Spirit in Action

Justice Powered from Healing Within

Penny Rosenwasser is author of several books, including her latest, Hope Into Practice: Jewish Women Choosing Justice Despite Our Fears, an activist's call to repair the world. Penny is a "life-long heartfelt, rabble-rouser for social Justice" with a Ph.D. in Transformative Learning & Change.

Duration:: 55m
Broadcast on:: 31 Aug 2014
Audio Format:: other

[music] ♪ Let us sing this song for the healing of the world ♪ ♪ That we may hear as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world home ♪ ♪ And our lives will feel the echo of our healing ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark Helpsmeat. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service. Hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred food in your own life. ♪ Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world ♪ ♪ That we may dream as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world home ♪ We have an activist and author with us here today who aims to help us learn to clear away the internal limitations that prevent us from working for peace and justice to our full potential. Penny Rosenwasser's recent book is Hope Into Practice. Jewish women choosing justice despite our fears. And she considers a number of the evils done to Jewish people over the centuries and how healing these emotional and psychic wounds can lead to profound changes, for example, in the way that Israel sees and deals with the Palestinian people. But the lessons are wider than just for Jews. It's a life lesson for all of us on how we can find power for good by confronting our wounds and limitations. Penny Rosenwasser joins us by phone from California. Penny, I'm really excited to have you here today for Spirit In Action. Oh, I'm thrilled to be here. Thanks for having me. I'm partly thrilled about it because there is so much about Jewish culture that I personally love. And, you know, in the book, you cover a lot of pretty heavy issues and topics. You know, things like antisemitism and Jewish power or stereotypes, internalized oppression, perfectionism, inherited trauma, and so on. I thought it might be really a bummer if we started with all that stuff. So in the book, you eventually get near the end. You say some stuff that's really inspirational. You give a lot of these examples. I thought maybe we should do that up front. So, Penny, how would you feel about you and me where we could just take turns saying things that we love about Jewish people, culture, tradition, any of those things? Are you a game for that? Sure. Okay. Let me start first because I'm an international folk dancer and where I first learned folk dancing was at the Jewish community center in Milwaukee. And because of the depth and grace and beauty and enthusiasm, number one on my list is Israeli and Jewish folk dancing. Your turn. Oh, there's so many things. I think Jews are love of ideas. I love of food. Don't take all of the items because we're going to go back and forth on this several times. Okay. Can I also just say, though, that what you're talking about is very connected to a chapter in the book called Jewish Positive, which is about really focusing on the joys of Jewishness as a contradiction to some of the really harsh things that can come out as a result of anti-Semitism. So I love that we're starting with this. So another thing, you mentioned Jewish food and I became a vegetarian in 1976. And first I Mexican food. I found that I could do really good vegetarian in the Middle Eastern food, falafels and hummus and tabuli, all those things, which are not just Jewish. I mean, they're the Middle Eastern, but I also connect them specifically with Israel. If I go there, I'll be able to get those everywhere. So Jewish food and Israeli food, I guess I might say more specifically. I love my connections with other Jews, especially with Jewish women. That's very powerful to me. There's a number of songs like the Weavers made popular song called "Sena Tseina." There's Shalom Haverim, Zumbali, Gali, all of those songs, which in folk tradition, I learned along with things like Hine Matov and Negun, like Haida Haida. Boy, I love Negun. I would be remiss to not talk right now about the very strong tradition and Jewishness of Tukunah Allah, which means the repair and healing of the world. That's been a really huge part of my life. And another song and dance that's very special to me, "Manavu." And one of the reasons it's especially precious to me is because in the first year of my son's life, to rock him, I would stand and dance that and sing that to him over and over. And just with him held close against my chest. So, Manavu is intimately wrapped up with my love for my son. That's beautiful. Let's see. I would say the intellectual history around the scholarship and really valuable knowledge and learning. Really the value, having the strong value of learning. I particularly adore a lot of the Yiddish expressions that have come to us, things like "slapping" or "Oi" or "cveching" or any of those wonderful terms that have enriched English language. And the language I'm used to speaking, a lot of people don't even realize I think that they're speaking Yiddish terms. Well, certainly