'Raise Up' by Hank Willis Thomas
T’ruah mobilizes Jewish communities around the country to fight for racial justice. We believe that Black lives matter, and we have a variety of resources for the Jewish community, particularly white Jews, about how to be effective allies in this essential cause. Our anti-racism campaigns include our work to end mass incarceration and solitary confinement, which disproportionately target Black Americans and other people of color.
Since its opening in spring 2018, T’ruah has 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 our work, 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), which brings together New York-area synagogues who want to build new relationships or deepen existing ones with non-Jewish communities of color.
We will continue to strive for collective liberation from the system of white supremacy, because none of us are free until all of us are free.
