Carly Hendrickson; Unsplash
Later this month is the start of the three-week communal mourning period in the Jewish calendar leading up to Tisha B’av.
There are so many ways to relate to a ritual of shared grief. Is it about historical events or ongoing ones? About losses of one community or identity or relationship, or many? How do we decide whose pain we make space for? These questions feel especially fraught this year.
The suffering all around us is undeniable and overwhelming. And yet, I hear others (and sometimes myself) distancing or rejecting others’ pain – hearing or reading of someone else’s grief and moving immediately to “But what do they mean by…” or “But why aren’t they also talking about…” or “But are they implying…”?
I fear that this distancing harms both our souls and our movements. We cannot possibly organize or be in coalition with people if we aren’t able to sit with them in their grief. We have to stay close, as hard as that can be.
Of course, analysis matters. Grief gets manipulated all the time, and we must be vigilant to make sure pain does not beget more pain. We have to get better at doing multiple things at once, recognizing that resisting dehumanization requires us to practice both compassion and critical thinking. In a collective liberation framework, we understand both that our various suffering is not the same and also that none of it is dismissed.
As we move toward this period of mourning, I invite you to approach it as an opportunity to widen our boundaries rather than retract them, to turn towards connection instead of isolation. I know that looking directly at everyone’s pain can be too much to bear. But if we believe that the only way forward is together, then we must follow the lead of the activist Ruby Sales, who grounds her work in the question of “Where does it hurt?” We have to be truly present to the answers that emerge, let them guide us towards building a future with less pain and more justice for everyone.
— Sarra Alpert, Chief Institute Officer, Avodah
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