Parashat Bo: Jan. 31-Feb. 2, 2025
The Tikkun Olam Commission (TOC) invites your community to host a special Shabbat focused on reparations. This movement-wide initiative is a great opportunity to re-engage in the deep reckoning with racial harm and accountability that we began as a movement with the passage of the Reconstructionist Reparations Resolution in January 2023. The goal of the Reparations Shabbat weekend is to facilitate both ongoing congregational study and action by identifying ways to join local reparations efforts.
Are you interested in hosting a reparations Shabbat in your community?
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Why are we still focusing on reparations in such uncertain times, when we know our communities will have to respond to many urgent challenges to justice and equity? Because we, as a movement, made a commitment to racial justice and healing that is still needed, regardless of the administration. We must honestly learn our past and be accountable for the harm done to create the conditions for societal healing. We consider it our duty to continue this soul-healing work for ourselves and those we love.
We also know that our congregations will plan and respond as needed in their community. Some of us may consider Reparations Shabbat an opportunity to learn and spiritually fortify ourselves. Many of the resources we developed can be used in the months ahead, not just during the Shabbaton weekend. We hold to the sayings of our teachers, “You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to desist from it” (Pirkei Avot 2:21).
A Reparations Shabbat is a weekend of congregational programming dedicated to the topic of reparations. It can be as simple as a single dvar torah, or as elaborate as a full weekend of events. Each congregation is empowered to build a schedule that is the right fit for your community. We’ve created a menu of ready-to-go programs and resources that we hope will helpful in customizing your reparations shabbaton.
Parashat Bo is the week we read the story of the Israelites receiving reparations from the Egyptians on our journey from slavery to freedom and a great time to re-engage with the commitments we collectively made in our movement’s reparations resolution.
We suggest an arc of the weekend that starts in study – re-engaging the need to understand the foundational harms our societies are built upon, and leads toward action – taking inspiration from the dozens of local reparations projects emerging around the world and putting steps in motion for your own congregational reparations initiatives.
Following the summer of 2020, The North American Jewish communities’ commitment to racial justice work was the strongest it’s been since the American Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. As the uncertainty of the stability of the world seemingly increases each day, and the threats to Jewish safety and well being grow in our mind’s eye, and the collective dedication of the Black Lives Matter movement fades with time, these commitments have been difficult for many Jews and Jewish institutions to sustain. In addition, the October 7th massacre and subsequent war in Gaza have deeply strained relationships between many Jewish communities and their progressive movement partners for racial justice, leaving many Jews uncertain of whose lead to be following in this moment. We are living in a moment of great uncertainty about what the future of Jewish life in Israel, America and around the world will look like in the coming years.
The Reparations Shabbat weekend is designed to be a supportive container to help a congregation re-orient themselves to the racial justice work of the present moment.
Despite these many great unknowns, our commitment to the transformative power of racial justice work to help Jews and our fellow travelers is unwavering. We will continue to fight for the full dignity and equality of BIPOC Jews and our non-Jewish BIPOC neighbors and community members, and work to transform our societies into one that lives up to our highest, democratic ideals of justice and liberty. Our movement’s work on reparations began as a response to a direct ask in 2019 from Representative Sheila Jackson Lee z”l who said, “if you in the Jewish community want to partner with us [the Congressional Black Caucus], help us get that reparations bill [HR40] out of committee and move it forward. That’s what we need you to do – do that – and we’ll know you really want to build this partnership.”
In January 2023, the entire Reconstructionist movement responded to Representative Lee’s challenge by passing a historic reparations resolution, committing ourselves to the practice of reparations as a Jewish roadmap to societal healing and transformation. We dedicate the Reparations Shabbat weekend program to her memory, may it be for a blessing.
That work of reparations is just as important now as ever before. We invite you to join us for an immersive weekend of Reparations Shabbat, where we will take another deep dive into this visionary world of collective teshuvah and make moves as a community towards action for truth and reconciliation for the foundational harms of our past.
Programmatic Resources for Your Community:
Other Resources:
