Racial justice is a Jewish value, and Black lives matter. Period.

T’ruah is mobilizing Jewish communities around the country to dismantle racism in our institutions, our communities, and in ourselves. We offer a variety of resources for the Jewish community – particularly white Jews – about how to most effectively be in solidarity with our Black and brown friends, family, and neighbors.

Racism permeates the society we live in, and thus racial justice is a concern in every one of our campaigns. In particular, the pursuit of racial justice undergirds our campaigns to end mass incarceration and solitary confinement, which disproportionately target Black Americans and other people of color.

We have brought two delegations of rabbis, cantors, and other Jewish communal leaders to the Equal Justice Initiative’s Legacy Museum and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama. Through sophisticated training and experiential learning with T’ruah, Jewish clergy have learned about how the legacy of slavery and racialized violence continues to reverberate through every part of our society, and have gone home dedicated to taking action against racism.

In 2021, we launched Synagogue Teams for Equity and Partnerships (STEP), an annual program that brings together New York-area synagogues with non-Jewish communities of color to build new relationships or deepen existing ones.

We will continue to strive for collective liberation from racism and white supremacy, because none of us are free until all of us are free.