Rise Up Grantees
Rise Up grantees are shaping an inherently Jewish blueprint for leaders, activists and citizens. They are illuminating new access points for the integration of spiritual life and social justice commitments. And they do this in a deeply relational way that centers voices often on the margins of Jewish life.
Solidarity of Nations
Achvat Amim is a movement building platform and educational initiative centered around the core value of self-determination for all peoples. Based in Jerusalem, Achvat Amim responds to their Palestinian partners' urgent calls for solidarity with relational and embodied presence. Their educational programming equips Jewish leaders with nuanced and in-depth understanding of Israel/Palestine, practical skills in community organizing, strong analytic frameworks, and access to relevant networks that enable them to become sustained actors within larger webs of cultural and political resistance. As a Jewish organization, Achvat Amim is stewarding a Jewish future that can effectively find right-sized political action, particularly as it relates to Jewish-Palestinian solidarity.
Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Education
Atlanta Jews of Color Council is a nonpartisan grassroots organization owned and led by Jewish women of color. AJOCC works at the intersection of empowerment and social impact. AJOCC serves as the south’s intergenerational leadership development, mentoring, empowerment and power building platform for Jewish women of color and girls. AJOCC is at the forefront of championing justice and equitable policies that center racial, economic, and gender justice to promote health and wellness, economic security, education, and global empowerment as key elements of liberation.
Jews of Color Torah Academy
Jewish education for Jews of Color by Jews of Color. This includes engaging JOCs (in New York and online) in Hebrew learning and seminar-style text learning, connecting with JOCs around the country to grow the field of accessible Jewish educational programs for marginalized communities and opening up new conversations about text, tradition, and liberation.
Jewish Experiences Up and Down the Mountain
Tawonga runs year-round mission-driven programs both at its residential campsite next to Yosemite National Park and in the San Francisco Bay Area. Serving children, families, and adults of all ages, Tawonga participants decompress from the pressures of their daily schedules, build community, unplug in nature and connect with Jewish life.
Jewish Spiritual Care for Communal Loss
The Communal Loss and Adaptation Project (CLAP) provides Jewish spiritual care for communal loss, centers the adaptive wisdom of frontline queer, disabled, and BIPOC communities, and honors the universal human need to be witnessed in grief. CLAP makes use of ancient mourning techniques, as well as innovative art, activism, peer support, and ritual, to facilitate spiritual adaptation to the losses of the Pandemic and climate crisis. CLAP is a project of Svara: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva.
A Jewish Call to Climate Change Action
Dayenu is a movement of American Jews confronting the climate crisis with spiritual audacity and bold political action. They care deeply about equity and justice in our world and about the future we create for our children and future generations. Dayenu believes that together, drawing from our Jewish tradition, experience, and faith, we have the power to create real and lasting change.
Yiddish Prayers Centered on Women & Gender-Non-Conforming People
Yiddish Tkhines are Ashkenazi supplications that were regularly written and prayed by, and centered the experiences of women, trans, and gender non-conforming people. Der Tkhines Proyekt offers interactive workshops which teach new melodies paired with old Yiddish tkhines, and uplifts the tradition of zogn tkhines, of speaking and writing spontaneous prayers as practiced by generations of Jewish grandmothers and trAncestors.
Jewish Women of Color Resilience Circle
Supporting Jewish women leaders of color through a transformational leadership development practice that links activism, relationship building, spirituality, and self-care. JWOC Resilience Circles model restorative justice in practice and create spaces for women of color to center their repair, empowerment, dignity, healing and interconnectedness in Beloved Community.
Disability Justice Torah Circle
Expanding Community
A space for Jews with disabilities to build community around Torah and engage Jewish text through a disability lens. The space will nurture and amplify the voices of Jews with disabilities and produce “Disability Torah” to impact the broader Jewish community.
Regional Jewish Diversity Collaborative
A network of partnerships and activities focused on affirming Jewish racial and ethnic diversity across communities in the Midwest region. Investing in the leadership of Jewish People of Color (JOC’s) is Edot's driver for change.
