My article on Jewish Storytelling and Democratic Imagination

Amidst the absurd heat wave sweeping the Northeast Fourth of July weekend, an article that I've been working on for several months was finally released into the world!

What becomes possible when we dare to tell many alternative—and even directly contradictory—stories, allowing narrative abundance to fight an absence of imagination? What would it look like to refuse authoritarianism's use of terror and violence to narrow our narrative capacities by daring to share more expansive interpretations of the past and the future?

The argument is one I've been developing across my work in both Jewish communal life and the US pro-democracy movement: that both communities are stuck in the same two paradigms at once: a backwards-looking trap that narrows which histories can be told, and a fear-based futures framework that leaves us unable to imagine anything beyond the next threat. I argue that Jewish storytelling and practices of expansive imagination, from the Passover Seder to the prophetic tradition, offers real tools for getting unstuck, and that investing in these practices is itself a form of resistance and building the world we want.

Credit: Kurt Hoffman via Shalom Hartman

You can read it here

Huge gratitude to Claire Sufrin and the editorial team at Sources, the Shalom Hartman Institute's journal of Jewish ideas. And thank you to the too-many-to-name friends and colleagues who contributed to the evolution of my ideas and writings on this topic.

This is one addition to a much larger ongoing conversation. My inbox is always open to continue it!

And now, for a brief "mea culpa" moment

I know I've been a bit quiet on this newsletter this summer. The majority of my capacity has been spent juggling the multiple prongs of the Judaism in 2070 exhibition—more on this soon!—which has meant I've let sharing my signal-scanning drop to the wayside. Rest assured, the signals are still being scanned, and I'll be back to a more regular practice of updates from my "desk" in the next few weeks.

Drink some water, hug a neighbor, we're all in this together.

L'shalom,

Becca