Ep 30: Eight Passover Practices for Collective Liberation

In the second of two Passover episodes, April and Tracie reveal the liberatory wisdom in eight practices from Passover observance.

Find April and Tracie's full bios and submit topic suggestions for the show at www.JewsTalkRacialJustice.com

Learn more about Joyous Justice where April is the founding and fabulous (!) director and Tracie is a senior partner: https://joyousjustice.com/
Read more of Tracie's thoughts at bmoreincremental.com

Resources mentioned:
Learn more about the characteristics of White Supremacy Culture
Hear the song "All my relations" by Ulali and read the lyrics.
Learn more about Joyous Justice's program, Whiteness Havruta. 

Transcript

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- [Tracie] Last week we focused on Mitzrayim, the narrow place. This week, in the midst of the Chag, we want to offer eight Passover practices that can lead to collective liberation.- [April] This is Jews Talk Racial Justice, with April and Tracie.- [Tracie] A weekly show hosted by April Baskin and Tracie Guy-Decker.- [April] In a complex world, change takes courage.- Wholehearted relationships can keep us accountable. So April, in our last episode, which published right before Seder, first Seder, we talked about the fact that we need to get really clear and honest about the fact that, for many Black folks and other people of color in America, the sea never parted and they remain in Mitzrayim, in Egypt. Also, another translation of Mitzrayim is the narrow place. And so today, this episode is dropping in the middle of the holiday, we were just talking about the fact that there are some practices of Passover that can be maybe instructive on how we move toward liberation. So I can't wait to hear this juicy list that you have, that you've put together.- Yeah! That you also helped to contribute to, thank you. So I think since there are eight different components of, do you remember what I called it, Tracie?- Yeah, you said eight Passover practices that can move us toward collective liberation.- Yay!#RacialJustice, okay. So.. Okay, so where do I start? Duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh- Can I make a suggestion?- Sure.- I would love for you to start with the cleaning.- Yeah, I was leaning toward that too. So similar to how we start the holiday itself, in preparation for the holiday is to clean our houses thoroughly, and specifically to zero in on something that we wanna be removing. In this case, for the holiday, it's chametz, or items that are leavened, contain leavening, and/or other foods, depending upon your Jewish custom, that are not permitted on Passover, during Passover, and you need to actually remove them from your house. At times, people throw it out. Other times, people like my mother, was like, this food is valuable, so we're moving it into our distanced garage, or we're putting it in our storage facility,'cause we need this food when the holiday is over.- Or like, there's a custom to sell it to someone, and then maybe buy it back afterward.- Yeah, that's another.- You have to get it out of your possession.- Get it out of your possession, right? And so this is our first practice that we wanna sorta modify, but then say, in general this is also a good practice as it relates to racial justice, is to pick one thing, one manifestation of internalized oppression for people of color, and for internalized oppressor material for people who are white, or who are categorized by white, much of the time, in daily life, in society, to, one practice is to just pick, well, there are many different attributes of oppression or oppressor material, but to pick one at a time, and practice awareness and noticing throughout your being, throughout your thought patterns, and your memories, and your spirit, that thing, and a reference tool that might be useful that we haven't fully unpacked yet are different attributes of white supremacy culture, or as Sonya Renee Taylor refers to it, white supremacist delusion. And some of those things include right to comfort, feeling entitled to comfort in most situations, or urgency, or perfectionism. And is to take time to start to notice and engage in essentially Cheshbon HaNefesh, right?- Accounting of the soul.- Yeah, an accounting of the soul. Thank you, Tracie has my back, as per usual. And yeah, so that's the first one. There's more I could say, but I wanna, I don't wanna get too long here,'cause we have eight to cover. So that's the first one is to take time within and literally both, so part of the metaphor is the house being your inner world, but also your actual home is also to perhaps do an inventory and are your racial justice values reflected in the products you buy, on the art that is on your walls, on the books on your bookshelf? Are you buying from artists and companies and thought leaders of color? Are you buying from white folks who are courageous allies to people of color, whether or not that relates to what they're doing, but are they someone who has shown, over the course of their lives that they are committed to racial justice