The Center for Jewish Ethics, part of the Wyncote-based Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, completed its Race, Religion and American Jews project last month. The project was designed to increase scholarship on the relationship between Jewish peoples, race and racism and disseminate curricula to Jewish educators and adults
Two recent grants will help Reconstructing Judaism advance its strategic priorities of pursuing racial justice, investing in rabbinic education and strengthening Jewish communities.
The Wabash Center, which funds higher education in religion and theological studies, awarded $30,000 in new funding to Reconstructing Judaism. With this fiscal support, the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College — part of Reconstructing Judaism — wi
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.
The pilgrimage is part of Reconstructing Judaism’s intention to build community for Black Jews both within the organization and in the greater Jewish community. On Feb. 9, the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History hosted “Deconstructing Racism to Reconstruct Judaism: The Story of a Pilgrimage Down South,” a panel outlining the event’s significance.
The pilgrimage to the South for Jews of African descent who serve as leaders of the Reconstructionist movement was fully funded by Reconstructing Judaism. Participants were able to engage in healing work and visit sites imbued with trauma within a Jewish and Black context.
Reconstructing Judaism plays a leading role in addressing systemic racism in Jewish communities and serving as a moral voice in a larger public reckoning. One of the powerful ways the organization does this is by nurturing Jews of Color in leadership positions, as rabbis and community leaders.
Kanye is saying some of the worst antisemitic things that are even hard for people who have right-leaning politics to swallow.
None of this is really surprising if you go back through Kanye’s problematic comments, or his relationship with Donald Trump and Candace Owens. It looks to me like he’s having a breakdown. I don’t think it’s just mental illness —
When Shahanna McKinney-Baldon came upon the life and work of early 20th-century entertainer Madame Goldye Steiner, the dramatic soprano who performed Jewish liturgical music along the East Coast and in the upper Midwest as “the only colored woman cantor in the world,” she said she felt an instant connection.
When it comes to groundbreaking research, it usually takes years for new work to appear in an academic publication and, often, it fails to reach the public in a meaningful way. The Reconstructionist Rabbinical College’s Center for Jewish Ethics is trying a different approach.