The Egalitarian Sephardi Mizrahi Community of NY
A Diverse, Egalitarian Sephardi and Mizrahi Community
The Egalitarian Sephardi Mizrahi Community of NY is an egalitarian diverse community gathering to practice regular cultural and spiritual offerings in NYC yearlong. They mark the high holidays, mimouna, and other important staples on the Sephardi calendar while centering women, nonbinary, queer, and trans leadership and participation. They are an independent grassroots community supported by movement work across the Jewish, Mizrahi, Arab, and SWANA diasporic worlds in the US and beyond. They uphold shared values of decolonization, racial justice, and collective liberation. All are invited to partake in their joyous celebrations.
A Flag of Peace, Resistance, and Imagination
The Hamsa Flag Project is a vehicle for imagining new practices of multi-ethnic cultural work and intersectional world-building, particularly for Jews working in solidarity with Palestinians, Muslims, and non-Jewish SWANA allies. The Hamsa Flag is flag of peace, resistance, and imagination.
Illuminated Hilchot Teshuvah
A Practical Guide for Restorative and Transformative Justice
The Illuminated Hilchot Teshuvah is a forthcoming book project with a modern, accessible, and culturally relevant translation illuminated with original artwork. The book will be a practical guide for activists and abolitionists invested in the lived practice of restorative and transformative justice, as well as an accessible text for sacred study. The book will hopefully be a resource to movements for social justice, a teaching tool within and beyond the Jewish world.
Spiritual Grounding Tools for Today's Social Justice Leaders
The Inside-Out change method supports social justice leaders to explore Jewish spiritual wisdom and develop Jewish spiritual practices. It 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. They're helping people build bridges between their spiritual lives and their activist lives.
Ancestral Connection, Embodiment, and Trauma as a Call to Prayer
The Jewish Ancestral Healing podcast engages spiritual leaders, artists, activists and visionaries on their journeys of ancestral healing, embracing resilience, and ancestor reverence practices rooted in Jewish traditions and counter-oppressive devotion. Jewish Ancestral Healing remembers ancient ways, reclaims and innovates new possibilities, and welcomes the blessing of being deeply supported and inspired by our loving and wise ancestors.
Jewish Justice Circle Education, Queer Ritual, and Community Action
Using the Jewish values of “Tikkun Olam, Repairing The World,” and deep reflective inquiry, this project aspires to build a bridge to transformational anti-racist engagement. The Jewish Justice Circle: Awakening to Whiteness is a guided process for white Jewish people in exploring whiteness and privilege in the US today. The course facilitates a practice of undoing racism at personal, institutional, and structural levels. The Jewish Bridge Project embraces the wisdom that living in a less brutal and racist culture benefits all members of society.
Envisioning an equitable, sustainable, hopeful future for our communities, based in Jewish values.
Jewish Covid Resilience Network advocate for Covid policies in Jewish communal spaces that are based in the tenets of disability justice, and to repair the exile of high-rise and disabled Jews from those spaces.
Activating Creativity in Individuals and Communities
Jewish Studio Project (JSP) exists to expand the capacities of individuals and communities to move through challenge and change leveraging a unique methodology that combines creative practices from the field of art therapy with Jewish learning techniques and spiritual community building. JSP is founded on the belief that creativity exists within each of us and that creativity is a vital resource in the work of personal and social transformation.
79 Organizations Pursuing Social Justice from a Jewish Perspective
The Jewish Social Justice Roundtable is a network of 79 organizations that strengthens and aligns the Jewish social justice field in order to make justice a core expression of Jewish life and help create an equitable world. They provide spiritual and skill-building trainings and coaching to build capacities in the Jewish social justice field around racial equity, conflict management resolution, and organizational change.
Intersectionality, Dignity, and Diversity
Jews in ALL Hues (JIAH) is an education and advocacy organization that supports Jews of Color and multi-heritage Jews. Their goal is to build a future for the Jewish people where intersectional diversity and dignity are normative.
