Legacy Fund Week 7 - Seeding a Jewish post-activism

by Rabbi Nate DeGroot

If you had asked me a year ago, I would have told you we were an actifest organization. 

Now, we are seeding a Jewish post-activism.

Because these days, it seems that much of activism - including Jewish activism - regularly spirals into practiced sets of actions and reactions, ricocheting patterns that leave us in the same places we’ve been, asking:

What happens if the response to the crisis is part of the crisis?

Is it possible that our raised fists and angry voices - or even our joyous marches and historic legislative wins - unintentionally reinforce the very structures that produce the injustices in the first place? Might our righteous “fights” for justice actually sustain the adversarial logic that the system not only allows for, but depends upon? Can we entertain that the activism we’re doing isn’t quite working?

Post-activism does not reject activism. It doesn’t claim that activism is over or unimportant. Rather, the “post” of “post-activism” is the “post” of “compost,” inviting us to consider: What strange new life forms might grow from the breaking down of old activist models and protest structures? What new shoots and buds might want to emerge from the blessedly rich, nutrient-dense, life-giving soil that came before? What might be called forth in this moment - in this generation - before we ourselves become compost again?

Post-activism acknowledges that activism is necessary to stave off the worst violence against those most marginalized and to ensure that our collective dissatisfaction with the status quo is felt publicly. And thank Goddess for generations of activists who have paved the way for us - including many of you! And for the many contemporary movements for social justice taking to the streets today - including many of you! Lord knows we’re needed.

But post-activism acts from a different register.

It senses that the world is exhausted, that activists and even activism itself is exhausted, and it invites us to explore what supplementary kinds of cultural creation, ancient wisdom, and creative expression might support the emergence of a different kind of world just itching to be born at the edge of Empire.

A provocation brought by renowned public intellectual, Bayo Akomolafe - whom I had the pleasure of conversing with back in 2023 (read more below) - post-activism is an inquiry that foregrounds the mysterious over the political. The fugitive over the flag-waving. The trickster over the warrior. It is an invitation into a kind of sacred justice that intuits the world, and us humans in it, are too complex and multiple for linearity and logic alone. Instead, post-activism leads with a wink and a spiral, focused less on analytical solutions than jumping the track.

As an organization, I am eager for The Shalom Center to be putting post-activism in dialogue with Jewish wisdom. For post-activism to dance with Jewish time. For post-activism and Jewish ritual to play together. And to see what emerges from it all.

This is what we did with our actifest prototypes last year. And though he may quibble with the specific language, this is what Arthur did with the Freedom Seder back in 1969 and what he’s done for decades, with reimagined holidays and liturgy and theology. And this is what we look forward to continuing to do going forward.

Now, the model of how we’re doing this is evolving in new and exciting ways. And next week I’ll be excited to share with you what that will look like!

But for now - as we prepare for revelation at Mt Sinai - I am glad to share the underpinnings of our renewed orientation, as we simultaneously root into our lineage and sense into the type of holy prophetic work we’re being called towards in this moment.

If you feel moved or challenged or provoked by any of this, I welcome your emails. And if you feel excited and supportive of our project for now and the future, I warmly invite you to contribute to the Reb Arthur Waskow Legacy Fund, so that we can sustain ourselves in this work going forward.

With blessings for a revelatory and synesthetic Shavuot,

-Rabbi Nate

For more on a Jewish post-activism, read Nate and Bayo’s conversation below

An Invitation to Shapeshift: A Talmudo-Poetic Conversation on Post-Activism with Báyò Akómoláfé