Tag: Personalizing Jewish Ritual

Teshuva Across Waters

Posted on by jocsantuary in Announcement, Event, Fundraiser

Teshuvah Across the Waters (TAW) is an exciting opportunity to bridge African diasporic Jews/Hebrews with African Jewish/Hebrew communities.

As a Jewish person of unknown African and Indian heritage, I have deep yearnings to experience ancestral Jewish traditions that have been severed through colonization, enslavement, and assimilation. Supporting the connections that will be forged through this project will enhance global Jewry’s collective efforts of Teshuvah, aligning values and relationships with ourselves, God, and the world.

TAW seeks to strengthen bonds across the Jewish Diaspora by lifting up the traditions and histories of African Jewry within the global Jewish community needed for an holistic and thriving Jewish peoplehood on our path toward spiritual redemption. Please join the incredible support for this project to increase connection our collective Jewish ancestry. A financial contribution of any amount can help us bridge these waters.

Dreaming the world to come

Posted on by jocsantuary in Announcement

I am proud to have served as the editor for the 5785 Dreaming the World to Come. The planner will begin shipping around Tu b’Av (August 19). I am delighted to offer a friend’s of the editor 18% off discount code TUBAV5785 that is good between August 18 through September 1.

FUN FACT: All three of the editor staff are born in the month of September!

The planner will be a beautiful place to keep your appointments on track during both the Gregorian and Jewish lunar calendar and nourish your spirit with ritual offering from 12 AMAZING contributors! One of the reasons I said yes to shepherding this project was the commitment to feature Jewish people of color, among many other identities, whose creative voices comprise 8 of the 12 contributors.

If you are new to this project, here is a description:

Dreaming the World to Come planner weaves ritual offerings from diverse fonts of wisdom through our Jewish year. It is our attempt to create something beautiful and defiant that shows we are here, fighting to keep Jewishness anchored in resistance, justice, and mystical tradition.

The planner cover invokes the Jewish sea monster Leviathan, who offers medicine needed in these times. Moving through darkness, unperceived; the fugitivity practiced by those whose existence has been criminalized and controlled. The Leviathan is a friend, lover, and protector of those escaping enslavement and incarceration, those whose perspectives are intentionally buried, whose inherent rights have been denied, who are forced underground for survival.

Beneath the face of the waters, in the depths,

the monster Leviathan lies coiled.

She moves in the darkness;

we cannot see her, yet we feel her power.

JoC Journey Toward Healing

Posted on by jocsantuary in Event
guest blog by Tamar Ghidalia & Jill Housen, 3W Consulting

3W Consulting‘s work is anti racist and anti-oppression work and uses liberatory practice at its core. Since the work is significantly grounded in Jewish life, tradition, texts and values, it enriches the spiritual life of the participants and allows them to claim their Jewish identities.

We have served 20 organizations over the last 3 years: congregations, communal organizations, schools,camps, and presented at national conferences. We intentionally support and center JoC’ leadership.

We created JoC Journey Toward Healing because of the need of JoC to have places to just be and share their identities in a safe space. We believe that JoC are deserving of care and joy, feeling seen, heard and understood, feeling empowered and not alone…

By tapping into the wisdom of Jewish tradition and texts, we can find ways of healing from the traumas that we have faced and be able to bring forth all of our identities. Together we can build our sacred space through prayer, poetry, music, storytelling, meditation, comparing the BIPOC and Jewish oppression and liberation narratives, and sharing our dreams of liberation.

Please register to join us.

Best,

Tamar & Jill

Gregorian year in review

Posted on by jocsantuary in Annual Review

Jews of Color (JoC) Sanctuary was born on Sigd in November 2019. The date was a nascent expression to bring Jewish reflections from communities of color into deeper relationship with a vision to create a sanctuary for Jewish people of color in Cincinnati and the Midwest. Like all things in development, the idea of JoC Sanctuary had been brewing for many years before emerging. April Baskin and the 2018 JewV’Nation cohort were particularly supportive in fostering early dreaming of Midwestern JoC space. We have grown slowly over the last four years of infancy and 2023 has been an exciting year of growth as we enter toddlerhood.