Latin-Jewish Heritage and Multiculturalism
Jewtina y Co. is a Jewish and Latin organization on a mission to nurture Latin-Jewish community, identity, leadership and resiliency. Jewtina y Co. envisions a world in which the global Jewish and Latino/e/x communities joyfully celebrate Latin-Jewish multicultural narratives and work together to interrupt inequities.
Ko’ach is an intersectional and liberation-focused leadership program with group coaching and advanced training by and for accomplished JOC leaders. It roots them in their inherent collective power to move the Jewish community closer to its promise of justice. Joyous Justice is a Black Jewish woman-led, multiracial community-powered social justice and spiritual transformation organization that leads systemic change in areas of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), racial justice, and anti-oppressive social justice strategies in the Jewish community and beyond.
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Jewish Youth for Community Action
JYCA is a youth-led organization that empowers Jewish youth to take action for social justice through innovative leadership development, community organizing, and socio-political education. Their Jews Against Marginalization (JAM) program is where diaspora meets & identities integrate, for JOCSM youth to learn from and uplift each other. Their Jewish social justice & program values include: Tikkun Olam, Olam Ha'ba, intentional authenticity, belonging, rest, play, connection, and radical joy as a form of protest.
Music for Jews of Color
This project “Music for Jews of Color” is allowing Cantorial soloist Jason Schachter McKinney to use his compositional talents to create new music for Jewish liturgy. This will help all Jews to learn through music the struggles and the strife that Jews of Colors have had to endure.
Justice Rooted in Jewish Community
Kavod is multi-ethnic, multi-racial community led by young Jews in Greater Boston, committed to each other and to building a liberated world for all people. They live out our values through vibrant Jewish ritual, transformative social justice organizing, and collective responsibility.
Post-Denominational Community with Jewish Values, Rhythms, and Practices
Kesher Pittsburgh creates space for intergenerational folx including multi-faith and multi-racial families, queer, disabled and otherwise marginalized people. Kesher Pittsburgh positions itself at the intersection of spirituality and social justice, working toward collective liberation by centering marginalized voices and working to dismantle systemic oppression. Their community was born out of the realization that there are many among us who are yearning for deep connection and a radical sense of community. Kesher Pittsburgh heeds that call by creating a space which strive to be connective, brave and curious. They celebrate Jewish rhythms and cycles of time in ways which are integrated with our lives, not as a special occasion but as fundamental to our well-being.
All Faces
An online community developed by Rabbi Sandra Lawson, a Queer, Black educator and activist. Rabbi Lawson aims to bring Judaism to where people are, responds to those seeking a spiritual place to call home, and where they are accepted without question. Kol Hapanim holds regular morning services, Shabbat offerings, opportunities for online connections and in-person gatherings for Torah study, coffee dates, community Tish, and other opportunities for building community.
Jewish Communal Singing for Healing and Liberation
Let My People Sing! is a cultural project expanding the ancient and transformative practice of Jewish communal singing. They gather in multi-racial, multicultural and genderful Jewish community, uplifting songs and leaders historically and ongoingly pushed to the margins. Collectively they transmit and reclaim diasporic Jewish singing traditions, celebrate original music emerging from their communities, and create heart-centered gatherings where everyone can all be leaders and learners of song.
Queer Jewish Chicken Farm and Cultural Organizing Project
Linke Fligl is building a radical diasporic Jewish future rooted in land, tradition, healing and justice. Through growing nourishing food, cultivating land-based community and organizing for reparations, they co-create Jewish cultural practice for collective healing, resilience and liberation. Linke Fligl sees land based cultural work as critical practice to build a more just world. Their programs and gatherings bring together queer, trans and BIJOCSM (Black, Indigenous, Jews of Color, Sephardim and Mizrahim) to pray, learn, cook, schlep and sing in community. They create space to reclaim our inherent connection to land, tradition, and each other while confronting legacies of colonialism, antisemitism, and assimilation. Linke Fligl practices an embodied and land-based Judaism centered in our traditions and sacred texts, woven with queer ritual and guided by Jewish time.