Jewish humor. It can look a lot of different ways, but it's so interwoven into our experience and our present day wave is being. And that really draws me. I love that. And I'll second that because my most favorite comedian right now, John Stewart. And way back, Lenny Bruce. The comedians that have come out of Jewish families are just so astounding both for their intellect and their way of seeing the world better. So they really give me a better view on the world at the same time. They make me laugh heartily. The strong history of resistance to persecution and courage and bravery by Jewish men and women, young and old. That continues to inspire me. And I'll toss in latkes and potato pancakes. I just introduced, my wife had never had them before this year. And she's 65 now. So she had never had potato pancakes. And so latkes, I got sour cream. I got the, you know, I did it. And she experienced something awesome that in 65 years she had not yet met. Yeah, you're making me hungry. You know, we could go on and on. And I have certainly more things on my list. Amongst other things, the Jewish renewal movement, which I find particularly beautiful. You know, I've attended enough, both synagogues and reform temples and so on. So that I actually have a moderately wide experience. Certainly not anywhere as deep as you and anyone who's been raised. But I actually even speak a few phrases of Hebrew because both of folk dancing and because of my Jewish experience. It's a rich, big basket of things. You start the book. And again, for folks just tuning in, the book is "Hope Into Practice Jewish Women Choosing Justice Despite Our Fears." And it's by Penny Rosenwasser. You start the book. Very first thing in the introduction is a quote from someone else talking about her experience. Woman meets a guy and the guy says, "Oh, you know, you don't look Jewish. You don't sound you act Jewish." And that points up a central question. Depending on who's asking the question, I think you get different answers. But what is a Jew? Is it a religion? Is it a genetic strain in humanity? Is it culture? What is it from your point of view, Penny? I think it's an ethnicity. The one commonality that all Jews share from my understanding is that it's shared history, history. It goes back several thousand years to one general geographic area. It's now Israel, Palestine, and then North Africa. But other than that, I don't think there's any one characteristic that all Jews have. So what is a Jew? If you define yourself as a Jew, then you're a Jew. You could be by birth. You could be by adoption. You could be by conversion. You could be not religious at all, but relate ethnically. You could relate to the tradition of social change and social justice. So there's a multitude of answers, as we say, often to choose three opinions. There's a drug going on and analyzing and looking at it from all different sides. It's a rich part of it. But I ask you how you thought about what Jewish means. And you gave me a very big basket. And I'm sure that some groups would or would not include someone in that group. And this is my own anti-Semitism or my own sense of being an outsider. I've been aware that there are times when I'm not included in. The Bible. They're the chosen people. God has a special covenant with these people. And that means that the people who are living in the area where the Jews moved in, they had to get exterminated. That's certainly not current Jewish thought in general. But it's there in the Bible and it's kind of a nasty side of every people. Like when the Europeans came to North America and so on. We moved in and the white folks were good, the red skins were bad kind of thing. So depending on your point of view, the Nazis exterminated Jews. Even if they weren't religious, even if they had said, "Okay, I'm not Jewish anymore." It served different people's needs to label people inside or outside of that circle. So your perspective that Jews define who's Jewish different than people who are not Jews, the goyim, how they define who is a Jew? Yeah, but I would say there's many different ways to be Jewish as there are Jews. So there's not one way to answer that question. Many different Jews would answer it many different ways. And I can't really speak to non-Jews since that's not who I am. Some of my perspective comes from the fact that I was raised essentially Irish Catholic. In fact, the ethnic heritage is much wider, certainly not just Ireland. But my family certainly had kind of an Irish identity. And definitely you had to be Catholic because Catholics went to heaven. And I'm talking back in the 1960s, Catholics went to heaven and anybody else didn't. And a lot of groups claim that they've got the Paschi to pearly gates. So I don't really think of myself either as Irish or I haven't been Catholic for a few decades. So those things I let go of easily. Talk about the Jewish experience of being a minority and being free to be or not be the minority. Does one have a choice to be a Jew? Oh, absolutely have a choice to be a Jew. I mean, some of us are born into Jewish families and others are, like I said, adopted or considered. And if you convert, of course, that's a choice. But yeah, it depends on what