Judaism On Our Own Terms

A Letter to Our Community: From Judaism On Our Own Terms

To fill out our form or access clickable links in this letter, go to linktr.ee/JudaismOOOT

Calling all rabbis, academics, educators, activists, and epic-havers-of-Jewish-geography with collective-liberation-grounded resources to share…

Our liberation-minded, peer-organized Jewish student network is building cross-campus resources and community.

Join Judaism On Our Own Terms as we engage in political, organizational, and spirtual building for movement revival.

Sunday, September 10th @ 3pm EST/12pm PST

Please also join us on Sunday if you are a student who is interested in starting an independent Jewish group, part of one already, or looking to get involved in JOOOT’s work in any other way!!

Register at bit.ly/joootcommunity!

Are you a Jewish student struggling to find a spiritual home and value-aligned community on your college campus? are you interested in building cross-campus resources and community through a liberation-minded, peer-organized network?

Join Judaism on Our Own Terms as we engage in political, organizational, and spirtual building for movement revival!

Sunday, September 10th @ 3PM est/12PM pst.

Please also join us if you are a student already in an independent Jewish group, an academic/faculty, a rabbi/clergy, organizer/activist, or alumni!

Register at bit.ly/joootcommunity!

As JOOOT continues through our restructuring process, we are so excited to share an UPDATED MISSION STATEMENT, POINTS OF UNITY, and FAQs that reflect JOOOT’s role in the growing movement of liberation-aligned Jewish organizations!

OUR WORKING MISSION STATEMENT:

Judaism on Our Own Terms (JOOOT) is a cross-national organization and movement that aims to create and build a network of student-governed and liberation-aligned Jewish communities on campuses across the so-called North American continent.

We work to build Jewish communal life that is free from dictates of the legacy Jewish institutions that constrain us and distort Judaism. The Jewish communities that we seek to collectively empower are both in solidarity with all oppressed and colonized communities across the world and radically inclusive of many different notions of, experiences within, and ways of relating to Judaism. Local JOOOT groups might articulate this solidarity in ways that make sense for their local context. JOOOT is an autonomous organization that strives to be anti-racist, internationalist, anti-imperialist, and anti-capitalist. This necessitates an anti-Zionist politic, which we see as a rejection of a manufactured piece of Jewish identity propagated by the Jewish establishment. We aim to build and sustain Jewish communities and organizations that center liberation as a necessary means for pursuing vibrant Jewish life.

OUR WORKING POINTS OF UNITY:

As a movement comprised of individual campus groups, we represent a diverse set of communities with various ideologies and missions. Through this, we are united by our six principles for Jewish campus life:

1. Establish and support democratically-run Jewish campus organizations by and for students within which students have the primary authority to determine leadership structure, and collectively decide rules, programming, and organizational mission.

2. Resolve never to jeopardize student needs in the name of donors’ political interests.

3. Protect and empower Jewish students facing increasingly common attempts to silence their voices, perspectives, and political opinions — especially regarding Palestine — by working against attempts to intimidate students who are part of, or in solidarity with, liberatory efforts.

4. Embrace solidarity with all oppressed and colonized groups, locally and internationally, while rejecting calls, politics, and alliances that stifle liberatory movements.

5. Embrace students’ diverse Jewish identities and understandings of “being Jewish” without delegitimization because of race, conversion status, sexual orientation, gender, or class.

6. Create vibrant Jewish spaces for ritual, discourse, and engagement with liberatory movements, along with mechanisms for these spaces to share resources and support one another.

This will not be easy work, but we believe it is a crucial next step for the long-term sustainability and vibrancy of the “North American” Jewish community. We are excited to continue this work of building student-run, democratically administered, liberation-aligned, and inclusive Jewish communities on campuses.

We invite our fellow Jewish students to join with us by either building new student-run groups or committing existing organizations to this mission.

Go to jooot.org for more info

An invitation and letter to the JOOOT Community:

We are in the midst of reflecting on the past and present organization of JOOOT in order to envision a path forward that ensures our organization fulfills its core mission of, “promoting student self-governance and radical inclusivity — both on our individual campuses and in the wider Jewish community.” We want your input on our next steps forward.

Those of us on the steering committee are writing this statement to be transparent with the incredible, student-led groups we have struggled to support over the past years. The COVID pandemic has been an incredibly difficult time for our student organizing, as well as many others. We want to specifically invite JOOOT groups we have lost touch with through these years to rebuild with us. We are committed to transformation such that we are able to be what you need us to be.

None of us on the JOOOT leadership team are willing to give up on the dream of a thriving diversity of justice-minded Jewish, student-led communities.

Furthermore, in the face of an increasingly homogenous, fearful, and intolerant Jewish establishment (at both national and international levels) we believe that our communities — of young people engaging in systemically conscious, solidarity-minded, radical Judaisms — are vital in their power to uplift and usher in alternative meanings and realities of Jewishness. Ones which prioritize building beloved community (within and beyond themselves) and reject calls to carceral, insular ‘community’ rooted in fears others tell us to have.

With this in mind, we are making efforts to explicitly reground ourselves in definable and actionable political praxis. Through this process, in a bid to be transparent, we will be providing the community with updates on decisions and conversations, as well as the resources and histories we are grounding ourselves in.

If you are currently involved in any JOOOT-affiliated independent Jewish group, or have been in recent years, we invite you to join us in the restructuring and reenvisioning process. Please fill out our google form (linked below) if you have interest in supporting this restructure, or with things you would like us to consider through this process. Reach out to us at any time to get involved, give feedback, or ask questions at our new email: [email protected]

We are so excited to bring this vision into being and inject new energy into this crucial area of Jewish student organizing! We hope you will join us.

In community -
The JOOOT Steering Committee

JOOOT Restructuring Interest/Feedback Form We are in the midst of reflecting on the past and present organization of JOOOT in order to envision a path forward that ensures our organization fulfills its core mission of, “promoting student self-governance and radical inclusivity — both on our individual campuses and in the wider Jewish com...

Apply and share widely!

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