Commandments.” In the prologue, host Ira Glass reads from some of the sillier iterations of this ancient and holy code of conduct: The Ten Commandments of Tractor Safety, the Ten Commandments of Paris Dining, the Ten Commandments of Math Teachers and, so on. He goes on to say:

I think there’s so many different versions of The Ten Commandments because ten commandments are such a perfect way to get across an idea. There’s ten of them, so it’s enough that you feel like you’re getting a comprehensive view. And yet at the same time, there’s just ten, right? Ten– manageable, not too overwhelming. Sure, I could do ten. Ten, sure.

I scoured the internet and couldn’t find a “Ten Commandments of Affordable Housing.” I found a “Ten Commandments of Land Use Planning” and “Ten Commandments of Infill Development,” both of which include provisions for affordable housing. There is even an entire book for sale on Amazon.com for $15.95 called “The Ten Commandments of a Local Government Employee.” I didn’t find anything dedicated specifically to what we fight for alongside tenants day in and day out.  So, in a somewhat silly blog post, here are ten guidelines, simple ones, that we feel anyone who works in affordable housing anywhere should be mindful of.

1. Thou shall honor the Housing Maintenance Code.
2. Tenants art customers and the customer is always right.
3. Repairs shall be thorough, not patchwork, and one shalt never, ever, ever paint over mold.
4. Tenants shall work together and demand that their needs are met. Organize!
5. Tenants shall live free from harassment from birds, beasts, or landlords.
6. Thou shall not steal; Landlords shall not taketh rent without services!
7. Buyers of distressed properties shall be approved by tenants and also by government agencies to ensure that they have the correct qualifications (for qualifications, see “The 10 Commandments of Being a Landlord”)
8. Banks shall maintain careful oversight over all backed assets and each and every building in their portfolios shall be in top repair.
9. Landlords and banks shall practice responsible underwriting that reflects real rents and a comprehensive repair scope.
10. There shall be ample affordable housing for all of eternity so that no one will go homeless.  Housing is a human right!

Some commandments are directed towards landlords, some are to bankers, and some to tenants. They may be somewhat specific to New York City, but the idea is clear: Good affordable housing emerges when landlords, lenders, tenants and government agencies work together. Though somewhat tongue-in-cheek, hopefully these “commandments” can be a guideline for that much needed collaboration!

Elise Goldin is from Evaston, IL and attended Macalester College. As a New York AVODAH Corps member, she is a Tenant Organizer at the Urban Homesteading Assistance Board, which supports self-help housing and community building in low-income neighborhoods by training, organizing, developing, and assisting resident-controlled limited-equity housing co-operatives.

Ask for What You Want

By: Elli Krandel

Ask for what you want. It sounds simple, and even though it’s crucial in order to accomplish most tasks, it can actually be very difficult. I have been thinking a lot about how comfortable I feel asking for what I want this year, especially in regards to fundraising. My placement, the Lincoln Park Community Shelter, is completely privately funded, as is AVODAH. This means that we rely solely on donations from individuals and private foundations. This also means that there is a lot of asking involved in keeping our budget afloat. Before this year, I never wanted to talk about money with anybody, let alone ask people for money. That is something I have been working on changing this year.

It’s important to recognize that there are many different levels of asking, and each one requires a different amount of risk. I like to think of it like a dinner party. It’s not very risky to ask your neighbor to pass the salt. You can say it quietly, so it doesn’t have to bother anyone else’s conversations, and you don’t have to draw much attention to your salty food addiction. This type of asking is similar to soliciting your parents for a few dollars when you are in a bind, or doing a small fundraiser. In both cases, you don’t need to do much to be heard, and the chances of the person being asked saying no are incredibly slim, unless you spilled something all over your neighbor earlier in the meal…then it might be risky to ask them to pass something your way.