Community by and for Asian American Jews
The LUNAR Collective cultivates connection, belonging and visibility for Asian American Jews, through intersectional community programming and authentic media storytelling. They originally launched in 2021 as LUNAR: The Jewish-Asian Film Project, an award-winning film series featuring 23 Asian American Jewish young adults in nuanced, unscripted conversation. After amassing a rapidly-growing, diverse community of Asian American Jews, they are now re-emerging as The LUNAR Collective, a space for learning, healing, expression, solidarity, and joy.
Communal Immersive Learning Experiment to Center Feminism
A community-led spiritually-grounded space for learning. It is founded on the knowing that collective patterns govern all interactions (between and within people) and that it is by understanding those processes more deeply that they are eventually transformed. They see their work as rooted in Jewish wisdom.
Adapted from the traditional Yeshiva-based model, the Kollel convenes a cohort of embodied Jewish teachers and practitioners for learning and collaboration to uplift and strengthen the work (and network) of embodied Jewish practice and somatic leadership. Emphasis will be placed on work centered around justice, equity, anti-racism, and ancestral trauma and healing, with priority involvement given to Jews of Color and other participants of historically marginalized backgrounds.
Programming for and by Mizrahi Jews
An emerging project grounded in the incredible work of Mizrahi Jews who have invested their labor and wisdom in creating spaces within progressive Jewish institutions to serve the goals of Mizrahi communal healing, learning, and organizing. There are three pillars: ritual (prayer, art, food, piyutim, ancestral healing practices); learning (history, feminism, culture, language learning eg: Arabic, Persian) and activism (anti-racist work, create Ashkenormativity Guide for Jewish organizations.) Their vision is to build a national network focused on building a powerful community amongst Mizrahi Jews in the US.
Ayin Press's digital column dedicated to Sepharadim past, present, and future
Moabet is Ayin Press's new digital column, launched in 2023, available to read on the Ayin website, curated and edited by professor Devin Naar, dedicated to the voices and concerns of various communities of Sepharadim past, present, and future. Moabet (מואביט) is a Ladino (or Judeo-Spanish) term that means essentially “intimate conversation.” It is not only a Ladino word: moabet draws its meaning from the broader Eastern Mediterranean cultural contexts in which Jews have been embedded for generations. The term stems from Ottoman Turkish (محبت – muhabbet), which in turn comes from Arabic (مَحَبَّة – maḥabba). Maḥabba literally means love—love of the soul. They express this love, in other words, through the deep connections that form through conversation with others. This column is dedicated to moabet— it is a space where the cultures and histories of Mediterranean peoples can be explored in the mode of moabet—meandering and lingering, revealing new insights and perspectives into occluded pasts and imagined futures.
Spirit of Humanity/Ein Sof Arts Festival
The first of its kind ever, this inaugural and annual festival was created for one purpose: to showcase, support, and engage those that identify as Multiracial Jews of the Diaspora, Jews of Colors, and/or marginalized, culturally diverse voices through their work of art. There are numerous categories of art featured, including visual art, music/performing arts, spoken word, literary, and short films. The Spirit of Humanity Festival provides a space for diverse Jewish voices to express activism, soul, and spirit through their work of art while building one community.
An Ancient New Direction
Nefesh is an open-hearted spiritual community welcoming all of the identities that make up who we are and who we love. Liberating Mussar is a wisdom tradition and spiritual discipline focused on growth and transformation that is emergent, feminist, queer, and embodied.
Jewish Spirituality and Meditation
Or HaLev believes that Judaism is a precious resource for crafting a meaningful life, and a gateway to transformative spiritual practice. They teach contemplative, pluralistic, connective Judaism as a way of life. The organization was founded in 2011 by Rabbi Dr. James Jacobson-Maisels. Or HaLev’s vision is one of transformational Judaism that is capable of healing the individual as well as the collective. Or HaLev was launched with the goal of giving people access to a deep meditation practice through a cross-denominational approach to Judaism. Their Spiritual Activism course brings together a community of people who are seeking to intertwine their spiritual practices and social responsibility by providing opportunities to deepen in their practice, be resourced and fed by the wisdom of the Jewish tradition, and learn how to apply their practice and insight directly to the circumstances and challenges of activism.
