Bad Rabbi Media - “What’s the Jewish Future You Believe In?”: Systemic Strategies for Structural Change with Jordan Mann of the Jewish Liberation Fund

“What’s the Jewish Future You Believe In?”: Systemic Strategies for Structural Change with Jordan Mann of the Jewish Liberation Fund

07/26/23 • 42 min

I was pretty rapt listening to Jordan Mann articulate the Jewish Liberation Fund’s (JLF) vision for a progressive Jewish future – and not only because “power,” “systemic strategies,” and “structural change” are my love language. Jordan’s personal connection to the work, both the crackling passion he brings to it and the personal journey that brought him there – from his childhood as the son of a Jewish father and black mother in “very white and conservative” central Illinois (“The reform synagogue would have evangelical Christians come in to teach us about Muslims”), to working with college students in a stint with Hillel (“Doing Purim&Dragons with Jewish college students at Hillel helped my clarify my own Jewishness more than any synagogue”), to running 90-100 miles/week (!) as a professional track athlete – made the time fly and left me with a whole new basket of questions for the next time we speak.

SERIES!

JLF is currently holding a political education series that still has one remaining installment. What We Need to Win centers three progressive Jewish funders, asking them: Why is values-aligned funding important for you and your movement?

The fourth and final session, about the critical yet underdiscussed role of collective giving and funding in movement-building, is upcoming—Thursday Sept 7. Hope to see you there!

*****

“I wish that wearing this kippah around didn’t mean I was right wing on Israel. I wish that wearing this kippah around signaled that I was someone who would be someone who would be showing up at a Black Lives Matter rally. Or someone cares about making sure that we have a higher minimum wage.”

*****

“For us the Jewish future we believe in is one where all ppl are free from different forms of oppression. Whether it’s identity based, whether it’s economic oppression. Making sure that we have a world where the Jewish philanthropy ppl do is about not just making sure Jewish ppl are safe, but making sure the Jewish people are safe in solidarity with other safe ppl, in community with them, fighting for them — willing so stand beside just about everyone in the fight for a just world.”

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“What kind of Judaism is one that’s just all about fear of annihilation? Celebrating through marching in the street for an increase in the minimum wage, or fair pay for care workers, or environmental Justice, reproductive rights: that’s a really compelling vision of Judaism for me. If Judaism means that, I think there would be a lot more people who would be a lot more excited about it than I’d we were just talking about annihilation.”

SERIES!

The fourth and final session, about the critical yet underdiscussed role of collective giving and funding in movement-building, is upcoming—Thursday Sept 7. Hope to see you there!

*****

Previous Episode

"We Need the Fantasy of a Destination and a Journey and a Path": Living Tangientially with Basya Schechter

“I think this is such a great line for your podcast. It’s from my third album, Exile. ‘I am in exile in my own home. My real home is moving, it’s a wandering home. I give birth to contradictions, I give up in indecision, and worry.' ”

Basya Schecter is one of my favorite wanderers. From a prolific early singer-songwriter career as the leader of Pharaoh’s Daughter, to her nine-year stint as the full-time musical director and then spiritual leader of communities in Manhattan and Brooklyn, to her recent sabbatical and transition to a more fluid mix of communal leadership and “musical adventures,” she has embodied an insistence to listening to one’s inner voice that I deeply admire. Speaking about the surprising comfort and inspiration she was able to find within the Jewish Renewal community (after a Hassidic upbringing in Borough Park that traumatized her relationship with Jewish community) — and about how the contingencies and demands of single-motherhood pushed her to reconfigure her life in a way that opened unexpected portals to self-connection — she is also frank about he perils of burnout and the non-negotiability of maintaining an active creative life.

“Creativity is finding the thing inside you that you didn’t know was inside. To find that thing that’s higher and beyond what I can actually do, and yet something that comes through anyway. And it’s a surprise. Those are gifts. Those are such gifts. Then those gifts become your friends.”

Next Episode

"Teaching From the Mud": Wandering, Witnessing, and Awakening with Melanie Landau

Early in my conversation with return guest Melanie Landau, I told her that she is one of my favorite wanderers, and she responded that I'm one of her favorite witnesses. Of course, it's an honor to witness such high-level wandering with the intensity of introspection and the commitment to translating insight into practice that Melanie brings to her wandering path. We talked a lot about the deep grief she has worked through since the breakup of her marriage, the host of realizations that emerged from that process, and the work she has done to leverage those realizations into growth. "Like, how I'm co-creating reality in my habitual responses to things...Like a reflexive victims mentality about things it shouldn't apply to, like my kids leaving their toys out even after I've told them not to. Or I'll take it to the other extreme: deny my reactions, deny my desires." For Melanie, these realizations have had applications both personal -- she's currently producing a film about the intimacy of couples (whom she interviewed in their homes) where one is a couple's therapist, and political ("Each side is similarly acting on triggers and exacerbating the situation by their responses.")

"The path I'm learning is to be aware of the reactivity and slow it down, but not by denying the realness of how I'm experiencing it...by being able to hold myself and soothe myself enough that I don't have to be reacitve to it."