New Class! The Weaponization of Antisemitism with Cherie Brown
by Rabbi Nate DeGroot
It was February of 2016. I was in my last year of rabbinical school at Hebrew College in Boston, having spent the previous year based in Jerusalem.
While in Israel/Palestine, I saw up close Israel’s occupation. I watched Palestinian friends mourn the murder of their friends and neighbors at the hands of Israeli snipers in the West Bank. I was teargassed by the IDF at a demonstration. I sat in homes sharing tea and laughter and tears and many delicious meals over many months.
When I returned to Boston that fall, I was so grateful to learn about a crew of friends and friends-of-friends who had spent the previous year developing the DNA of a youth-led movement to end American Jewish support of the occupation and ensure freedom and dignity for all. As you might have guessed, that was the start of IfNotNow.
For me, having just seen the soul-crushing reality of occupation on Palestinian lives and the Jewish soul, I was all in.
By the time February rolled around, I attended the first-ever IfNotNow Boston training with a truly marvelous group of folks, many of whom have gone on to become dear friends and communal powerhouses (including Shalom Center board member, Lex Rofeberg, who I first met that weekend! Do you recognize any other familiar punims in this picture?).
IfNotNow Boston inaugural training group picture in February 2016. Photo: Helen Bennett
One of the most impactful and moving parts of that two-day training for me was a module on antisemitism. I was blown away!
The facilitators used as a framework April Rosenblum’s 2007 The Past Didn’t Go Anywhere, “making resistance to antisemitism part of all of our movements.” I had never encountered an antisemitism analysis like this and immediately felt deep resonance.
On the inside front cover of The Past, Rosenblum dedicated the zine to two people, one of whom was Cherie Brown, “whose work to analyze anti-Jewish oppression was mentioned by so many interviewees as a source of inspiration and belief in themselves, whether they had worked with her closely, or seen one article by her long ago.”
That was my first introduction to Cherie Brown’s name.
In the years ahead, I would come to know Cherie as a key figure in Jewish identity and understanding antisemitism work, and in the Jewish and progressive worlds more broadly. I would learn that her leadership and trainings had been core to IfNotNow's founding beyond only her influence on The Past. And on a personal level, I would experience her influence and insights as critical to my own evolving understandings, analysis, and activism in the years that followed.
So you can imagine how humbled and grateful I felt joining The Shalom Center in 2022, learning that that Cherie Brown was the organization’s Board President!
Three and a half years later, I am even more grateful for Cherie’s broad contributions to the Jewish community and world over many decades, and specifically her leadership of The Shalom Center and the support she’s shown to me over these years.
With all of this as backstory, and really burying the lede, I’m thrilled to share that Cherie will be teaching a public, online, three-part class on antisemitism for all of us this fall!
The class is called: The Weaponization of Antisemitism and The Shalom Center is thrilled to get to host it!
For three consecutive Tuesdays in October and November (October 21st, October 28th, and November 4th at 7:30pm ET), Cherie will help attendees unpack the histories, confusions, and nuances connected to contemporary antisemitism. With her decades-long history helping to build and advance this field, we are tremendously lucky to learn from Cherie in this way!
And of course, the dynamics at the core of this exploration continue to intensify and heighten by the day. With antisemitism being weaponized by Christian Nationalists from the White House to college campuses and beyond, Israel and the US in cahoots, escalating the horrific annihilation of Gaza, and the Jewish community at the brink with itself and progressives more broadly, this class isn’t just timely, it’s playing out in real-time.
The first class will focus on dynamics of Christian antisemitism. Weaponization of antisemitism on campus will be the topic of the second session. And the third and final session will explore antisemitism on the Left, Israel, and Zionism. Each session will have an initial presentation by Cherie, followed by small group interaction and listening time, and then time for questions. All sessions will be recorded and shared with registrants. Pay once for the whole series and if money is a barrier, just let us know.
We genuinely hope you’ll join us in this opportunity to do some learning and thinking about how antisemitism is playing out all around and within us these days, for the sake of collective liberation, with one of the preeminent teachers of our time, who also happens to be our Board President!
On the other side of High Holidays, let's dive thoughtfully into vulnerable and vital questions of identity, connection, power, and possibility together. Register now and join the class!
With blessings,
Rabbi Nate