Organizing for Change
by Chava Hassan | November 29, 2010 | 0 comments“Community organizing means developing leaders and bringing people together to form powerful organizations that allow people to act on their own behalf to make systemic changes in their lives.” —Jewish Organizing Initiative
When I applied to the Jewish Organizing Initiative (JOI) in spring of 2005, I had never heard of community organizing. I was finishing up a Master’s degree in modern rabbinic literature and several years of struggling with being Modern Orthodox and a feminist. By the age of 23, I knew that feminism had won out and that I could no longer identify as Orthodox. So I searched for a place outside of the academic world where I could maintain two sets of values in a mutually inclusive way: my commitment to justice and my commitment to Jewish community. The former grew out of my experiences as a feminist Orthodox woman and the intense alienation and disempowerment I had encountered there. And the latter had been inbred in me since I was a small child, the daughter of parents who built their lives around synagogue life and whose unfailing dedication to their community has often seemed unparalleled.
JOI was a place I could pursue and develop both Jewishly and with regard to social justice. It is a year-long fellowship program that includes placement at a non-profit organization where fellows work four days a week, and training and learning all day every Friday (plus the occasional weekend retreat, regular Shabbat diners, and more). On Fridays we would learn together for half the day about community organizing, social change, Jewish history, etc. And we would also spend time each week studying Jewish texts, thinking about how our Jewish identity impacted our work.
My placement organization was a non-profit called Health Care For All. My role in the organization was to build a base of support throughout the state for health care reform. And in spring of 2006, during my time there, health care reform did indeed pass in the state of Massachusetts. It was thrilling to be on the forefront of a change that not only made front page headlines of every major newspaper in the country, but that also markedly improved the lives of those people that I had encountered and organized in the previous months. What I learned at JOI was the power of organizing, working for social justice by seeking systems-level change, by addressing social problems at their roots.
Addressing root causes, not symptoms. Building power, not providing a service. These were the skills we built during our JOI year. And in the process we created a community of our own. We developed long-lasting relationships based on shared values and experiences and we learned to organize by organizing each other. And while some of us have continued to be community organizers in our professional lives (personally, I went on to organize around affordable housing and responsible lending for three years after completing JOI), we all have found the lessons and skills we gained to be invaluable tools, no matter what we do now.
If you would like to apply, or have any questions, go to www.JewishOrganizing.org. The application deadline for the 2011-2012 year is March 18, 2011.
