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VIRTUAL ROOTS TONIGHT (grades 8-12): Jews and Blacks and Civil Rights
In this pre-MLK Day experience, teens will join Rabbi Jen and Billy Planer from Etgar 36, as we explore both the reality of the relationship between the Jewish and Black communities in the past and the present. For the Zoom link, check your email or DM us!
Thanks for the love, Billy and Etgar!
This month, we're celebrating Atlanta Pride through a social media parade of Atlanta's Jewish organizations. We're so grateful for our community's shared commitment to equity and justice!
This week, our Speakers Bureau participated in the first in-person speaking engagement since March 2020! Speakers Tim Bell and Edrika Fulford spoke to students from Etgar 36 about their lived experience of homelessness and advocacy work as grassroots leaders at CCH. The event was held outdoors at Millennium Park.
Learn more about the Speakers Bureau and schedule a virtual or outdoor in-person event here:
https://www.chicagohomeless.org/programs-campaigns/community-organizing/the-speakers-bureau/
Whether it’s one on one, with friends, family or your community, discussions about race, politics or Israel can get heated. How can we have these important and necessary conversations while turning down the heat? How can we practice self-care as we enter into uncomfortable conversations? What can success look like during a difficult conversation?
Jewish Teen Initiative at CJP - Combined Jewish Philanthropies has teamed up with Temple Isaiah - Lexington, MA, Temple Emunah Lexington and Etgar 36 for a series of important conversations - open to in grades 8-12. Learn more & register today >> JewishBostonTeens.com.
Thank you to everyone who participated in our MLK Day event yesterday, the Panel on Racial Justice: What Teens Can Do! With over 210 teens from 16 different states, we honored Dr. King's legacy but leaning about Racial Justice through music, defining important terms, thinking through the role of youth in the fight for a more just society, and hearing from the daughter of a prominent Civil Rights activist. Thank you to our partners in this event, and beyond as we continue our partnerships going forward as one network of Jewish Youth organizations with a focus on community action: Tzedek America JYCA - Jewish Youth for Community Action Etgar 36 Rabbi Isaiah Rothstein
UJA-Federation of New York
J-Teen Leadership is gathering teens from around the country to have an honest conversation honoring the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King on this MLK Day of Service. Moderated by Rabbi Isaiah J. Rothstein, the panel will include professionals from Etgar 36, JYCA - Jewish Youth for Community Action, and (us!) Tzedek America and DJ Wildstyle. We’ll talk about the fight for racial justice in our country and what you can do to take action.
This event is free and open to any teens in this community who would like to participate!
Click here to register:
https://www.ujafedny.org/event/view/jteen-racial-justice
Please join us for a special Shabbat service honoring the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. tonight at 6:30 pm, with special guest Billy Planer of Etgar 36. Billy will share how the Alabama Civil Rights trip that he leads is informed by the legacy of Dr. King and how it continues the work that he advanced. He will also discuss how the Jewish community needs to get (and stay!) involved in the ongoing struggle for equality.
https://www.templesinaiatlanta.org/event/shabbat-service-honoring-martin-luther-king1.html
As Rabbi Leubitz stated perfectly on the Zoom call. Last night, our 5th-12th grade parents and teachers grabbed their backpacks, pencils and notebooks, and went back to school for a lesson on "How to Talk to Your Teens About Race."
We were so lucky to have had the best professor teaching our newest students, Billy Planer with Etgar 36.
Weren't able to make it last night? You can watch the recording here!
Today we are to Etgar 36 who is offering socially distant 1& 2 day Civil Rights Trips! "Get back out on the road in a safe way and experience another time in our history when we were separated from each other for very different reasons." Click on the link below to learn more and register for this important and exciting opportunity!
“When Bryan Stevenson set out to build a memorial to the thousands of black people lynched in the United States, he thought about Germany and Poland. Those countries, where millions of Jews died at the hands of the N***s, have made sure to preserve the memories of the victims — and the places where they were killed.” - JTA, What a New Memorial for Black Lynching Victims Learned from Holocaust Commemoration.
In early March of this year, a group from Women’s Philanthropy- Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit went on a Civil Rights Journey to America's south. The 40 women, including several David-Horodokers, traveled to Atlanta, Georgia and Montgomery, Selma and Birmingham, Alabama, exploring the historic struggle that helped shape the nation.
In Atlanta, the group visited the National Human and Civil Rights Museum and heard the story of Leo Frank, a Jew who was falsely convicted of murder and lynched in 1915. In Selma, they met and walked with a participant in the infamous 1965 “Bloody Sunday” voting rights march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. In Birmingham, they joined a Reverend who was a Civil Rights worker in the 50s & 60s for a walking tour of Freedom Park & the 16th Street Baptist Church, which in 1963 was the target of a bombing by the K*K, killing four young girls. And in Montgomery, they stood where the Civil Rights movement began at the Rosa Parks Museum and toured the Equal Justice Initiative’s Legacy Museum & Lynching Memorial.
The Equal Justice Initiative’s Legacy Museum & Lynching Memorial was established in 2018 by Bryan Stevenson, an American lawyer, social justice activist and founder/executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative. He was depicted in the legal drama Just Mercy which is based on his memoir Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, which tells the story of Walter McMillian.
“In Berlin there are dozens of markers and stones placed next to the homes of Jewish families that were abducted,” Stevenson told JTA in a 2016 phone interview. “Auschwitz is a place you visit. It sobers you with the horrors of the Holocaust. When you leave these places, you want to say, ‘Never again should we commit this kind of suffering and abuse.' “
“Stevenson wanted to evoke the same feelings in Americans in the design for The National Memorial for Peace and Justice (informally known as the National Lynching Memorial), the first physical space dedicated to the victims of slavery, lynching, segregation and mass incarceration. The memorial and nearby museum was spearheaded by Stevenson’s nonprofit, which provides legal aid to those wrongly convicted of crimes.”
Nearly 4,400 people were victims of white supremacist lynchings between 1877 and 1950, according to original research by the Equal Justice Initiative — about 800 victims more than had been previously documented.
The Civil Rights Journey for Women was planned and guided by Billy Planer, director of Etgar 36.
Information sourced from
https://www.jta.org/2018/04/26/united-states/new-memorial-black-lynching-victims-learned-holocaust-commemoration.
Photo left: Group participants, Women’s Philanthropy- Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit Civil Rights Journey, 2020. Photo middle: The four girls killed in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, 1963 (clockwise from top left): Addie Mae Collins (14), Cynthia Wesley (14), Carole Robertson (14), and Carol Denise McNair (11). Photo right: Equal Justice Initiative’s Legacy Museum & Lynching Memorial. The names of lynching victims are inscribed on corten steel monuments hung from above .
Watch this short film on the creation of the Nkyinkyim Sculpture at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8O2ETApTLds&t=88s
We welcome the Westchester Reform Temple to our space on their civil rights tour w/Etgar 36 and Names Project at Remerge
An amazing first day of the Civil Rights Journey, as 36 of our members explored Atlanta with Etgar 36.
The morning included visiting the old Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was raised, the tomb of Dr. and Mrs. King, and worshipping at the new Ebenezer Baptist Church across the street.
After a lunch at the Ponce City Market, we explored the National Center for Civil and Human Rights, engaging with the history of Civil Rights in America and the global human rights situation.
After a briefing on voter engagement and voter suppression, we enjoyed dinner in downtown Decatur, GA.
This morning our journey goes west to Montgomery and Selma...