I feel immensely grateful to the way that my family of birth exposed me to judaism. We were a secular family with deep reverence for our roots. I carry this reverence to this day, despite being deeply troubled by the patriarchal aspects of Judaism, including the way it can be used to justify the oppression of others. In high school, I was part of a tiny group of about five of us who studied with an amazing scholar of both Jewish philosophy and Kabbalah (the Jewish mystical tradition), which seeded a lifelong interest in Judaism. This relationship deepened considerably after encountering the book Jewish Renewal by Michael Lerner, in which he invites us, in each generation, to sift through the sources and identify what is what he calls “the voice of God” and what he calls “the voice of accumulated pain and cruelty” and what I now call patriarchal conditioning.
In my book Spinning Threads of Radical Aliveness, I have a chapter called “Heaven on Earth” that is about what I treasure within Judaism. In it, I name the qualities within it that continue to be foundational to how I approach everything: a commitment to Tikkun Olam (healing and repair of the world), an attempt to anchor economic justice in daily living, grounding everything in practice and not just beliefs; a positive relationship with the body, an acceptance of human fallibility, trust that life is redeemable, deep grounding in community, a orientation to questioning authority (including god), and one more that I did not include, which is the belief that human souls are pure. Every last one of these sustains my strength and my capacity to continue to walk towards vision, even on difficult days.
The following four sections are intended to initiate the process of alignment between you and NGL. Please take your time reading them. Our intention in communicating with you in this way is to bring clarity to your involvement in NGL as a Friend and for that clarity to live in both your mind and in your body. The more clearly you understand the invitation by which you are welcomed into NGL, the more ease we anticipate having in meeting our purpose together. For us, NGL Friends contributes to our intent to practice openness and build relationships that will mutually support our collaboration towards nonviolent global liberation.
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The administrator of the personal data collected in this form is Nonviolent Global Liberation.
Your personal information is collected for the following purposes:
– Processing of your personal data is necessary to deliver our service to you, without this data we are unable to register you as an NGL Friend. Collected data will be stored as long as you are registered as NGL Friend and for 3 months after your unsubscribe as NGL Friend, for claiming and defending against claims, unless a longer period is required by law.
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As we mentioned in the introduction to Join NGL Friends, we have a number of requests of you that we want you to engage with seriously as you decide whether being an NGL Friend is a fit for you.
The overall principle we are asking of you is that you recognize the limits of our collective resources as a community, and adopt the attitude of reverence and “do no harm.” We have worked for a long time with much care to create this space. We want it to be as welcoming as we know how, and we know it’s not perfect.
We want to learn from and with you, and our capacity is limited to engage with you beyond what we offer generally. We ask that you act with awareness of being a guest in our community. We have attempted to offer as much guidance as we can to support your journey into and within NGL, and we may have not given sufficient clarity.
If so, let us know when we ask for feedback, and we will aim to find a way to offer more guidance in new ways. We deeply believe that you will learn and get a sense of belonging from attending calls and we ask that you do this with care for all of our specific requests (which mostly focus on your overall intention and focus, not concrete actions):