After Colleyville
This month I wanted to find something to help us better understand and ultimately help fight what unfortunately appears to be a continued and possibly rising amount of anti-semitism. I cannot in any way claim to be an expert here or even deeply knowledgeable. Thankfully I was sent a great recommendation by my co-worker Tali.
For this meetup we listened to a really great podcast called Chutzpod! which is hosted by Rabbi Shira Stutman and Joshua Malina and produced by PRX. And I love their claim on their about page: “It's a podcast for people of all or no faiths; Hebrew school truants and proud yeshiva graduates; those who want to be inspired but don't want to schlep to synagogue; basically, anyone trying to live a meaningful life during these trying times.“
We actually ended up listening to parts of two episodes:
First, we listened to the beginning of the After Colleyville episode (until about 9:57)
Then, we listened to the interview with ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt in the episode called Ancient Magic 8 Ball (starting at roughly 29:41 until we need to break for discussion)
Suggested discussion questions (if you need something to start the conversation):
At one point I heard “could use other people to stand up on our behalf” -> what a great call for allyship. Thoughts on how we might stand up?
How do we not let hate lead to a reaction of more hate?
We’ve heard this concept of race is a social construct in other podcast episodes before. A quote that came up in our discussion “Race is made up, but racism is not”. What does that mean to you?