seat you and what you relate to. For me, it's actually my parents considered raising us Unitarian because in our, in Northern Virginia in the 1950s, there was a, the local activist was Unitarian Minister and when my folks went to him to talk about perhaps, you know, raising us that way and enrolling us in that kindergarten, he said, "Don't you dare deprive your children. They have this valuable heritage." And so, you know, they did enroll us in the Reform Temple and Jewish Sunday school, which I actually didn't relate to in my childhood. But when I was in the early 80s and I read this book called "Nice Jewish Thurls," a lesbian feminist anthology, and immediately I felt an emotional connection to my Jewishness. And I was thrilled to find out that involved in Jewish feminist conferences and it's gone on from there. But I have, you know, their friends who were, you know, raised in Jewish families, but don't relate to it. And I think it's totally, you could say, "Yes, that person genetically that's been their past." But I think we always have a choice in terms of how we want to identify and what we want to relate as. Now, sometimes that really connects to one of the big things in my book, which is about internalized antisemitism, ways that we have internalized prejudice or bias against Jews from the society. And in this country, it's been the dominant Christian culture that denigrates or, in some way, thinks negatively about Jews. And sometimes when we grow up internalizing that, we believe that there's something wrong with us. So we don't want to be that group, but we feel like we need to put down that group. So my book is a lot about trying to point that out and not blaming us for that at all. But if we decide we do want to choose to embrace our Jewishness, that's probably a good word. The book talks a lot about, especially Jewish women's experiences, working to work through those negative feelings and to reclaim what I call a loud, proud, joyful sense of Jewishness and whatever that looks like, however we choose to express that. There's a complimentary question that I could ask, and it was my own experience that when I decided I wasn't Catholic anymore, that didn't fit for me and I became Quaker eventually. I would say that at home, things were not too happy with my parents. Are Jews equally free to not be Jews? Or is that not possible because it's ethnic strain or whatever? Yeah, I also want to be clear that this is my personal perspective and experience. And again, you could find many different answers to those questions. I think that could be part of your heritage and you could choose not to claim it and not to identify with it. I know people that say my parents are Jewish and I'm not. You know, is that something they don't want to relate to or connect to? And that's, I think, a personal choice. You mentioned, and the reason I have you on this program, Penny, is because I have been so captivated by the activism and the work for good. And like you said, Tukkun Olam, the healing of the world that has been part of at least some strains of Jewish practice, can you give me an idea of how far that goes back? Is that something that two centuries ago we would have found a really well spring of Jews working in that direction? Or, you know, is it 2,000, 3,000 years old? Where do you identify it? Well, I would definitely say thousands of years. In the mystical tradition of Tukkun Olam comes from the Kabbalah, which I can't speak to extensively, but it's a beautiful Jewish mysticism and the concept of repairing the world comes from that thinking. And then from the prophets, you know, thousands of years ago who talked about justice, justice shall you pursue. There's many examples of that as well. And Rabbi Hillell, who, again, I can't tell you the exact years that he was alive, but this was quite a while ago, but we quote him a lot. And one of his same assays is about, you know, if not now, when? And that's something that we invoke a lot as a call to action, as a call to. This is something we need to do now. And then there are more recent examples of some Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, who talked about not all of us are guilty, but all of us are responsible. Or I forget the Rabbi's name, who also talked about, it's not incumbent on us to complete the work in our lifetime, but neither much we refuse to do our unique task. And so all of those messages really call to me. And then, you know, more recently, the amazing Jewish women, for example, former congressional representatives, El Absob from New York, who spoke out so loudly against the Vietnam War. There are many examples and modern-day examples, but that's -- so it's a long-term tradition, and then it's still alive and active today in the civil rights movement. At least half of the white civil rights workers who went down to were freedom writers were Jews. And then that tradition, a lot of us today working against the occupation of Israel and Palestine. And I say that now is there's a horrific onslaught by the Israeli government on Gaza. And many of us in the streets -- I was just in the streets on Sunday, and there were many of us. I worked with Jewish voice or peace, and we were marching with