We were awarded our first formal grant through ArtsWave, made possible through our fiscal sponsor, ish Cincinnati. JoC Ritual Studio was an invitation to claim our right to Jewish ritual that reflects the fullness of who we are and offers meaningful marking of important transitions. JoC Sanctuary was a featured speaker at the Rising Tide Conference and supported facilitation of a Seven Steps Mikveh Guide Training, including original ritual creation (a new cohort starts in February!^). We learned and taught Dismantling Racism from the Inside Out (DRIO).

Other community interactions include, returning to the Jews of Color Mishpacha Project Shabbaton, deepening connection through creative practice skills, standing in solidarity with refugees, celebrating the rich diversity of faiths, getting up to some good trouble, bringing light into the world, and shepherding Jewish End-of-Life Practices & Rituals research which will be released in 2024.

We co-sponsored events with the Jewish Community Relations Council and the Jewish Federation of Cincinnati. We collaborated with Birds of a Feather, Black Jewish Liberation Collective, ish Cincinnati, Jewish Community Library, Jewish Spiritual Leadership Convening, Jewish Women’s Archive, Kirva, Mayyim Hayyim, and Rising Tide. We were supported by ArtsWave, Jewish Bridge Project, in-kind contributions, and individual donations.

This year has welcomed the Bilhah Zilpah Project and Parasha Play as special projects of JoC Sanctuary. Parasha Play is an improv-based Torah exploration and the Bilhah Zilpah Project seeks to reclaim these Jewish matriarchs, and listen for the wisdom that their silenced voices can teach us into our modern lives. 2023 closed with the inaugural launching of the Bilhah Zilpah Project through a series of homecoming events. Parashat Vayeitzei falls shortly after Sigd every year, sweetening welcoming this project as a poetic return to our beginning.

Sincere gratitude goes out to all the individuals and organizations who have fostered the growth of Jews of Color Sanctuary through participation and co-creation. We look forward to continuing creating sanctuary in 2024. If you have skills you would like to share with us, please email danserica@gmail.com and if you would like to provide financial support, contribute through our fiscal sponsor’s webpage: noting the funds are for Jews of Color Sanctuary.

Joyful Gregorian New Year celebrations for continued sweetness in your Jewish year!

Kwanzukkah Reflections

Posted on by jocsantuary in Event
Kwanzukkah attendees pose for a mid-celebration photograph (photo by Christine Ngeo Katzman)

Sixteen people across a wide spectrum of ages and backgrounds came together to create a space where we can bring the fullness of our fabulous Jewish selves, including all of the messiness that makes us each who we are as individuals.

Kwaanzukka was an opportunity to bring all of the intersectional realities that people of color are never allowed to forget, but that is a reality of every life on this planet. Something evident in the rich conversation that ensued after bridging the land acknowledgment into an invitation to name the geographic places referenced at the event. From lands our ancestors originated, whether we had ever stepped foot on that land or not, to the cultural communities connected to the dishes we brought, whether those were our culture or not.

The responses were messy, full, and rich… from EVERY attendee. Affinity space is important. It is also important to have periodic open full-community events where Jewish people of color can show up in our fullness along with all of the people who love and support us, whatever their race or spiritual affiliation. To still center the voices and experiences of Jewish people of color and break down anti-blackness.

Jews of Color Sanctuary has done national virtual events which have been deeply meaningful for me. However, Kwanzukkah may be the only time I have ever felt like every part of me was welcome at an in-person event where I live. A simultaneously heart-breaking and exuberant statement. I lead this work because I need it in my life. I know it’s important because I see how powerful this work is in other settings across the country. Special thanks go to the JCRC and Federation for understanding the importance of creating events like this, and especially to each attendee… we created this space together and it could not have happened without you.

