In these challenging times, we can look to Jewish “spiritual technologies” for tools to process trauma and other difficulties.
The Inside Out Wisdom and Action Dismantling Racism from the Inside Out (IOWA DRIO) program uses Mussar and other such tools to teach resilience using a racial justice lens.
Edot Midwest is partnering with IOWA Project, Jews of Color Sanctuary in Cincinnati, and Chicago’s Kol Or JOC Caucus at Jewish Council on Urban Affairs (JCUA) to bring this amazing program to the Midwest region. This cohort will be for Midwest Jews of Color. The program will start on November 7th, 2023 and will run until March 21, 2024. Click here to register.
The Kirva Inside Out Wisdom in Action (IOWA) Project works with Jewish social justice leaders to help them develop Jewish spiritual practices and connect to Jewish spiritual wisdom. The Inside-Out change method helps people making social change integrate deep spiritual wisdom into their justice work in order to lead from a place that is more visionary, creative, sustainable, and grounded. We’re helping people build bridges between their spiritual lives and their activist lives.
Following the 2020 uprising for Black Lives, Yehudah Webster joined Kirva-IOWA Project in creating the Dismantling Racism from the Inside Out (DRIO) course and community of practice to support Jewish leaders, advocates, and organizers to be more effective, successful, and sustained in their racial justice work through the spiritual Jewish tools of Mussar. We know antiracism work is not easy, and those invested in racial justice need the support and tools to ensure we don’t replicate the very dynamics of white supremacy and racism that we’re working to undo systemically. To dismantle racism in our society at large and in each of us, we need to create personal and communal transformation in addition to systemic change.
The DRIO program integrates Mussar teaching and practice with anti-racism frameworks and is intended as a second-level course for those with prior, introductory DEI and anti-bias training. DRIO focuses on the “how” of antiracism, equipping participants with daily concrete Jewish spiritual tools of Mussar to confront, subvert, and heal implicit and internalized racism within ourselves and others, supporting the collective organizing, advocacy and service-work efforts to dismantle racism systemically.
Register today by going to this link: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/dismantling-racism-from-the-inside-out-midwest-poc-cohort-registration-710431258017?aff=oddtdtcreator