Johannes Plenio; Unsplash
How and why we gather
How would you describe the heart of your commitment to justice? I see mine, ideally, as an invitation: “It’s so much better over here — come join us.” Come be part of a world where we feel the relief and connection that emerges from hard conversations, change our minds as we learn, make amends for wrongdoing, insist that our comforts do not always have to come at the expense of others, build structures of expansive collective care, celebrate the fullness of our authentic, messy, gorgeous selves.
I have found that my role in working for a better world sits at this intersection of encouragement and agitation, where we lean on each other in a way that pushes us all forward.
That is why it has been such a deep honor to helm the Gathering for these past three years, to be a part of gathering us together with words and resources, new sources of learning, new and old tools for building that better world.
I have been thinking lately about these formats of how we gather, how we take in information, perspectives and stories, in particular the social media carousel and how it affects us. Grieving families, flick, cozy socks, flick, vacation photos, flick, an activist sharing the antisemitic and racist vitriol she regularly receives online, flick, cat memes, flick, starving children, flick, my loved ones, flick, news of the latest government harms, flick. What does this do to our capacity to see each other’s full humanity? To be able to sit in true presence, to honor each other, to activate together?
And so I wonder: can we replace the newsfeed with the table? The table that I mean is both literal and symbolic; it is anywhere we face each other with sustained attention, where we have the opportunity for deep emergence. Where we celebrate together and comfort each other, where we feed each other. Where we can’t just flick over to the next person or next story, where we stay present with pain and joy and their interrelatedness.
We are sitting at that table whenever we seek out new sources on a topic we realize we don’t know enough about, whenever we ask each other about what’s breaking our hearts and what’s helping to mend them.
I’ve recently had the opportunity to teach Aly Halpert’s beautiful song “She is On Her Way” and the second verse always moves me deeply: / we’ve traded in our numbness and all of our fear / to fight for the lives we now hold dear / and everyone has come to greet the reckoning / the place where our hearts got smaller and smaller / now grows to hold the pain / the brokenness that leads to change.”
Teachers across cultures reference this idea of how it is only through our broken hearts that we find wholeness – Hazrat Inayat Khan, the Kotzker Rebbe, Pema Chödrön. When we flick to the next story, it is a guard against the pain of staying open; when we sit at the table with that pain, we learn how to hold it together and build from it. There is so much brokenness to face right now — we have to reckon with it, together, if we are to move forward.
I know better than to believe that warm crowded tables, active group chats and educational resources can topple the powerful men who are trafficking in hatred and fear and death – but they don’t get to dictate what we’re here to do. Gatherings are for building and maintaining the vibrant communities we actually want to be a part of, so that that colorful societal fabric can make those tyrants obsolete.
I return to where I started: that working for social justice is an invitation into a better world, one worthy of our sustained attention and ongoing learning. Halpert’s song is built from a quote by the writer and activist Arundhati Roy: “Another world’s not only possible – she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”
We have to keep listening for that breath together, keep extending the invitation, again and again, to the tables where we dream and live that world: it’s so much better over here. Come join us.
And with that, an announcement: the Institute is about to undergo a new period of development and my role there is ending, which means this is my last newsletter.
But you’ll still be able to draw from the full Gathering archive available on the Avodah website. I hope they can be useful ongoing resources for you.
Before I sign off, I want to express my deep gratitude and appreciation to the people who created, maintained and contributed to this project. The original vision for The Gathering came from the phenomenal Davinica Nemtzow; her design skills and thoughtful collaboration have shaped every edition. Jonathan Gershberg and Amanda Lindner guided Avodah’s overall communications strategy, and their edits and support were essential to my writing and to the project as a whole. Alison Rollman brought you an incredibly rich body of resources from across Jewish and social justice learning, with Ed Abraham’s assistance in the most recent editions. The leadership of Emilia Diamant and Cheryl Cook provided us with the broader context of this work and I have been grateful for their partnership throughout.
And of course, all of this was dependent on the incredible teachers, writers and activists whose work we sent out in these newsletters — it was an honor to be a part of getting your voice out to our network.
Recommendations
For this edition’s resources, I’m taking the opportunity to showcase some of the people and sources that have most impacted my own Jewish social justice development and/or who I now turn to most regularly for my Jewish justice learning:
• The essays and fiction of Grace Paley
• Tzedakah: The Untranslatable Virtue and Loving the Stranger by Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks
• Red Sea, V’ahavta and other poems by Aurora Levins Morales
• The music of Aly Halpert, Rabbi Koach Baruch Frazier, and Rena Branson
• Bend the Arc’s Your Safety is My Safety video series
• For work that speaks to our current justice movements and news cycles, some of the folks I turn to regularly are Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg, Rabbi Sandra Lawson, Elad Nehorai, the Evolve team, Fragments from Truah, and Shoshana Brown’s and Rafael Shimunov’s Beyond the Pale – I highly recommend adding their newsletters and shows to your regular sources of learning.
• And of course there’s always new content from the phenomenal folks who have served as Avodah Institute faculty and advisory council members — I hope you’ll explore their websites, writing, art, and other ventures. It has been a deep honor to work with them over these years.
Thank you all for being subscribers and readers. Thank you for your replies and engagement and encouragement – it has truly meant so very much.
I look forward to many more opportunities to gather together in whatever forms arrive in the years ahead.
— Sarra Alpert, Chief Institute Officer, Avodah
