Program
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Who Counts as a Jew? Hebrew Israelites and American Judaism
Most Americans first encounter the words "Hebrew Israelite" through a street corner encounter, a news story, or a Southern Poverty Law Center label. Rabbi Walter Isaac, PhD, has spent two decades documenting an entirely different reality: a global, centuries-old tradition with roots in the Atlantic slave trade, ties to figures from throughout United States history, and a population the Manhattan Institute conservatively estimates at 22 million in the United States alone. In this conversation, Rabbi Isaac will walk us from the foundations of the tradition through its painful entanglement with the slave and sex trade, the wide variety of people who claim Hebrew Israelite identity today, and what an honest truth-and-reconciliation process between Hebrew Israelite and predominantly white rabbinic Jewish communities could actually look like.
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- Event
- Streaming
A Multi-Rooted Movement — Devin Naar on Sephardic Memory and Jewish Futures
What gets lost when Jewish history is told from a single root?
Devin Naar, the Isaac Alhadeff Professor in Sephardic Studies at the University of Washington, has spent two decades recovering the Ladino-speaking Jewish world that American institutional memory mostly left out. His scholarship draws on multi-rootedness, a concept describing communities that come from more than one lineage at once, rather than the familiar frame of a single homeland and a single dispersal. That idea offers a different starting point than the usual diaspora and homeland narrative, one shaped by Mediterranean Jewish socialism, Sephardic illegibility within American racial categories, and a long tradition of solidarity built sideways rather than upward.
Join Andy Kahn and Devin Naar for a conversation about Sephardic memory, Ashkenormativity in Jewish left spaces, and what new Jewish institutions can look like when they draw on more than one root.
This is a recorded, virtual conversation. Registrants will receive the Zoom link ahead of the event.
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- Event
- Streaming
Optimism of the Will: Arielle Angel on 8 years of Jewish Currents
A conversation with Rabbi Andy Kahn on what eight years in the work has taught her, and what she wants us to know now.
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- Education Series
- Event
Global Shavuot Teach-in "From the US to Palestine: Solidarity is Holy"
On May 21st-22nd, the American Council for Judaism and Rabbis for Ceasefire will be hosting our third annual Global Shavuot Teach-in
Under the theme “From the U.S. to Palestine: Solidarity is Holy” we will demonstrate global Jewish solidarity with Palestine, deepen relationships across continents, and develop shared analyses, songs, interpretations of texts and beyond that guide our way to liberation.
This teach-in will be wide ranging including short films and discussions, traditional Jewish text studies, skill shares, song shares, history lessons, political discussions, art making workshops and beyond!
We look forward to seeing you there!
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