In the second episode of the comedy web series “Ac’tiv•ist,” Sam enjoys her campaign’s new-found success — until she meets the new volunteers.
Aspiring student organizer Samantha Rushbad grapples with the simultaneously inspiring, mind-numbingly banal, infuriatingly stupid, and downright absurd nature of campus activism as she starts a campaign to force her college to divest from Israel. As Sam steps ever-further into the labrynthine world of activism, she must also deal with her mother, love interest, teachers, and friends who fail to understand her activist life.
[pullquote align=right] Jewish studies ought not, as Neusner recognized, be shaped to meet the parochial interests of the Jewish community. [/pullquote]In December of 1984, Jacob
And yet, in the Biblical Pesach story, Rasha is not left behind. The entire Jewish community — the wise, the wicked, the simple, and those who don’t know how to ask — cross the red sea together. And together they wander for forty years, diasporic and free, a group filled with doubters and dissenters and rebels. In other words, questioning the Jewish community does not mean that we are separating ourselves from it. We question not from a place of distance but from a place of caring, engagement, and connection. And efforts to keep out the challengers, to blunt our teeth, are doomed to fail.
Erika Davis pens a useful guide for journalists on how NOT to exoticize Jews of color: listen, don’t assume, and do good research.