In a moment when everything feels binary, Mackey came to the Avodah Jewish Justice Fellowship looking for something different—a space to sit with discomfort, explore nuance, and reconnect with his Jewish identity in a meaningful way.
Applications are now open for the 2026-2027 Justice Fellowship! Use the form below to start the application process. Otherwise, scroll down to continue learning about the Justice Fellowship and the impact our Fellows have on their communities.
Expand your network of local changemakers passionate about exploring justice, Jewish life, and the powerful intersections between the two. Fellows create a pluralistic, diverse community built on mutual trust and respect through 8 months of in-person evening and weekend sessions, retreats, mentorship, project-based work, and community events. In these chaotic and complex times, this cohort will ground you, sustain your justice work, and help you grow your skills and relationships to make meaningful, material change in your city.
If you’re in your 20s or 30s and have been engaging in sustained social and economic justice work in a professional, volunteer, or personal capacity, we’re looking for you. Justice Fellows are activists, organizers, educators, social workers, non-profit staffers, movement leaders, artists, lawyers, health care professionals, students, those in-between jobs, and so much more. Justice Fellows are visioning, exploring, and building pathways to a better future for all.
We want you to join us.
Find your people and cultivate a powerful, creative, diverse Jewish community. Learn how to contribute as Jewish people to the broader justice movements in your city. Build a community where your Judaism flourishes and integrates with your understanding of collective liberation.
Deepen your analysis of the root causes and effects of economic, social, racial, environmental, and other systemic injustices. Trace the intersections of different facets of oppression and learn about historical and contemporary intervention strategies.
Through a year-end project, you’ll build a tangible articulation of how you’ve advanced your analysis and work for justice. Past projects have included everything from counting the Omer to live a zero-waste lifestyle, to a family book club, to leading a panel of Chicago Jewish organizers, to facilitating a group dialogue about how we can better align our money with our values. These projects have been featured in the New York Times, The Rachel Ray Show, The Forward, and more.
Explore Jewish texts, history, rituals, and culture. You’ll develop throughlines between your Jewishness and your justice commitments, and locate yourself in an unbroken history of progressive Jews resisting oppression. Gain the community and Jewish insights that will foster resilience to keep you in this work for the long haul.
Chicago Fellows learn through a lens of environmental stewardship to trace broader sites of justice and injustice, and deepen their relationships in Jewish justice movements.
The Justice Fellowship brings together a pluralistic cohort of Jewish adults in their 20s and 30s working on a wide variety of local issues in their city. Our Fellows aim to break out of their personal silos and explore a more holistic approach to making change in their communities. They seek to build power, solidarity, language, resilience, and strategy for a Jewishly-rooted movement committed to doing this work effectively, collaboratively, and sustainably.
In short, they:
• Have some experience in their professional, volunteer, or personal life working on domestic social, racial, environmental, and/or economic justice issues;
• Have an active interest in exploring the intersections of Jewish life and social justice, and developing a local, justice-oriented Jewish network during and after the Fellowship
• Have an ability and desire to listen, grow from productive discomfort, and stay in relationship with others in a diverse community that reflects a multitude of ways of living and thinking Jewishly
Our Justice Fellows are usually in their 20s or 30s, in their early and mid-career stages. We welcome applicants who work professionally in social justice as well as those whose justice work is on a personal/volunteer basis. If you’re unsure whether you should apply for the Fellowship, we bet you’d be a great candidate. Feel free to reach out if you have any questions.
Generous funders subsidize the full cost of Fellows’ participation in the program.
As an economic justice organization, we are also committed to offering a sliding scale model, with a scale that is based either on your employer’s budget or on your own income.
Since the Avodah Justice Fellowship is both a professional and personal development program, we encourage employers to cover all or at least part of the tuition. We can provide additional documentation to help secure professional development time or funding from your organization if needed.
We do our best to ensure that no accepted candidates are prevented from attending due to financial reasons, including those who engage with social and/or economic justice work on a personal rather than professional level.
In a moment when everything feels binary, Mackey came to the Avodah Jewish Justice Fellowship looking for something different—a space to sit with discomfort, explore nuance, and reconnect with his Jewish identity in a meaningful way.
Our Justice Fellows—from different backgrounds, identities, and perspectives—build a community around shared values of tikkun olam (repairing the world).
Avodah’s Jewish Justice Fellows in NYC share the impact of their Justice Learning Opportunity projects. Continue reading
We’re here to help you through the application process and will be available every step of the way, from start to finish. We know that everyone’s background and needs are different, and can answer any questions you may have.
