Intro to Judaism: Traditions, Texts, and Transformation
Join Rabbis Brant Rosen and Jessica Rosenberg for a 15 week exploration into the foundations of Judaism and Jewish life. We will engage with diverse histories, examine texts, theologies and philosophies, and learn about ritual and prayer as dynamic aspects of Jewishness with powerful potential for our lives and times.
Some key questions will include:
• How have Jews organized ourselves over time and related to other peoples?
• How do we relate to land, place, and power?
• How do we understand and relate to aspects of Jewish tradition that replicate oppressive systems?
• How can we bring our liberatory values to Judaism and create Jewish lives that nourish and sustain ourselves and our communities and feed our work for justice?
Foundational to this class is the understanding that Jews are and always have been a multiracial, multiethnic, multicultural group. We will bring feminist and diasporist lenses and will work to create an accessible learning space for participants.
This class is open to people with all ranges of Jewish experience. In particular, we are eager to support Jews and Jewishly-journeying leftists who are looking to deepen knowledge and connection with Jewishness, who may feel marginalized in Zionist Jewish spaces. This class may be taken toward the fulfillment of the requirements for formal conversion to Judaism. Please check out Tzedek Chicago’s core values for more on the political/spiritual context of this class and our community.
Lastly, we are happy to share that the Jewish Voice for Peace Rabbinical Council will be offering an Intro to Judaism course in 2023. These new emergent opportunities for sacred learning represent an exciting and long-needed step forward in diasporist Jewish education!
About the instructors:
Rabbi Brant Rosen (he/him) serves Tzedek Chicago, a synagogue he helped found in 2015. A longtime Palestinian solidarity activist and organizer, Brant is the co-founder of the Jewish Voice for Peace Rabbinical Council and the Jewish Fast for Gaza. He blogs regularly at the Jewish social justice blog, Shalom Rav and his book Wrestling in the Daylight: A Rabbi’s Path to Palestinian Solidarity was published by Just World Books in 2012 (updated in 2017). Brant is also a prolific poet and liturgist whose prayers and poems can be found on his blog Yedid Nefesh and his chapbook, "Songs After the Revolution: New Jewish Liturgy." Brant is a white, Ashkenazi, cis male from an owning class background and lives in Evanston, IL.
Rabbi Jessica Rosenberg (she/her) became a rabbi in order to learn our people’s diverse and nuanced histories, tell stories, and create spaces, ritual, and organizing that helps transform our relationships to past, present and future. Jessica is a white, Ashkenazi, queer cis femme from an owning class background. She is a collective member of the Radical Jewish Calendar project, and organizes with Matir Asurim: Jewish Care Network for Incarcerated People and as part of the Jewish Voice for Peace Rabbinical Council. She is a writer and teacher on integrating trauma-informed pedagogy into Jewish education, ritual and organizing, and authored an Introduction to Trauma, Healing and Resilience for Rabbis, Jewish Educators and Organizers, published by Reconstructing Judaism.