signs. You know, all lives are equally precious. It can be now against the killing of any civilians, regardless of who does the killing. So anyway, this is a long, ongoing tradition, and the one that I'm really proud to be taken to. And it's really the main spring of my life. I mean, this book is an activist call to repair the world. And even though it's certainly about Jewish women and trans folks, it's really for anyone who cares about human liberation, about linking personal healing with more effective activism for a world that's more generous in time. You know, the books that you refer to, The Prophets, those are also included in what's treated as the Christian Bible. And there are plenty of Christians who I think don't live up to those high aspirations. My personal observation has been in the world that somehow when people experience oppression, that excites their sensitivity to it in a wider spectrum. So I think the fact that Jews have experience with oppression through programs, through general anti-Semitism, through the Holocaust, through the Inquisition, through all those kinds of things, I think that Jews have said, wait a minute, if we have a system that oppresses anyone one time or another, it's going to point at me, we better clean up the system. Does that resonate with you? Is that part of your inherited sense of why this is so urgent with it? And as you said, so many civil rights workers who are Jewish and so on. It certainly resonates with me personally, and I think with many of the Jews I hang out with and have been with, but I don't think it's inherent. Like any people, there are also folks in Jews among them, and I think this is part of the dynamic that's going on in Israel right now. As a response to the oppression, they develop a siege mentality, a circle of the wagon's mentality. And so this happened to us, this was terrific, it's never going to happen to us again, and are often manipulated by our leaders into an us and them mentality. So I think both things are true. I remember when I was in Jerusalem in the early 80s, and I was interviewing, I thought, were Israeli women dressed in black, demonstrating that women in black, and they had signs that said, "Daliki Bush and Hebrew are in the occupation," and I went up to one of them and said, "Why are you standing here?" and she said, "My whole family died in Auschwitz, and I don't want that to happen to any other people." And I was so moved by that. And then there are certainly folks, both Jewish Jews in the US and in Israel today, who say, "Again, my whole family died in Auschwitz, it's never going to happen to Jews again, and we're going to build up a country that has unlimited arms, and that uses force, and that is not, you know, that makes sure that no one is going to be in a position to harm us again or to assault us again. This is not the kind of Jewishness that I resonate with. I think walls do not serve us, building bridges is what serves us, building how alliance is with other groups, and I think we have, as Jews in the US, a lot of allies, and I cherish that, and I believe strongly in working in coalition and in alliance with all kinds of people from all kinds of backgrounds, and that's how I think we build a better world. It's together not excluding anyone, but really going for peace and justice for everyone. To me, that's what Jewish liberation is about. And that's a beautiful vision that I see lived out by an awful lot of people. Do you have your sense as being in the mainstream of Jewish thought in the US or mainstream within some subset of Jewish thought in the US? Well, what I was just talking about, for example, a Jewish voice repeats, we have over 140,000 supporters. Many of them are, most of them are Jews, and not everyone is, but I think there's really been this being a sea change happening in this country. There was a period when, I mean, I think Jews in this country generally have tended towards liberal and been very supportive of a lot of social justice causes, but for a lot of reasons, the mitt Jewish mainstream community since about 1967 has been more of this circle than the wagons mentality. And sometimes we say progressive and everything, but Palestine, and I think a lot of that's been based in fear. You know, Jews have over 70 years ago, over a third of the Jews in the world were systematically exterminated two thirds of those in Europe. The reason that Jews have been terrified, and before that, you know, the pogroms, which murdered hundreds of thousands of Jews, those are state sponsored riots, before that the Inquisition and the Crusades. But I think then that fear has been manipulated by leaders, some of whom are Jews, some of whom are not, some of whom are in Israel, some in the US, manipulating fear to serve political agendas, like in this country after 9/11 when George Bush said you're either with us or you're against us. And manipulating the fear, for example, in this country, 75%, the US sends over $3 billion of aid to Israel every year, 75% of that has to be spent on US corporations. And most of those are arms dealers, so who's benefiting from that? So a lot of Jews, I think, in this country have fallen under that spell, but as a result of some fear, severe Israeli