and even more in terms of if you wanna be edgier and even more stringent is, are they committed anti-racists? Are they committed to an ongoing practice, not of perfection, but of doing this? And, and this is not to say necessarily that you need to go through your home and remove anything that wasn't purchased from a Black company, but it's to notice. It is to notice that and in an appreciative, positive sense, begin to think about where there might be opportunities in your home and the things that your family does to begin to incorporate more anti-racism into your ecosystem. So next up, we have a shift in diet. I really love this one, right? So on Passover, and for a lot of people, it's difficult in various ways, for various reasons and people also within our community, I think it's, at times, helpful to be very inclusive and say that there are a range of different kinds of practices, not only around Sephardic and Mizrahi, and Ashkenazi, but also just in terms of level of observance. And there are many people who find Passover meaningful and they observe it in all kinds of ways, right? But in general, traditionally, there's a shift in diet and there's an emphasis on replacing bread, leavened bread with matzah, and also depending upon your custom, also, perhaps, not eating other foods that, depending upon minhag or Jewish custom, the Jewish custom you observe, are also not permitted on Passover. And so here, what I'm excited about is less so about literal food, although that absolutely is incredibly important, but it's just thinking more broadly about what you're ingesting. What is your diet? Are you feeding yourself sources and thought leadership that support a belief system that is more powerfully anti-racist and liberatory? Are you listening to leaders who not only bring rigor but also compassion and practical tools that help you unpack this? Again, ideally, you have a diet that has a robust suite of nutrients. So you're listening as much as you are able to and are ready to, to thought leaders who are edgier and who are really out in front and leading, and who might not make things more practical for you, but help anchor you in a North Star of where you want to be moving toward. And then you have other people who may share your identity or who may have different identities to you, but just like in your life in general, right, like we're taught that we should eat multi-colored vegetables in an effort to get a robust, diverse set of minerals and vitamins and nutrients, you ideally wanna do that with your racial justice work, and ideally, and with your liberation work more broadly and also specifically racial justice work is to be thoughtful about your diet on social media, about the shows you watch, knowing that collectively, yes, one person only makes so much of a difference. We could get into that whole debate, but that collectively, the shows we're choosing to watch, people track that data, right? So where are we putting our presence and therefore, money or attention, right? And also, in terms of what we're communicating to different corporations and leaders, by the ways in which we show up or choose not to show up. So I think with this diet piece, just as we eat matzah, I think with a diet, an area of what we, our consumption, I think that's the best word, that we can be mindful about our consumption in two ways, both what are we proactively nourishing ourself with and what are we choosing to put a boundary around, whether that is ongoing and permanent or temporary or in seasons or phases? There's a lot of different options here, but it's beginning to be more mindful about this, and recognizing we have the power of choice. Tracie, did you wanna add something?- I just really wanna underline what you just said about the positive and the negative piece, not negative, but avoidant piece of the diet, because I think kashrut, in general, which is the laws of kosher, the laws of keeping kosher, requires you to be more, requires people to be more aware of what it is that you're consuming, and then Passover adds another layer to kashrut, and so I think that the learning, the sort of meta-learning from this that April's pointing to is really interesting. And I love the idea of like, even just for a time, go on a diet, you know, a media diet where you're paying attention and thinking about things both that you want to bring in and that you want to not bring in. I really love that as a practice.- Yeah, and to me, I think that gives us a lot more freedom that it doesn't have to be only about adding, it can also be about making room. And it's not only about exclusion. At times, people think you have to immediately exclude, and this is just in general for life, that at times, there are ways we can make meaningful change without excluding and starting to just introduce healthier things into our diet or a more inspiring, more aligned person into our social or professional network. And eventually, we're gonna have to make some choices, but it doesn't all have to happen at once.