The next type of asking involves a bit more risk. For example, you are asking someone a few seats down to pass a heavy bowl of soup. They will probably still say yes, but you will need to raise your voice a bit so they can hear you, and everyone between you and that person will notice, and probably participate, in passing you the bowl. This is similar to asking friends and extended family for donations. You will need to put more effort in than asking your parents. You will also probably need to give more of an explanation of your cause, and should send them a follow-up thank you note. It can be uncomfortable to put yourself in this situation, especially with the increased uncertainty of success, but you are usually happy and satisfied once you have received the soup/donation.

The top tier of asking is the highest risk. In the dinner party example, this is asking the person across the table to pass you the giant platter of veggie burgers (yes, I am a vegetarian). Since they are sitting furthest from you, you might not know them as well as your closer tablemates. You will probably have to get their attention, either by being very loud, or getting the attention of all the people in between you and them. I would compare this to asking a stranger for a donation. It takes a lot of effort to strike up a conversation with someone you don’t know, and, once you do that, it is quite a few steps further to ask them to make a financial investment in your cause.

Everyone has a their own comfort with the different levels. Some people get a thrill out of making requests; other people would rather hide under the dinner table. I think that anyone can raise their comfort level by following a few simple steps. Most importantly, PRACTICE! The first time you ask a new person to donate to your organization, it is probably going to be weird and uncomfortable, but it only gets easier. Another great way to make a move to a higher level is to practice with the ones you are already comfortable with. When I had to fundraise for AVODAH this summer, I stuck with my lowest comfort level – family and friends. I also did most of my asking in a larger format, such as email and various online venues. Later in the year, when I wanted to get a small donation for my housemates to be able to make sack lunches for the guests at my shelter, I asked my grandma. It was very different from my AVODAH fundraising (I was asking for $100, not trying to raise $1000), but it was more personal to just ask her directly. For me, though, this was still relatively low-risk because I was pretty confident she would say yes (and she did).

Whether you want someone to donate money to your cause, you want a raise at work, or you just want someone to pass you the roasted beets, you will never get it if you don’t ask for what you want.

Elli Krandel is from Woodstock, IL and attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. As a Chicago AVODAH Corps member, she works as a Volunteer Coordinator at Lincoln Park Community Shelter, a comprehensive social service agency serving adult men and women who are experiencing homelessness. LPCS provides interim housing, meals, and a targeted array of social services to over 300 people each year.

Creating Home

By: Gabrielle Friedman

This post originally appeared at Apna Ghar here.

As a legal advocate with Apna Ghar, I share information with immigrant survivors of gender-based violence about their rights so that they can seek remedies and protections. I refer them to pro-bono and legal aid attorneys and I provide emotional support at court dates. In some cases, I provide interpretation and translation for French-speaking clients from Africa so that they can communicate with their attorneys or voice their stories in an affidavit.

When I’m not at Apna Ghar, I live in an intentional Jewish community. I travel from our bayit to Apna Ghar-from our home to our home. I came to Apna Ghar through AVODAH: The Jewish Service Corps. Through this placement, I have found new strength in my spirituality. I say the words of the Hashkiveinu, “Spread over us the shelter of your peace,” and I feel supported in my hope for the protection of all people.

The survivors who are my clients belong to different ethnicities, religions, and cultures, and they speak many different languages. Although their journeys are diverse, each woman has found a home at Apna Ghar. While their voices and stories are unique, their choice to confide in me is shared. In this way, my clients teach me about their experience, and I learn enough to provide them with accurate information and appropriate referrals. I respect their choices and support them in their goals.

At Apna Ghar, I witness courage, generosity, resourcefulness, resilience, and determination.  I speak with women who are brave enough to share what felt private, to refuse to be victims, and to voice their needs. These women trust me to be their advocate although I do not speak their language, may never have lived in their country, or met someone from their culture. I see women determined to claim their rights, protect themselves and their children, and find ways to heal from trauma. I see women who are resilient in the face of adversity, and who draw upon internal strengths, community, friends, family, and education as resources that allow them to thrive. Despite experiencing abuse that alienated them from society and undermined their sense of self, the women I know here are achieving belonging and independence. These women are determined to live happy and healthy lives.