Palestinian Voices Study Group
A Jewish Experiment in Centering Palestinian Voices
PVSG works with Jews to engage with Palestinian texts in order to understand Palestinian perspectives, experiment with centering Palestinian voices, and practice radical empathy while confronting anti-Palestinian racism in Jewish communities. PVSG is a learning process dedicated to supporting leadership, building community, and expanding the possibilities for Jewish engagement with Israel/Palestine.
Mikveh for Queer Jews as a Living Liberation Praxis
Queer Mikveh Project is a participatory art and ritual experience, an in-process documentary, and method of community care. They organize Queer Mikveh gathering spaces for them to honor the healing powers of water and its impact on their individual and collective bodies. Their kavannah, their intention, is to reawaken the practice of mikveh for Queer Jews as a living liberation praxis. Their values are to heal from assimilation and white supremacy by renewing Judaism through relevant embodied rituals and art, and their integration with social justice work in solidarity with Indigenous communities advocating for water rights and safety.
Jewish Spiritual Melodies as a Healing Practice
A Queer Nigun Project nurtures LGBTQIA+ and incarcerated people through nigunim (Jewish spiritual melodies). They sing as a personal and collective healing practice, fortifying their spirits for the long-term work of inner and outer transformation. They have three main initiatives: hosting singing circles, maintaining a Soundcloud archive of melodies sung and/or composed by queer folks, and sending recordings to people who are incarcerated in NYC jails and have limited tablet access.
R&R
The Rest of Our Lives
R&R envisions a world where balance between work and life is celebrated, where leaders feel supported and cherished in their roles, and where the rest and rejuvenation of talent are seen as instrumental to an organization’s success. R&R’s seeks to change the world by investing in the well-being of nonprofit professionals through rest and rejuvenation solutions with an equity lens.
Reconstructing Judaism
Reset helps Jewish activists learn about, experiment with and commit to Jewish spiritual and resilience practice. Through individual spiritual coaching, multi-session workshops, drop-in sessions, and daily spiritual practice series, they offer opportunities for creative and accessible spiritual learning.
Where Joy Meets Justice
Rimonim is a collectively sponsored poet-in-residence project for Puerto Rican Jewish poet Aurora Levins Morales to create new liturgy that is fully inclusive of Indigenous Jews and Jews of Color, rooted in global, diasporic Jewish cultures, is in accountable relationship with local indigenous people wherever one is located, and recognizes and responds to the danger and opportunity of the ecological crisis. This liturgy fully integrates Jews of Color, Mizrahi, and Sephardic Jews into the center of Jewish practice, and includes both adaptations of traditional text and brand-new pieces that respond to the changing needs of Jewish communities.
Shleimut
Aligning Jewish Leaders' Approach to Israel/Palestine with their Jewish Social Justice Values
Shleimut supports Jewish change-makers to evolve into more whole versions of themselves – wiser, more expansive, more resilient individuals – so they can radiate the wholeness they’ve cultivated on the inside back to the outside world. Shleimut’s groundbreaking Kirvah Project supports Jewish leaders to align their approach to Israel/Palestine with their Jewish social justice values through immersive educational and spiritual programming, including an innovative delegation to Israel/Palestine.
A Traditionally Radical Yeshivah
Dedicated to the serious study of Talmud through the lens of queer experiences. SVARA’s unique pedagogy makes Talmud study in the original accessible—for the first time in Jewish history—to all who want to learn. At SVARA, everyone—queer, straight, trans, alef-bet beginners, experienced talmudists, secular, religious, Jews, non-Jews—everyone learns together in a mixed-level bet midrash that recognizes as crucial the insights of all those on the margins. SVARA’s mission is to teach Talmud through a traditionally radical lens to develop compassionate, critical thinking, courageous humans who work to create a more just, peaceful and healthy world.