- Right. And I mean, to your point with the Passover, using it as a Passover practice, like chametz is not bad. When it's not Passover, chametz is fine, it's good. And so, and there are bad things that you should take out of your diet, but my point is just like that intentional, temporary or even more permanent noticing and choice opportunities is not necessarily, it doesn't have to be a huge judgment call.- Right? But that's another way that we can move toward, what's the word, right, like is to move toward collective liberation. That's sort of my phrase for what some may call the messianic era, is when we've achieved collective liberation.- Ooh. I just got a chill.- It includes all sentient beings and the Earth, as well. As a comprehensive, right?- Wow, I just got a chill. Collective liberation is the messianic age. Whew, that's gorgeous.- Yay, thanks! Right? So we're talking about from Mitzrayim to messianic, collective messianic era, collective liberation, and that shows a little bit of my Reform movement bias. Some people think necessarily that it might literally be a person, and I grew up in a context where it was more thought of as a time and a context more so than any one singular person. So next up is...(humming) The four children. I wanna name, so I really love the four children, as it relates to some moving out of Mitzrayim and toward collective liberation strategy, in terms of recognizing. And I'm immediately reminded of this song that I shared in one of our courses, our racial justice intensive called "Whiteness Havruta." One of the things that we shared in one of the sessions was a song from Ulali called "All My Ancestors." And I think of the four children as being aligned with the song,"All My Ancestors," a little bit, although the four children, traditionally, can be a little bit more harsh in some ways, but this idea that as we're working and doing our work, that there are different people with different narratives, and that each one of them, I love this, I'm like nerding out right now. (laughs) As someone who teaches about racial equity and effective multicultural strategy and interaction, and one of the core principles in that aligns beautifully with this idea of the four children, that there are four children with four different tendencies and kinds of questions, and because there are differences in them, they also require different responses. For one of them, I think the response traditionally is a little bit harsh, and the child is told, you know, when a child asks, in the custom, do you wanna say it, Tracie?- The thing about setting your teeth on edge, setting their teeth on edge, that thing?- I was thinking about more just the, in my, I think, I think we had one of the classic versions of the Haggadah when I was younger, like-- The Folgers one?- Essentially, yeah, or Maxwell House.- Maxwell House, yeah.- I'm not sure if it's, it's not quite that one, but it's another one that I think like many, many, many families had.- Maxwell House is the one I grew up with from the 1920s, yeah.- Yeah, and it talks about how the child who says, why do you do this? So they distance, and the text, as I recall it, is supposed to say, which I would not say this to my child, well, you know, like you wouldn't have been led out of Egypt, if that's how you felt. Like this is a collective thing, and since you're, so okay, I'm not taking this wholesale from the traditional text. My point is as we're moving through this, to recognize that different people, are in different places with this, and it's helpful to notice that. And so maybe you wanna work with the kid who's down with it, who's into it, maybe you wanna work with the person who is like, I'm here for it, and maybe another person who is really inquisitive or doesn't know what questions to ask, but cares, or people enter this work in different ways, and it's still possible to achieve. We don't need 100% alignment of humanity in order for us to achieve monumental feats. We just need a critical mass of people who are asking aligned questions and additional people who are asking slightly not aligned questions that help to agitate us and to strengthen the questions we're asking and to strengthen our strategies. So my point is four kinds of people, four plus kinds of folks in this work and to recognize that people are at different developmental levels. And I probably quoted her before and I'll quote her again. I love when Sheree Brown has said, that you need to meet people where they are. It's like, you might want somebody to be somewhere else, but they are where they are. And the thing is, that doesn't mean that every person, whatever your work you might be doing is, that you have to work with, you can choose, right? But you wanna make a choice around being aware and frank within your own mind of this is where this person is, and to want to work with them if this is where they are, because it's not going to help me to wish they were farther along than they are,'cause they're not yet. And so, then we get to make that choice and decide if this is someone in a friendship, a partnership, in moving work toward, moving our world toward justice, if we wanna take that on or not.