The partnership between Apna Ghar and AVODAH has grounded me. From the women who are my clients, I have learned that we can create a home when we build caring and safe relationships-which require taking good care of ourselves. There is no more that I could have asked for this year beyond feeling at home in an imperfect world.

Gabrielle Friedman is from Newton, MA and attended Middlebury College. As an AVODAH Chicago Corps member, she works as a legal advocate at Apna Ghar, which provides culturally-appropriate, multilingual services, including emergency shelter, to survivors of domestic abuse with a primary focus on the South Asian and other immigrant communities.

Caught in the Gray Area

By: Rachel Gang

Are your eyes really that color? It’s a question that I was first asked two years ago while tutoring middle schoolers at a DC public school in the Congress Heights neighborhood of DC, not far from my current AVODAH placement at Thurgood Marshall Academy Public Charter High School. I remember uttering something similar to, “Yes they are; they’re naturally blue,” and then quickly changing the subject to help the student focus on the assignment at hand. At the time I barely considered the significance of that question, but it has repeated itself multiple times at Thurgood Marshall Academy, the charter high school where I now work.

Last week as I walked over to check in with a group of students working together, one student paused to look up at me and asked:

“Ms. Gang, your eyes, are they real?”

“Yes, they are,” I replied, and redirected the conversation the same way as when I heard the question the first time.

This question is not unfamiliar and generally something I don’t pay attention to, but its repeated presence prompted me to think carefully about how this short exchange between a few curious students and myself is symbolic of how I am physically perceived by the young adults with whom I work. I often wonder—how does my physical presence appear to my students? As a young white female, how would my actions or “white sounding” words resonate differently if they were coming from someone of another color?

I found myself reflecting (as this year encourages and often allocates time for) when the DC Corps members recently gathered in Spring Bayit, one of the DC AVODAH houses, to meet the Partners in Justice honorees. Marsha Weinberg, one of this year’s honorees, introduced herself by showing us an illustration of herself drawn by a young elementary schooler from southeast, a region in DC with one of the highest crime rates in the district. Brown-colored crayon filled-in Marsha’s skin. Seeing the crayon drawing of white Marsha, the “lady from the Jewish church” depicted as the same color as the elementary school student who drew it prompted me to ponder how the students with whom I work might actually be viewing me. At first glance, perhaps I’m just the young white lady with the blue eyes who’s always doin’ too much- a common response when I remind students for the fifth time to clean up their lunch wrappers from the basketball court or take out their homework when they arrive in the library for after school tutoring. I’ve learned not to fixate on how the noticeable difference between my physical appearance and those of my students might influence their perception of me as an adult. However, as we all sat in the Spring living room, I contemplated how much the injustices and inequalities that we see and experience throughout the AVODAH year have drawn me to possess an overwhelming desire for change.  Even after discussing theories of social change and exploring social justice as a Jewish movement, I still struggle to believe that wishes for justice can morph into movements that provoke action, and eventually make change.

Seeing Marsha drawn as a black woman provoked me to share my own inclination: “I wish I was black.”  I often think that being a young black woman might lead to a little less pushback from my students, and make my job a little easier. While no one said doing this work would be simple, perhaps, if I were colored in a brown crayon, I would hear “Ms. Gangssss, you’re doin’ too much,” a little less often.

Many days it’s easy to drown out the small questions in a sea of phrases such as guh, you’re doin’ too much, and the myriad of teenage colloquialisms that are uttered back and forth between high-schoolers. However, it is profound thoughts such as those one ninth grader  recently shared in an after school club meeting, “Flaws are what make you human,” that keeps work from being too challenging. I’m also reminded that the boundary between black and white that exists in the city in which I work and live is not as transparent as what I initially thought.

