A very Jewish welcome to the US

If any of you saw me this summer back in the UK you probably noticed the range of emotions i was exhibiting, and my fairly incessant grumbling that i should've organised to spend longer than 3 weeks in the UK before moving to the US. Way way back i'd organised to attend a 'Queer Talmud Camp' outside of chicago for a week in August. Not knowing where i'd be at the time it seemed logical and by the time i knew i'd be staying in the US it kinda made sense. But then came the packing and the prepping and realisation that i'd be doing a fairly intensive week of study just after moving country and before starting an intense job, either way i started to panic, maybe i should cancel and do this next year, but I'm incredibly glad that i stuck it out and went because I was lucky enough to have one of the best weeks of my life at that retreat in the Wisconsin Dells!

So let's unpack it because at least 1 of those words might not be clear to all. "Queer", generally used as a term to describe the LGBT community, reclaimed from the pejorative it is generally used as a more inclusive term as it doesn't determine sexulity and gender by labels and binaries. The use of the word Queer in this case goes one step further and the camp ran with the idea that queer is about generally challenging the norm.
"Talmud" for those non-jews or jews with less traditional educational privillege the Talmud is both the oral law and the commentary on said law, collated and commented on through various generations of priests and rabbis it is both a key Jewish text as well as a snapshot of a historical period of Judaism.
"Camp"... okay maybe it was more of a retreat but it was run by a summer camp director, we sang round a campfire and had smores so it totally counts!

Svara - A queer yeshivah (jewish house of study) in chicago runs this camp. The Rosh Yeshiva is a rabbi called Benay Lappe, She has pioneered a method of talmudic study surrounding her 'crash theory' - I would recommend either of these talks for a brief understanding https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBWIEAR_GQY  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTdeIFK7VSc
I have to admit, i wasn't completely taken in by the camp at the beginning. Crash theory just looked a lot like queer theory to me, and there seemed to be a little bit of a cult of personality around Benay. The Talmud study itself seemed fairly traditional, we were studying in hebrew, memorising. Svara calls itself a 'Traditionally Radical Yeshiva', what was so radical about this?

My amazing Chevruta (traditional style of jewish
 learning in pairs/threes) Amir and Jamie

It took till about the third day for me to get it. On the third night one of the electives (which we had about twice a day as extra sessions) was 'stories from our queer elders', it had been organised by Benay as an opportunity for anyone who self defined as an elder to tell their story. Ultiamtely it was about 20-30 Queer people 50 and older telling stories of their queer lives. Of struggle and victories, of love and loss, of community and family. It was a reminder of the incredible victories that have allowed me to be in spaces, the fights we have yet to fight, the nature of our queer community where history is passed down not through family, but through peers. That we might disagree with our elders on some things but we still have a bond with them and can always learn.

Beit Midrash (house of study) in full flow, Benay at the front -
Whenever anyone did recitation, no matter how short
we would applaud them, incredible genuine affirmation of all learning abilities.

One example, and it really doesn't do justice to only tell one, a couple told their story. Each their own story and then leading to how they'd met. One was a rabbi and he'd been fairly vocal and a few people knew him, almost no one knew his partner who'd stayed fairly quiet and reserved the entire camp. He had a heart wrenching story of repression of his identity, and even when he admitted his identity he believed he would be alone forever with it and could never be happy. Even in his loneliness he decided to do something to help others. As a photographer he used his skills to go around interviewing queer people and turning their stories of self acceptance into an exhibition into a book, hoping to allow young queer people to see that they could and did exist. at this moment one person in the group (about my age) turned around and said, wait i read that book when i was growing up, it helped me so much, murmurs of similar agreement rose from the crowd. The whole evening was indescribably powerful.

So how did this affect my view of studying Talmud. Well this certainly goes back to my own experiences of Jewish study, I never quite felt that Jewish texts were mine to study, as a woman, as a queer person, as someone with radical politics. But the environment at Svara was one that said anyone can learn, anyone can contribute, in fact our queerness provides us with a unique insight into the detail of law, life and community and the debates of the talmudic rabbis, as well as an impetus to use this study for good. 
After that night some sort of barrier had broken down, age didn't matter anymore, educational background didn't matter, we began to truly learn from each other, to affirm each other in a way that i have never seen in an educational space before. Our learning became more than just paraphrasing the words of old dead men, but opening ourselves up to our most vulnerable places and choosing to build ourselves up again with the help of a community. 