Jews of color… what kinds of events would be meaningful for your lives? Allies… please let the Jews of color you love know that JoC Sanctuary is their local resource and an opportunity to plug into the national networks of Jewish people of color from many backgrounds who are claiming their right to celebrate their Jewishness with the rest of their fabulous selves. We’re here for us.

SPARKLY TORAH

Posted on by jocsantuary in Workshop

I am in the beginning moments of reflecting back on what I want to take with me into Shabbat and what I wish to leave behind as I close my week.  I smile as I recall how my week started with JoC Sanctuary Ritual Studio.  A program called Mezuzah Bedazzle.  Creation is a beautiful and powerful thing.  Perhaps that is why we start there in our annual reading of Torah.  The act of making can also calm us as it gives us something to do with our hands, and perhaps a way to make sense inside our minds.  Somewhere along our journey into adulthood, many give up the simple joy of making for making’s sake.  Witnessing this tendency interrupted is a precious moment during a session of Mezuzah Bedazzle­–seeing adults allowing themselves to play.  When children attend, they take to the task easily.  Adults often need more time, but always arrive.  And, in the midst of joyful gathering and separating and imagining creation making with intention we studied about mezuzot, and had conversations with each other–learning, listening, laughing…  This is what I’m bringing in to spark Shabbat!

In the way that we are made in the image of God, and perhaps God also holds parts of us, may we reflect aspects of our children as we mold them into adults.  In a world filled with too much sorrow may we give ourselves the gift of choosing simple joys all around us, even if we have to mimic our children until we find our way.  May we choose to embrace ritual in ways that are meaningful for our lives and relish opportunities to listen and learn from the wisdom of every person, seeing God reflected in each face.  May our spiritual sparkle bedazzle our world.

Personalizing Ritual

Posted on by jocsantuary in Uncategorized

When I was a child, I was always creating. Somewhere, on the way to adulthood, despite going into a creative profession, I left the devising ritual and imbuing meaning to other professionals. While I was taught to think and to question, that was only supposed to go so far before turning to an expert. It sounds strange to say, but I now realize I am the expert of myself and my life and in choosing what moments I want to create ritual and highlight meaning around.

Reading Inventing Jewish Ritual by Vanessa L. Ochs came at the perfect time and helped hone the ritual innovator inside me to more confidently claim ownership over my prayers and new rituals in a subtly different, but deeply profound way. Prayer had always felt meaningful and personal to me, but Ochs’ historical foundation framing of Jewish ritual development created space for me to bring a fuller authentic self to current rituals and helped me to bravely create rituals rooted in Jewish practice for important life moments I want to mark or honor.

I feel there are many lost opportunities to help Jews of Color see themselves through the people of Color in the Torah. One of the foundational reasons I created this forum is to offer a safe space, a sanctuary, for Jews of Color in the Cincinnati and surrounding areas to explore those topics among other Jews of Color craving similar opportunities for chevruta, study and exploration. Our March event topic was Celebrating JOC Ritual and beyond texts pulled from Creating Jewish Ritual, we used one of my favorite texts borrowed from a friend’s article titled Bagels, Lox, and Grits: Defining My Jewish Identity by Yolanda Savage-Narva.

One of the food elements I connect with Rosh Hashanah is black eyed peas, after reading this was a popular African dish to celebrate the Gregorian New Year. This afternoon, I was part of a program that happened in an art studio. I learned a new kiln was being fired for the first time. As as artist who has mourned the loss of pieces which didn’t make it through firing, I immediately offered a simple prayer for a vessel which will bring beauty into the world. Daily minyans and Shabbat are crucial for me, but acknowledging the relevance of art is important to me too. Bringing aspects of myself in that I sometimes feel are pushed aside helps me step into a fullness of myself and my power that is exactly what I believe God wants for me. In the end, the ritual nuances that bring me the most joy are often simple elements. How they find their place is not always easy, but it always feels worth it.

https://reformjudaism.org/blog/2018/07/23/bagels-lox-and-grits-defining-my-jewish-identity