Maoz Tzur, Rock of Ages, is a Hanukkah classic. The singing of this medieval poem anchors our Hanukkah celebrations and helps us to remember the Jewish people's deliverance from our enemies. However, some of the violent imagery in this 13th-century poem runs contrary to our modern, progressive values. One stanza in particular calls on God to “wreak vengeance on enemies of the Jews.”
The Reconstructionist movement has adopted a Resolution on Reparations, making a commitment to “supporting and advocating for institutional, local and federal legislation and policies that specifically address the need for reparations.”
The resolution is a call for communal and national teshuvah, an opportunity for repentance, utilizing a Jewish framework to speak with moral authority on an issue of profound importance to American society and global efforts for justice.
If ethno-nationalism is bad for Jews as a minority in the Diaspora, then ethno-nationalism practiced by Jews as the majority, holding state power, is also bad.
Hanukkah isn’t just play; it is a conversation between the past, present and future. Tradition also holds that Jewish individuals and families tell and retell the story behind the candles. Each of us is invited to seriously explore issues of militarism and assimilation, universalism and particularism.
As a Black Jewish woman and mother of two biracial sons, Buffie Longmire-Avital has felt compelled to apply some of those same research methods to Jewish households. Yet she lacked the time, funding and support.
"As a Jew and an African American, I carry the memory of two groups of people who were once enslaved," said Rabbi Sandra Lawson, RRC’ 18, Reconstructing Judaism’s inaugural director of racial diversity, Justice and inclusion.
