THESE HIGH HOLIDAYS, BRING BLACK LIVES MATTER INTO YOUR COMMUNITY

This High Holiday season, we invite you to carry the bold vision of the Black Lives Matter movement with you into your holiday rituals.

Ring in the new year with a symbolic act towards ending anti-Black racism and building the city, country, and world as it should be.

We encourage you to order and display this Black Lives Matter placard in your congregation, home, community center, and other places of significance to you. All proceeds go to the Black Lives Matter movement.

Why do we hang this Black Lives Matter placard?

We display this sign prominently in our community to challenge the racism that targets Black communities in houses of worship, on the street, in schools, and in the prison system.

We come together in collective grief and with a burning desire for People of Color to exist and live with dignity in our country and world. If the synagogue is to be a true mikdash me'at, a small Temple, what better way to beautify and adorn our sanctuaries than by proudly displaying our commitment to Black lives in the place of most central importance to our spiritual lives?

Displaying this sign so prominently connects us to the core work of the High Holy Days: to unsettle and search our souls so that we can do better in the year to come.

This year,

We cast away silence and complicity.

We cast away fear of acting.

We cast away apathy toward, and acceptance of, a system that normalizes racism.

We cast away the feeling of “what can I do as one person?” and join to act in community together.

We pray that community, allyship, and love forge new bridges of understanding and trust. We pray that we continue to hope and believe in each other, demanding as one that Black lives truly do matter.

What other actions can you take?

Provide context for why you hang this sign during services through written material and communications and through one-on-one conversations.

Use our Black Lives Matter Tashlich for White Jewish allies and The Hope of How, a poem written by JFREJ members Yehuda Webster and Zahara Zahav, to give your community further context about why today we bring #BlackLivesMatter to the forefront of the High Holidays.

Further resources on the #BlackLivesMatter movement

Learn a herstory of the Black Lives Matter Movement from co-founder Alicia Garza.

Read Alicia Garza's analysis on ending state violence.

Learn how to debunk "all lives matter" thinking.

We wish you a connecting and inspiring new year -- filled with the change we are fighting for together.

Photo by Carolina Kroon.