human rights abuses against Palestinians, the tide in this country is changing, and more people are waking up to see really what's going on, and to pressure Israel to abide by international law, and to pressure the US government to pressure Israel to do that, saying this is the Jewish values are about, you know, treating the neighbor as ourselves, about human rights, about kindness, about compassion and justice, especially, again, justice shall you pursue, and so that is really shifting in this country. And I'm proud of that happening, but so the Jewish mainstream, again, as I was saying, has been more, I think a lot of folks have come from a very fear-based mentality that has been manipulated. And also in the book I talk about, and I learned this from the domestic violence movement, this adage of hurt people, hurt people, that any group who's been traumatized, if we don't work through it and heal it, there's a possibility, a strong possibility that we can then project those fears and that pain onto another group that we've been taught to hate or fear, like Palestinians, like Muslims, and I think that's a lot of the dynamic that is happening in Israel right now, and that has been happening in the US as well from groups like APAC, or some of the Jewish corporations, but that time is turning, especially with younger generation Jews, who just go, wait, you know, we really, we want justice, we don't subscribe to this fear-based mentality. We want liberation for all people, and that's why in my book, what I talk about is, is to use telling the courage to face our fears, but not act on them, so that we're choosing justice despite our fear, so that we're linking healing from internalized antisemitism like fear, to working for the liberation of Jews, and a liberation of Palestinians and the liberation of all people. There's a whole lot in what you said that gets unpacked and spelled out well in the book, hoping to practice Jewish women choosing justice despite our fears, in case you're just tuning in, that's Penny Rosenwasser, who's speaking about that, and her website is PennyRosenwasser.com. Rosenwasser is R-O-S-E-N-W-A-S-S-E-R. If it's too complicated to get all those letters down, come to NorthernSpiritRadio.org, and you'll find a link to her site. Again, this is Spirit in Action, you're listening to. We've been producing these programs for nine years now, they're on our website, NorthernSpiritRadio.org, for your free listening and download. Also on that site, you'll find links to our guests, you'll find further information about them. For instance, you'll find out that Penny Rosenwasser has a PhD in transformative learning and change, which I have to ask you about that soon, Penny. Also on this site, there's a place to leave comments, and we love two-way communication. So please, when you visit our site, post a comment, let others know what you're thinking, and let us know what you're thinking. Also, there's a place to leave donations, click the donate button so you can support NorthernSpiritRadio, but first I want to encourage you to support your local community radio stations. Community radio is providing a slice of news and of music that you get nowhere else on the American landscape, so start off by supporting them. Again, Penny Rosenwasser is here. We're talking about a wide range of activism, but Penny, one of the things that seems so central to your identity is not only Jewish, which is a very tiny minority in this country. You're a woman, which has history of oppression of women, women's rights, and you're lesbian identified, so that it looks to me like you're getting it from every side. And so somehow some people can either be beat down by that kind of being a tiny minority, or they can rise up and be loud and proud, and I'm so glad that you've chosen to be loud and proud. How does the intersection of these three or more identities in your personal case fuel what you do or don't do? Thanks for that question. I often say that it's actually my lesbian feminism, and now I identify it's queer. My lesbian feminism really led me to my Jewishness, as I was mentioning earlier when I kind of bumped into this book, "Nice Jewish Girls" in 1982. It was an anthology of lesbian Jewish women talking about their experiences and their lives, and even though they were very diverse, I really emotionally condemned that. That's what really grabbed me and helped me to really start loving a Jewishness and cherishing that. So that was a gateway for me. It's certainly true that I have been oppressed as lesbian and as a woman, but in terms of intersectionality, and as a Jew, but in terms of intersectionality, I'm also white. I'm middle class. I'm educated. So I also have a lot of ways that I've been incredibly privileged in my life, and one of the things that I talk about, I actually got this idea from Rabbi Alyssa Wise, is the idea of using privilege to shift power, and that feels like very core to my life and to my life experience. And to use my experiences of oppression to certainly relate to and understand, have some idea. I mean, I'm never going to understand racism because I haven't been the target of it in a particular way, but I know what it can feel like to be integrated or