W.E.B. DuBois’ once said, “The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.” As I continue to learn during my AVODAH year, whether it’s at work, at home, or in the community, I’m beginning to think that perhaps W.E.B. DuBois’ saying still provides insight into what I notice happening in DC today. I may not be able to switch the skin color I’ve been dealt, or erase my white privilege, but, I do rest more at ease knowing that colors aside, there’s some recognition of acceptance and change out there in the one young mind who drew the white lady in the brown crayon. This change might just still be making its way to the adolescent brain.

As far as I can tell, creating a gray area between black and white remains an effort in progress. The more we realize how alike we really are as human beings, no matter what color we are, black or white, blue or gray, the more I buy into the claim that what I’m doing every day at a micro level contributes to working for a broader effort to create social change.

Rachel Gang is from Bethesda, MD and attended Bowdoin College. As a DC AVODAH Corps member, she is a Program Associate at Thurgood Marshall Academy Public Charter High School, which is a law-themed school that prepares students to succeed in college and to actively engage in our democratic society.

We Are Still In the Desert

By: Leila Shooshani

Photo by: Gregory Jordan via CC

As we approach the Passover holiday I’ve begun to wonder about the experience of wandering through the desert. You know the story: we were once slaves in Egypt, but before we reached the land of milk and honey we first had to traverse a barren landscape for forty years. Many chose not to leave, many Jews stayed in Egypt where suffering had become acceptable, familiarity comfortable. That’s one of the most amazing and tragic aspects of being human I suppose, our adaptability. Even the tiniest cage can seem like a home. Rabbi Hanoch of Alexandria said, “The real exile of Egypt was that the Israelites learned to endure it.” Yet, what counteracts this tragic aspect of humanity is a desire for escape – to abandon what is known in favor of… in favor of what? Hope in ourselves and one another?

During the Passover seder each year we recite “we were once strangers in Egypt.” Our prison was such that we could not see the other, we could not find ourselves liberated through her. The desert is symbolic for deprivation because even outside the confines of slavery, one is still not quite free; for instance, by being dependent on allowance of resources allocated by heavenly control (manna). Vast and unyielding, the desert seemed to have no end, and for those who died without reaching its borders, it didn’t.

In the nothingness of the desert, all you have are stories of hope. The Torah is the ultimate story because you not only interact with it, but it interacts right back. We treat the Torah as if it were another person. Yes we clothe it, kiss it, and provide it with a home; but we only do these things because we’re able to speak with the Torah as if it were another person. Moses, the mute liberator, delivered us to the nothingness where in order to survive, we require to be amongst interlocutors that would provide us with hope enough to make it out of the desert. In Judaism we transcend the brutality of the world through others and through our texts or stories, which we treat as other and in that way my existence is indebted to your very being.

I can’t help but notice the similarities between the Hebrew words for desert “Meedbar/מדבר”and for speech “Medabear/מדבר”. It seems that in its typically poetic and deeply profound fashion, the language is telling us that yes, when you have nothing in the world the only thing you have is each other. Storytelling, dialogue, sharing, aren’t these the foundations of the Passover Seder anyway? Scratch that, aren’t these the foundations of the entire Jewish tradition?

Our liberation story as a Jewish people is not one with a happy ending. During the seder we sing “Ha Lachma” about the bread of affliction and pronounce that “now we are slaves” and that next year we hope to be free. Yes, in the Torah we did eventually make it into Israel, but our history is far from over and we are still making it today. I believe that we are all “still in the desert.” We live in a world that sees an unimaginable degradation of human dignity; whether it is through poverty, war, or sheer inability to love or even recognize my neighbor as myself. Our journey is far from over. It is not enough to cease being strangers in Egypt, although we see the other and thus understand the ethical obligations we have to them, we have not reached freedom. This Passover let’s recite together “We are still in the desert,” because our only way of actualizing a just world is through each other.

Leila Shooshani is from Boca Raton, FL and attended New College of Florida. She is a Congregational Outreach Worker at Faith in Place, which helps people of faith understand that issues of ecology and economy-of care for Creation-are at the forefront of social justice.