Let’s Create New Jewish Rituals To Cope With the Trump Era
Image by Drew Angerer
In the wake of this toxic election season and its deeply destabilizing outcome, many people have been scrambling for ways to react, to process and to organize. From this environment of confusion, many small Jewish grassroots efforts have sprung up, trying to find ways to understand and react to a new world — through the lens of Jewish practice and values.
One such effort, developed by Julie Aronowitz, Raphael Magarik and their pluralistic community, The Matriarchy, is a guide to mobilizing and organizing that draws on sources in Jewish ritual tradition. The guide (which can be found here) is offered as a resource anyone can feel free to use in their group or personal spiritual practice. It includes songs, prayers and passages from Jewish texts — as well as lists of progressive organizations, actions, personal and collective goals and organizational steps.
“The most important thing right now is to be creating circles of support and to act,” the Matriachy guide’s mission statement reads, “and to do so quickly. Don’t wait for the perfect moment. People are hungry for this now. Find a co-host and send out an invitation.”
This effort is one of many, part of a wider wave of identity-embracing activism and community building. From tradition-evoking efforts like these to Jewish-centered protest efforts like #JewishResistance and If Not Now, Jews across denominations — even, or perhaps especially, secular and non-practicing Jews — are coming out in huge numbers, and are coming out specifically as Jews, to process, to organize, and to act.
Ironically, it seems that Trump’s efforts to stoke bigotry and hatred have, in this case, only served to unify and mobilize.
Lana Adler is a Forward Summer Fellow working on opinion. Follow her on Twitter @Lana_Macondo
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and the protests on college campuses.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
