Program
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Keeping the Score: Jewish Trauma, Memory, and Healing with Jon Danforth-Appell
What if the dominant progressive Jewish explanation for Zionist attachment, that our bodies carry the accumulated trauma of generations, is itself a kind of myth?
In his just-published essay for @jewishcurrents, "Does the Jewish Body Keep the Score?", writer Jon Danforth-Appell traces how the language of embodied, intergenerational trauma has come to saturate Jewish organizing spaces over the past decade. He argues that this framework treats Zionism, a political project, as a pathology, and in the process flattens a wildly diverse community into a single wounded body, relieving us of agency in the process.
Join Rabbi Andy Kahn in conversation with Jon on Tuesday, April 28 at 3:30 PM EST for a public education conversation exploring the history, theory, and politics of "Jewish trauma" as a concept. We'll talk about where these ideas come from, what they do inside our institutions, and what becomes possible when we accept agency as creators of Judaism.
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Anti-Zionism: A Jewish Tradition Book Release Event
Join us for the book release event, in partnership with Jewish Currents, McNally-Jackson, and Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church, of Anti-Zionism: A Jewish History by Benjamin Moser, in conversation with activist and writer Jasper Nathaniel. The two will discuss the history of Jewish Anti-Zionism, its current iterations, and what it means to actively involve yourself in this tradition today.
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Tashlich Guide 5787
The ritual of Tashlich—casting bread into water while reflecting on the wrongdoings of the previous year—is a potent, tangible way to reset and recommit for the year ahead.
This Tashlich guide uses the four worlds of Kabbalah, the layers of reality our ancient mystics saw as integral to human existence, to engage with different forms of wrongdoing. Each page of this guide invites you to reflect on one world of wrongdoing, providing a Kavanah (intention), an excerpt from the high holiday liturgy, a responsive reading (to be split between individuals or groups), and an invitation to cast off our wrongdoings in the past year.
This ritual can be done alone, with family, in a havurah, or with a large group any time during the 10 days of Teshuvah between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.
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Hidden in Plain Sight: Zohare Jacobi on Jewish Magic Beyond Nationalism
On August 7th at 2pm Eastern, Rabbi Andy Kahn sits down with Zohare for a conversation about diaspora, magic, comparative religion, and what it means to teach Judaism rooted in scholarship and love when so many mainstream institutions have collapsed it into ahistorical nationalism.
Her shop, jewitches.com, carries ethically sourced ritual goods, herbs, books, and Judaica drawn from across the diaspora. Worth a browse before or after the conversation.
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