Hope into Practice

Life experience has taught me that the better we feel about who we are and where we come from, the better we’ll treat other people—and the more positive/powerful our activism will be in creating a just and generous world. And the more joyful, expansive and meaningful our own lives will be. That’s the bottom line of Hope into Practice.

Working through internalized oppression (hard work, but totally possible!), we can fight more effectively to change systems that are immoral, violent, unfair. Linking personal healing with social justice, we can speak out as loud/proud self-loving Jews against attacks on undocumented workers, against the rollback of abortion rights or against the Israeli government building settlements on Palestinian land.

Hope into Practice is about Jewish women in the U.S., but it’s for everyone who cares about Jewish women, about Jews, about women (including those who identify as trans/gender-queer.)

Hope into Practice reader

Hope into Practice…

  • Explores anti-Semitism: what it IS and what it ISN’T.
  • Stands for racial justice and challenges white privilege.
  • Shines a light on Jewish resistance struggles, and on our allies.
  • Links healing from internalized anti-Semitism to working for the liberation of Jews, and the liberation of Palestinians, and the liberation of all people.
  • Insists on the centrality of Jewish multiculturalism, meaning full inclusion of Jews of color, Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews, and Jews of other ethnicities and hyphenated identities.
  • Reclaims a loud-proud (not superior) joyful Jewishness!
  • Asks us for the courage to face our fears without acting on them — to choose justice despite our fears – linking personal healing with tikkun olam, or mending the world.
  • Calls for liberatory healing, bringing our bodies and whole selves into the act, of healing trauma and rebuilding aliveness.
  • Advocates for changing unfair systems, including in the U.S., including U.S policies regarding Israel-Palestine; it calls for security, equality, dignity, self-determination and full human rights for Palestinians and for Israelis.
  • Invites us to reframe internalized voices that tell Jewish women we are Too Much or Not Enough, that no one wants us, that it’s dangerous to be visible, that we can’t trust anyone, that we are the Lone Ranger, that we have to appear tough, that the whole world is really against Jews.
  • Includes a 38-page Action-Oriented Reader’s Guide to use in groups, or by individuals.
Penny Rosenwasser, HOPE into PRACTICE

I’d love you to bring me to your town, bookstore, synagogue, women’s center, school, community group, conference, book club to do a reading or a workshop or both!