My Friend Gray annonated their talmud with our discussions from our final shiur.
It's a beautiful summary of 5 radical days of learning.

For many years I've said that my Jewishness and Queerness are important to me, both innate parts of me, and that they cannot exist without each other. My experience at Svara allowed me to begin to explain that they are actually the same thing! 











How Could I possibly move on from those days, well I was lucky enough to spend a Shabbat in Chicago with lovely Svaraniks, I got to go to Mishkan Synagogue which is a lovely welcoming community. and then off I headed to Boston for some R and R. I was lucky enough to spend some beautiful days with Irene chilling out and processing everything, as well as watching the olympics, chatting about family and life. I also got to see Claudia and Marg and generally enjoy Boston suburb end of summer. 

Some Brits finishing up/starting Adamah (Jewish farming fellowship)
on the farm, we spent a great shabbat together

I then had a long weekend before starting Avodah in NY. My original plan was to head to DC but it seemed complicated and far away by that point. The other amazing thing about Svara was that it had put me in touch with an incredible network of queer and radical Jews, and one of them, Zev invited me to Isabella Friedman farm in Connecticut for Shabbat. There was a singing retreat happening as well, and we worked out that i could do a day of looking after kids in exchange for not paying for the retreat. So up i turn and discover yet another amazing community of singing lefty Jews mostly from the New York and Boston areas! 


The singing retreat was called 'let my people sing' and was started by 5 young jewish activists/educators, 3 of whom had been at queer talmud camp. It was a different area of Jewish music than i'd ever be exposed to before, moving beyond the traditional American Reform liturgy to bring in all sorts of different heritages, music from jews of colour including gospel and sephardim, as well as much more traditional music and classes on how to teach it in an inclusive manner. 
I also discovered new types of services, particularly traditional egalitarianism which blends orthodox liturgy with radical egalitarianism. 

I left Friedman and Svara heading into a year in New York with new friends, Jewish connections and my judaism feeling nourished and energised and excited to explore all that New York Judaism has to offer. I could not have asked for a better welcome.

New York City life part 1

I've been meaning to write this update since I left the UK, and then since i started Avodah, and then since i started work but will all the business and exciting things i've been up to I haven't really had a chance. However this weekend i've been ill in bed with a cold which although not overly pleasant, has given me a chance to catch up on a few things.

For those of you I haven't spoken to since I left the UK, I spent a wonderful few weeks at the end of August on a Queer Talmud (jewish text study) retreat outside chicago, then a wonderful week or so in Boston, followed by a shabbat on a singing retreat at a jewish farm in rural Connecticut. (more detail about these another time - safe to say it was a wonderful welcome into the US Jewish community).

Then Avodah started in the last week of August. For those I haven't properly explained to, I'm on a program called Avodah for the year. This program is an intensive year where you work in a non-profit job, live with other young jews doing non-profit work and have an intensive program of jewish learning throughout the year.

Avodah cohort of 2016/17 from all 4 cities

For the first time ever Avodah started with a national retreat in upstate NY, 4 cities have avodah groups and all 4 came together for this retreat. We did an interesting mix of learning on everything from different Jewish practices to anti-oppression training. I'd say it was about 100 people in total, all with different backgrounds and experiences. Avodah also brought in a few speakers including Ruth Messinger (President of American Jewish world Service) and Yavilah Macoy, an educator and musician and organiser for Jews of colour and around racial justice. These people were really inspiring in terms of the ceilings they had shattered and the way they viewed activism with a beautiful mix of pragmatism and beautiful visions at the same time.

Exploring Washington heights with fellow avodahniks

After about 4 days we split up and headed back to our respective cities for a week of city orientation. This included moving into our apartments and exploring our local areas. NYC has two cohorts, one in Bushwick, Brooklyn and the other in Washington heights which is uptown manhattan. I'm in washington heights and we have two adjacent apartments where we use both the spaces. Orientation was a bit intense but also fun, we got to go to the NYC museum and learn about various change making movements and key periods in the city's history. We got to visit congregation bet simchat torah which is the largest lgbtq synagogue in the world, as  well as meet more interesting people from the jewish and non-profit world across the city. 