- It just reminds me of the, sort of the idea that this work is too important to throw people away, and so I think that if folks are in our presence and asking questions with genuine kavanah, because, you know, there is a method of trolling-- Genuine intention.- Yeah, thank you. Kavanah is with intention. So there is a method of trolling that involves asking questions. So that's not what I'm talking about, but I think if someone is asking questions, even if those questions are difficult or wicked, as our Haggadah calls it, if they come from genuine desire to learn, then this work is too important to throw people away.- Yeah, and what I would add though, at times, too,(laughs) to kick it up a notch is I think it's important to honor all questions, and if someone's at a certain developmental level, they might not be ready to join a specific leadership team or a specific project yet. And there's likely a different place from their position from what they know where they can be met. And that's the core principle, without getting into some of the specifics of, some favoritism or some meanness that could play out at times in some of our traditional Jewish texts, is more this idea that there's a strategy, there's a resource and a strategy for every person. You just haven't, you might not have identified it yet. And my hope is that there are enough people doing this work that the groups or people who may be hard for me to work with for any number of reasons, or they may find it hard for me to work with, hopefully, I have some allies or some other partners of color in this work who do have the right medicine or resources for those folks. Right? And so, it's to notice at times and to hold out a possibility, which can kind of transition into another point, that I hold out the possibility, at times of being really clear around who I am well equipped to work with, which is a pretty broad range, but there are limitations to that. And also not saying, not dismissing those folks, but saying my medicine, of this Indigenous kind of medicine, my medicine isn't quite right for them, but I know there are folks out there who do have medicine that can resonate with them, and thank God for that, thank goddess for that. It's wonderful, right? So I think that was number two, right?- That was number three, that was number three.- Three, okay!- There was the cleaning, the diet and the children.- The four children, okay. Okay, all right, so I'm gonna try to speed this up. The next that I wanna talk about is, ooh, I potentially should just save this till the end, is Elijah. I wanna name here, y'all, that at times, it's called Elijah's Cup or Miriam's Cup, there's this idea within traditional Judaism that we open the door during Passover to welcome in guests or strangers, and also, to see if Elijah is there to inform us, the prophet Elijah is there to inform us that the messianic age or the Messiah is coming. And in our work, I think it's so important, this is a huge part of, a huge underpinning, in my work with Joyous Justice, is this idea of me always holding out that radical new possibilities are possible. And that's not the core place from where I work, but I work with an openness to a metaphorical Elijah coming at any time, and me working to have enough agility in my work that I can respond and shift when that happens, when there is a big breakthrough, when something that I didn't think would happen, would happen so quickly does, for any number of reasons.- Yeah, that's really beautiful. We keep the cup ready for when Elijah does come.- Yeah, and this is happens in movement work. Like we've seen this in a lot of different areas around racial justice but the example that first comes to mind for me is around marriage equality, that they were organizers and activists who were working for decades. And then I have like full body chills, and there's an opening and a moment at times where something monumental that normally would take decades to happen can happen in a matter of months. And it was able to happen, in part, because there were people who were willing to say, who were willing to be open, despite all of the pain and trauma that had happened before, and despite the fatigue that enough people had been preparing for that potential for years, that when it came (snaps fingers), they were ready to act and take action (claps) and make the most, right? And so that, with us, too, with racial justice, is as much as possible, to take it as far as you can, and then also notice if there are certain limitations then you might need to conform to those limitations, if there's certain ways that you're blocked, but still in your mind, still be pushing for that freedom in your mind and engaging your radical imagination of, okay, I'm currently limited in my current role and for various reasons, I might not be able to shift, but I'm going to hold that it's possible for somewhere, for an agency, for a nonprofit, for a corporation to have this powerful impact in the world. And I'm gonna keep cultivating that, so if and when, I happen, by fluke, to become the CEO or something happens, or an opportunity comes up at a firm that's