Dear Tikkun Collective,
It’s Nadine and Leila, your Nefesh Tikkun Collective co-chairs, sharing our last email of the year. We thank everyone for your work advancing tikkun olam in our community. We look forward to a restful and restorative holiday for us to come back renewed and ready in January!
Our next meeting will be Sunday 1/10 at 5 pm. Please join us to discuss our vision for 2021.
- Zoom link: https://cccconfer.zoom.us/j/98924752074
ACTION
Nefesh Jewish Antiracist Continuing Dialogue
Begins January 17, 2020
Nefesh is pushing the date of our White Jewish Antiracist Continuing Dialogue to January to begin 2021 with a commitment to anti-racism and allow for more spaciousness and access to the whole six-part series.
We invite you to join us to continue the work begun with our Nefesh Jewish Antiracist Dialogue and Training this past July. You do not have to have attended in July to join us now. This six session dialogue and training will be led by Nefesh Kin Dani, Ben, Josh, and Mel.
This series will begin Sunday January 17, 2021 from 4:30-6 PM, meeting the third Sunday of every month. Participants are strongly encouraged to commit to all six sessions. If there is a session you will not be able to attend we understand. Our hope is that you will make an effort to attend all six.
This series will focus on further developing and understanding our identities as antiracist White Jews through dialogue, exploration, learning and spiritual practice. Together we will delve into the impacts of racism and antisemitism and the cultivation of a positive antiracist White Jewish identity, using the Middot/traits as framework and guide. We will also share resources for learning and action. We look forward to creating a brave space, built on trust and support, and engaging in this work with you.
- All times 4:30 to 6:00 pm, Sundays in 2021
- Jan 17, Feb 21, Mar 21, Apr 18, May 16, June 20
- Suggested Donation – $180, $162, $144, $126, $108, $90, $72, $54, or $36, pay what you can. Nefesh Kin – no charge
- Please consider becoming Kin!
- No one will be turned away for lack of funds.
TORAH
Last week and this week (Vayeshev and Mikeitz), our story is undergirded by a structure of dreams. Put another way, our narrative is propelled forward by the having and interpreting of dreams. Most often, that interpreter is Joseph who, like his forebears, receives a new name only this time by Pharoah, not by God. He becomes Tzafnat Paneyach (explainer of hidden things) because of his confident, and prescient, interpretation of Pharaoh’s dreams and those of others. Were those dreams destined to happen or was it the interpretation of them that willed them into being? Asked through another context, when we go to the mikveh (ritual bath), is it to mark a new state of purity/ life phase or is the very act of immersing in the water a part of the process of transition that enables the transition to occur fully? Perhaps we’ll never know and perhaps it doesn’t matter, but there is something profound in imagining that our interpretations have a kind of power of enacting, of bringing into being. Dare I say this is a time when we can begin to awaken to our dreams? This isn’t over but vaccination day (as I’ve renamed last Monday) was a hopeful day and one that gave me, perhaps many of you, a feeling of relief and “we’re gonna get out of this!” for the first time in months.
So let’s dream as we head into a new phase, into 2021, and into the next iteration of this Tikkun Collective that has so much power and potential. And let’s interpret – calling out what’s wrong, suggesting what could be – and in doing so we can enact a different future. Let’s see together into the hidden things. Pharaoh looks at Joseph and sees “a man who has the spirit of God within him.” Let’s continue to find the spirit of God within ourselves and within everyone, dreaming big for what could be, and offering up new interpretations that will help ensure we are all treated like the holy beings that we are.
In solidarity,
Nadine and Leila
