Last week, I had the opportunity to travel back to Chicago.
Avodah has been in Chicago since 2006, when we opened our third Jewish Service Corps program. Since then, more than 200 Corps Members have worked with over 50 Chicago nonprofits, serving 133,000 individuals who are working to make ends meet and adding over $4 million in staffing capacity.
This trip to Chicago came at such an uneasy time—the city had just gotten through a few days where temperatures dropped well below 0, which puts pressure on homelessness services trying their best to keep people warm. Unclear threats swirled from the new presidential administration that ICE raids would begin immediately post-inauguration. All this, amidst a slurry of executive orders putting into question federal funding for social services and more.
As part of this trip, I was able to visit two of our placement organizations and our Avodah Corps Members at work. On Monday, I went with some members of Avodah’s staff to Back of the Yards, a working-class, predominantly Black and Brown community on Chicago’s South Side. There, we met with our Corps Member Itai and his supervisor Saul, who work for Beyond Legal Aid (Beyond). We joined them at Increase the Peace, where Beyond hosts a pop-up legal clinic on Mondays. Increase the Peace is a local neighborhood organization that advocates for solutions that tackle the root causes of violence through leadership development and community organizing. As part of their community offerings, they partner with Beyond to help neighborhood residents with immigration paperwork, housing, sealing and expungement of minor criminal records, and more, so that people don’t need to travel to the Loop for these services. Increase the Peace is just one of Beyond’s 13 community law offices, which are community-owned; community members and leaders staff and run the programs in partnership with Beyond’s legal team. All legal work is collaborative and conducted within partners’ spaces.
Saul, Beyond Legal Aid’s Community Empowerment Supervisor, has been with the organization since 2018 – the same year that Avodah’s partnership with Beyond began. Over the past 7 years, he’s known each of the Avodah Corps Members who have worked there and developed incredible relationships with all of them. Itai, our current Corps Member, works on grants and reporting, but also serves as a program coordinator for SWOP (Sex Workers Outreach Project) and AAAN (Arab American Action Network). Itai applied to Avodah because of Beyond itself. He told us, “I studied International Law in school, but the learning felt removed from people’s lives. I was studying power and politics, but I wanted to see how it plays out in the real world.”
Itai wanted his next step after college to be tangible and experience how laws can impact people and a community. He had heard about Beyond’s impact in Chicago communities and discovered Avodah as a route to join in on the work. He was excited about how every aspect of Beyond’s work has community in mind—a model that they call Community Cubed, which stands for being community-located, community-operated, and community-directed.
Itai shared with us that since joining Avodah and beginning his work at Beyond Legal Aid, one of his most impactful moments was in early December, when, during a workshop for Beyond’s 20+ staff attorneys, he spent the day working with them and filing paperwork for ten people to be naturalized into the US. While the work felt “small” to Itai in certain ways, since it was “just filing paperwork,” the human impact to help change 10 people’s lives is absolutely tremendous.
After the 2024 presidential election, Beyond sent a survey to all of its 22 community partners (13 community law offices and 9 activism partners). They used the survey to get a better sense of what the immediate needs of their partners might be, and how Beyond could help. Unsurprisingly, most partners were unsure. With fear about the future looming close and so much uncertainty about what’s to come, it was hard to distill what actionable steps there could be to take. The general response was that organizations are scared, and their community members are scared. Beyond doesn’t want to add to the fear but instead, find ways to help. And, the simple message of “You are Not Alone” is very powerful.
Saul explained Beyond Legal Aid’s work in the metaphor of a sword and a shield: “When you’re fighting a battle, you need your sword – that’s our community partners—to be on offense and fight the fight. And, you need a shield to protect defensively and to put in front of yourself.” Beyond sees their work as being the shield. It’s not always flashy, but it’s really important to help keep people safe.
Near the end of our meeting, I asked Saul and Itai, “What do you need from us as a Jewish community partnered in your work?” and they shared a few ideas:
1. Tune in, listen, and amplify the information from grassroots community organizations in your area.
2. Fact check and clarify where you’re getting information from before sharing it. Social media is a useful tool, but you really need to verify reports. Disinformation is there to intentionally exhaust us!
3. Don’t give into fear and despair in the new cycle. The long-term commitment to justice work requires us to nurture and sustain ourselves while conserving energy for all that is to come.
4. Humanize the stories. When we put names and faces to numbers and statistics, we understand the true impact they have on people’s lives.
As we look towards all that is to come, Avodah is ready to meet the moment. We will support our partner organizations, reach deep for that Jewish wisdom which guides us, and sustain our young leaders, whose work will be fueled by both practical tools and the nourishment of community.