Most of my Avodah house by the hudson river

We had a great Shabbat together and I began the first of my shul hopping across NYC adventures with attending 'fort tryon jewish community centre', it's a traditional synagogue in terms of its practice but radically progressive in terms of its politics, so women leading and in talitot (probably more than in most reform shuls) but an orthodox service structure. I was invited to do an Aliyah on my first visit, and the rabbi came up and chatted to all the new people there. It was an extremely welcoming environment and a different style of community to anything i've experienced before.

The next week I started work. I'm working for the Urban Homesteading Assistance board. A bit of history is needed to understand UHAB, best to look up; 

red-lining http://liberationschool.org/red-lining-and-the-historical-roots-of-housing-segregation-in-new-york-city/  

http://www.brickunderground.com/blog/2015/10/history_of_redlining  

white flight/Bankruptcy of the city http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/05/nyregion/recalling-new-york-at-the-brink-of-bankruptcy.html 

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/07/white-flight-alive-and-well/399980/ 

https://www.thenation.com/article/legacy-1970s-fiscal-crisis/ 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Bronx#1970s:_.22The_Bronx_is_burning.22

The view from outside my office building (my office is on the 20th floor)
that's the brooklyn bridge and brooklyn.

So in a nutshell (white) people were abandoning the city, and landlords were abandoning buildings in the 70s but communities of colour still remained and needed places to live, my organisation came into being to solve the problem by giving communities control of their own buildings. It came under a state law known as sweat equity and beget the creation of HDFC coops which are community run low income coops.

These are most commonly formed out of the TILL (tenant iniative something something ahhh acronyms) program which used tenant associations to form coops, whilst renovating dilapidated buildings. Since then my organisation has been working to maintain these coops, create new ones and generally push for better more affordable housing across the city.

Of course the organisation looks a little different today, and when the programs and organisations were formed in the 70s no one ever imagined the housing boom that would exist in the city today, particularly the gentrification of certain areas. Primarily there are 3 areas of work in my organisation:

 My new bike, and the cycle path I go to work along

Tenant work - organisers who work with communities to organise them into tenant associations and unions to fight for their rights and create strong neighbourhood ties amongst all residents.

Policy and Coop development - How do we create new coops and affordable housing in a different housing market? how do we react to constant changes in housing, ie the introduction of Air Bnb and their effects on affordable housing. Most recently Uhab has been accredited as a developer and acquired a revolving line of credit for the purpose of funding the transition of buildings into low income coops. 

Member services - Once buildings are coops how do we support them, organise them and help maintain them as affordable and equitable.

I'm in the member services team so work primarily with existing residents. We're working with residents on sustainability, democracy and resident advocacy. However i'm already discovering one of the great things about this organisation is everyone definitely works together. I'm partnering with the policy team to help influence the new housing policy on coops the city is currently releasing, as well as learning organising techniques from the tenant organising team to bring into the membership team. It's all fascinating, this alongside the huge diversity of backgrounds and experiences of both the staff as well as the communities i get to meet. In the last two weeks i've been to a training in the bronx, a meeting on the upper west side, a day of meetings in harlem, a tenants union meeting in crown heights, brooklyn (organisers among you look up crown heights tenants union as an amazing example of successful organising).

Leafleting and training in the bronx

I'm certainly excited to learn more from the people around me and be part of such a dynamic organisation.

On a social side i've spent a long of time hanging out with my avodah cohort, there are 24 of us so we're a fairly diverse bunch and it's been great getting to know lots of different people. I've been to a few different Jewish community events of different denominations, 'romemu' which is a large renewal community, on Shabbat a ton of brooklyn shuls are coming together for seudah, havdallah and selichot with an incredible jewish musician called joey weisenberg, so very much looking forward to that. 

Anyway that's most my news so far, what with quite a few evenings working and avodah obligations it's been a little hard to get totally settled in the city, but that should even out fairly soon. NY, much like London seems to have too much to do at all hours of the day, but as per i'm enjoying not stopping and taking in all there is around me.

Exploring 'Smorgasburg' an overpriced food festival in Williamsburg Brookyln with avodahniks! Yes the bagels here are obviously up to my standards!