doing just what I said, I see it and I'm able to act on it and make the most of that, that Elijah moment. All right, we just finished four, y'all. We're at the halfway point. Here we go, let's keep it going. So for number five is the Seder itself. Seder means order. I also like thinking of it as formation, shoutout to Beyonce, let's get in formation, let's have order, is that there's room for the magical Elijah to come in, and part of what allows Elijah to work as we just talked about, is having different rituals and structure and practices that are consistent, that don't necessarily have to be as long as the traditional Seder, that ideally incorporate parts of the Seder overall, of remembering our purpose in what we're doing and being intentional in our process, and having some wine or some metaphorical wine, having something, right? Like this is also part of best principles around habit formation is having some sweetness in there, right, and celebration around honoring what's good. But something that it helps a collective of people engage in rituals that they can begin to expect and help them feel safe and also make room for them to be more creative within a ritualized practice that can be very elaborate or relatively simple but consistent.- That's beautiful, that's beautiful.- Thanks.- Yeah.- Right? All right. So that was five.- That was five. Mm-hmm.- Keep going ahead. I just wrote six. Okay, so yeah, so number six is a noticing, the art of what's happening here in this Seder, that is for a specific reason in the holiday, but I think I can extrapolate more broadly to racial justice work. So we begin thinking about these different pieces around our diet and our home and meticulously going through and bringing our liberatory consciousness into our individual selves and the spheres in which we operate. Right, and then we have rituals to help keep us on track and remind us of why we're doing what we're doing, and have some shared expectations with the people with whom we're doing this work around that rhythm, right? And while we're doing that, is noticing the freedom that we do have access to and getting some pillows and relaxing a little. And that might not, in your day to day work or activism or leadership, look like necessarily literally pillows, but it might look like more comfortable shoes. It might look like having a water bottle with you at all times that maybe has some lemon in it or if you need electrolytes. What else might that look like, Tracie?- Taking breaks and not giving yourself a hard time about it?- Yeah, taking breaks, reclining, noticing the freedom that we do have. We're still in Mitzrayim, but it isn't as bad as it was before, and I believe, as I think I've talked about, that I believe in incorporating our destination into our process. The more we can align with that, the faster that it can come, right? And to me, in the future, ideally, we're still engaging in, I want to engage in rigorous things in a messianic era, but I want them to be things that bring people joy or that contribute to the people around me in deep relationship and contributing to the further elevation of our consciousness around what's possible for humans and all sentient creatures with whom we interact on this gorgeous planet and in this broader universe, right? So that's always gonna be happening, and ideally, we have time to exhale and breathe and let our shoulders relax, and have a little bit of wine, or whatever version of that, if day drinking is probably not the best practice in general. So having fresh juice, fresh vegetable or fruit juice or eating delicious fruits and vegetables and yummy sandwiches that nourish us and feel good and notice who's near us, right? And savor, right? Like I can pause in this moment in real time and see Tracie on my screen in front of me and think, wow, not only do I get to do work that I'm passionate about but I get to do such a remarkable, loving, brilliant, um, (sighs) consistent, reliable, joyful partner.- You're gonna make me cry.- Right? Now I'm starting to cry. Right? You know? That to relax into, and not let our working to get out of Mitzrayim allow us not to see some of the liberation and freedom that is here right now and is real right now in this moment.(laughs) Right? So I love you, Tracie.- I love you too, April.- So that was six, right?- Yes.- All right, home stretch, y'all. I think I'm gonna let you bring us home with the eighth one, Tracie, since it was your idea, you had one, that I think you might remember. So for seven is, we're doing this in community and with our family, right? So is the Jewish Passover tradition of, if you're able to, inviting a lot of people to your saber, Seder table, saber, your saber table. (laughs) Inviting a lot of people to your Seder or attending a Seder that has a number of people involved is this idea of community, is that this work is best done in the context of community, especially since it is far more work than any one person or one team can do. We need community. We need community around this work, in our movement, that like Passover, the different minhagim, I think would be the plural.