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.

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.