With antisemitism and unspeakable violence in Israel-Palestine forcing the American Jewish community to wrestle deeply with questions of identity and solidarity, the need for future-oriented conversations is clear. But how do we go about having them? Scholarship, art and aesthetics, strategic foresight, and ritual development all give us different tools through which we can begin to construct generative and imaginative frameworks of a Jewish future. Over the course of three weeks, we will explore some of these tools together, placing the work of Judeo-futurism in the context of Afrofuturism and other indigenous futurisms as well as traditional future-oriented Jewish liturgy. We will examine Jewish thinkers and leaders who are doing Judeofuturist work right now. And ultimately, we will get to practice types of Judeofuturist thinking and planning in an experimental community together around a shared focal topic of a common future impacted by climate relocation.
This session: Using various tools of strategic foresight (I promise it sounds more intimidating and wonky than it actually is!), we will examine art, culture, media, politics, and academia for concrete, compelling evidence and trends that can help us with perceiving, anticipating, and interpreting how American Jewish communities and identities are changing. We will review how to look for these data points in various arenas of our lives. Together, we will analyze examples and how they relate to each other to begin to tell cohesive stories about our imagined Jewish futures, particularly in how it relates to the future of climate change and climate relocation in 2075.
Due to the cumulative nature of the content, participants are strongly encouraged to attend all three sessions:
Tuesday 5/13: Building Blocks for Judeo-Futurism: Orienting Ourselves in Past, Present, and Future
Tuesday 5/27: Building Blocks for Judeo-Futurism: Practicing Judeo-Futurism
Becca Leviss (she/her) is a current candidate for a Masters in Theological Studies at Harvard Divinity School, where she explores the intersection of religion, ethics, and politics, especially in community building and civic engagement work. Her current studies focus on the ongoing relationships between Black and Jewish scholarship and activism, and how those insights can inform critical frameworks for imagining a future for Jewish identity and a pluralistic democracy. She spent her past summer with Mormon Women for Ethical Government (MWEG) investigating how their model of faith-based organizing teaches and encourages civic empowerment and engagement while countering ideological extremism. Prior to her time at Harvard, Becca helped build the fundraising team at Protect Democracy – a leading nonprofit in the US democracy movement – where she managed institutional giving and major gifts. For more information on Becca's framework of Judeofuturism, see this podcast.