Synagogues Rising
Centering Justice and Spiritual Practice
A new network of seven synagogues across the U.S. that integrate justice and spiritual practice at the heart of their missions. Synagogues Rising will build relationships among the leaders of these communities to share resources and practices, offer mutual support, elevate and amplify their justice work and Jewish teaching, and expand the base for Jewish presence and solidarity in movements for justice and liberation. At this point, the group includes Kehilla Synagogue, Oakland, CA; Kadima, Seattle, WA; Kolot Chayeinu/Voices of Our Lives, Brooklyn, NY; Hinenu, Baltimore, MD; New Synagogue Project, Washington DC; T’chiyah, Detroit; and Kol Tzedek, Philadelphia.
Community Ritualist Training Program
Serving as an intergenerational group of educators, organizers, and artists to develop Jewish spiritual practices, creative strategies, and critical relationships for healing, resilience, and liberation. The training program is a year-long cohort for Jewish leaders looking to deepen their own practice, weave their justice work and spirituality together, and gain the skills needed to offer meaningful, Jewishly-sourced ritual and spiritual care in their own communities, movement organizations, families, and daily lives.
An Emerging Jewish Leadership Incubator in Portland, OR
Based in Portland, OR, TischPDX runs an "Unaffiliated Jewish Leadership Incubator," to bolster the skills, visions and connections of Jews who have been historically marginalized in Jewish communal life. They serve primarily young Jews, Jews who are queer and trans; Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC); and Sephardi and Mizrachi Jews and those raised outside Jewish community.
JOC-Led Culturally-Responsive Evaluation
Tiyuv טִיוּב Initiative (“improvement” in Hebrew) is a Jews of Color-led organization founded to meet the growing need to establish a model and a hub for JOC-led, culturally responsive evaluation (CRE) of Jewish community social and racial justice programs. Tiyuv offers program evaluation for Jewish community racial justice work with a team of professional evaluators from groups most affected by the issues. Their Tiyuv New Evaluator Training and Mentoring Program furthers the development of future Jews of Color as professional evaluators, working to improve Jewish communal spaces.
A Jewish National Multiracial Network of Practitioners
Tzedek Lab is a network of educators, community organizers, spiritual leaders, artists and cultural workers. It exists for its member-practitioners, for the Jewish communities that can be taking action against antisemitism and racism and their intersections, and for the communities with whom members collectively build a multiracial democracy.
Orthodox Social Justice
Uri L’Tzedek is an Orthodox social justice organization guided by Torah values and dedicated to combating suffering and oppression. Through community-based education, leadership development, and action, Uri L’Tzedek creates discourse, inspires leaders, and empowers the Jewish community towards creating a more just world.
Center for Earth-Based Judaism
Wilderness Torah awakens and celebrates the earth-based traditions of Judaism to nourish the connections between self, community, earth, and Spirit. Presenting a training series “Dismantling White Supremacy within Jewish Community, and policy development; and support online tools, marketing, and coordination of the workshop series.
Arts Fellowship Centering the Work of JOCISM
The Workshop is North America’s first arts fellowship centering the work of JOCISM (Jews of Color, Jewish-Indigenous [i.e. indigenous peoples of the Americas], Sephardi & Mizrahi) artists & culture-makers. Conceived and founded by theatre-maker and rabbi, Kendell Pinkney, this fellowship is housed on the newly renovated campus of The Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City.The Workshop seeks to stir-up, interrogate, incubate, expand, trouble and revitalize notions of Jewish art by setting the creative processes and the support of artists as the highest priority. Over the course of a year, fellows receive artistic mentorship, financial support, research support, and access to work and performance space. Additionally, fellows learn together regularly, build creative community with each other and partner organizations, and most critically, present their work at seasonal performances across New York City.
Reclaiming Culture
In the multimedia album Ya Ghorbati, singer Laura Elkeslassy musically excavates her family’s history in Morocco, France, and Israel, coming face-to-face with forgotten ancestors and reclaiming a lost family name. Developed in collaboration with music director Ira Khonen Temple, this project weaves together the stories of Judeo-Arab divas from the last century with new performances and interpretations of their music. Ya Ghorbati looks across time and space to tell a tale of political upheaval, exile, and displacement—ultimately questioning the supposed binary of Arab and Jew.