- Customs, yes.- The different customs might vary, but this idea of getting in formation continued, but in the context of many of us working in alignment, with both diversity but alignment around some shared principles within a broader swath of our work. And then, as movements get even bigger there might be different practices, right? And all of those things, right, we're dealing with so many adaptive challenges and so many variables that the more we can lean into the power and strength of that diversity and the strength and power that diversity has as we work on our own internal cultural competence, meaning our own ability to work effectively and be open-minded as we work across lines of difference, that's great. And oftentimes, we don't even need to work that much across lines of difference. There are specific leaders who are doing that, but more be at peace and that it's okay that within a similar movement, some other people have different strategies, some of which we agree with and some of which we don't, but ultimately, is it truly moving us in a broader direction towards collective liberation? Yes? Then let's keep it moving. Right? Yeah, so is community, that part of Mitzrayim involves contraction and isolation. And part of the effect of internalized oppression is to blame the victim and internalize that blame, right, and so one of the best things community can do is to lift up our heads. And ritual can help us start to do that, and look around and see that we aren't alone, and that, in fact, this is a broader issue which we hear classically throughout a number of community organizing stories, historically and today is often, can be actually a galvanizing thing for people, is because often, at times, oppression works to have the person blame themselves, and once they realize it's not them, and it's a broader thing, then there's a sort of inspired righteousness and rage. Although again, I think rage works for different things for different people, that isn't ultimately, but is an initial rage that opens up this fire within a person, and it helps them connect with their, reconnect with their spirit and say, it wasn't me all along. This is a trick, this is a setup. And we can work in community to address this and to not let this ignorance and oppression continue because we're gonna link arm in arm, or if touching is not your thing, walk side by side and move toward collective liberation.- Yeah, so I'll just bring us home. Number eight is actually related to some of the other things, but that is the power of questions. So this is related to the children that April named, and also to the cleaning that we talked about, but to really start to, some of the ways we are able to do that, our tradition teaches us to ask, to ask why, to ask how, and in those questions, it's not judgment, it is just an investigation in order to better understand and therefore, metabolize in different ways. And so I would offer that as just the final Passover practice to move us toward-- And I would add.- Collective liberation. Yeah.- Yes, thank you. And I would add a little bit more to this briefly, which is that something I learned from my teacher and friend Yavilah McCoy, that I've used in my teachings moving forward, too, is that when you are in the work, right, if you're on the journey and you are learning from a person of color or you're learning from an inspiring leader and something happens, they do something or say something that is upsetting to you, is rather than checking out or being immediately critical or attacking them is to get curious, particularly if you don't understand. If something happened and it sort of miffs you a little bit and you're not fully sure, be willing to get humble and curious, and to assume that you really may not know and to ask questions or to reach out and rather than disengaging or engaging in fight or flight, a way to remain present is to stay in a space of curiosity and asking questions and openness, an openness to insight and greater knowledge.- Yeah, I would say replacing judgment with curiosity just in general, serve us well as human beings.- So those are some of our eight Jewish practices and rituals that, with a little bit of tweaking, can be used to move us more quickly through Mitzrayim into spaciousness and collective liberation and a messianic era in which we are all free and able to be in loving relationship, doing fun, transformative things together, from a place of possibility and shared common purpose rather than oppression and pain. Chag Sameach! Happy Passover. And I'm so excited for us to continue to walk together in the direction of greater justice and joy. Tracie?- Chag Sameach.- [April] Thanks for tuning in. Our show's theme music was composed by Elliot Hammer. You can find this track and other beats on Instagram @ElliotHammer. If this episode resonated with you, please share it and subscribe. To join the conversation, visit jewstalkracialjustice.com, where you can send us a question or suggestion, access our show notes and learn more about our team. Take care until next time and stay humble and keep going.