ignored or diminished, or I've never been physically attacked for any of those things. But even though that is happening to leftists in Israel now, the Jewish right wing and even not just the right wing are physically attacking some of the leftists because of their support of Palestinian human rights, and that just breaks my heart. But back to your question. Yeah, using that intersectionality of looking at places I have privilege to try to be responsible, just like Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel was saying, take responsibility for what my government is doing as a U.S. and what my people are doing in Israel. And again, using my experiences of oppression to try to help understand what it might be like for folks who are on the downside of any kind of oppressive dynamic, racism, sexism, homophobia, classism, ableism, ageism, et cetera. One of the concepts that you talk about to a significant degree in the book is this inherited trauma, kind of inherited PTSD that because you probably have relatives, ancestors who were killed in the Holocaust and who suffered in so many ways from very active anti-Semitism, that because of that is the experience of your grandparents or your parents, that it's inherited in your life, even though you might have experienced much less of it in your life. Talk about that idea, how powerful is it and how do you cure it? Because you do obviously talk about that in the book as well. So it was making one chapter particularly, which is kind of the core of the book is called Taking Egypt out of the Jews, and that's not about Egyptian Jews, that's about, you know, in the Passover Habbata where it talks about, it was not enough to take the Jews out of Egypt. We had to take Egypt out of the Jews, and that's talking about what I was referring to earlier, that internalized victimization. And that I feel like, you know, we really, it's incumbent on us to break the chain of pain, to make it end with us so that we don't pass on what was done to us. And it's certainly not our fault that we have the trauma, but it is a responsibility to look at it, work through it, figure out how to heal it. And someone who has been a real beacon for me is my friend and colleague, Irina Kletch, a Jewish lesbian scholar at Barnard College who teaches Yiddish and women's studies. Irina was four years old when she and her mother escaped from the Warsaw ghetto, and her father helped lead the Warsaw ghetto uprising, which held off the Nazis for three weeks, 750 young Jewish women and men. And finally the Nazis prevailed and Irina's father was killed. And Irina has been, from the first into thought, it has been part of a group of Jewish women against the occupation. And her point, you know, what she says is our fears are real, they're rooted in history, but we can't let them stop us from doing what's right. We can't let them stop us from making just choices, and actually that's the subtitle of the book I got from Irina, you know, choosing justice despite our fears. So I just think that's really incumbent on us. And I was just thinking about, I'm a member of Kihila synagogue in Oakland, California, and my Rabbi David J. Cooper said in his young to poor sermon, which is the holiest day of the Jewish year. This was in 2011, he named Israel Palestine, the single greatest ethical issue facing the Jewish people in the 21st century. So, again, my book is a lot about looking at the hidden heritage trauma, not blaming ourselves for it, but having the courage to face our fears, but not act on them. And that's very much connected to working for justice in Israel Palestine, for human rights, for having Israel abide by international law, and human rights for all people. It's not trying to say this is the only place in the world where human rights are being abused. We can look all over the world, and we're talking about going to the Congo. Look what's happening in the Ukraine, into that in China, in northern Sahara, in Sudan. I mean, there are places all over the world, Colombia, where horrific things are happening to people, the forces of oppression. And one of them is right now in Israel, Palestine, and as a Jewish, you know, it's definitely, you can really look at how historical Jewish trauma is operating there, as well as US imperialism. In terms of trying to manipulate support for militarized Israel. One of the things that you address very well in the book is how you actually break the chain of this inherited PTSD, this inherited trauma. How do we not pass it on to the next generation? Because certainly it's very easy for those kind of attitudes, fears, aspirations, all be passed on to the next generation without much examination. Talk about some of the ways that you advocate or that you deal with in the book about how to heal that trauma. Oh, I love this question, thank you. The whole last third of the book is really focused on healing. And the book actually at the very end of the book is a 38 page action oriented readers guide to really hoping that individuals can certainly use it to work through the chapters. But I really think what made a huge difference for me was working in several different groups of Jewish women, sharing our stories together and figuring out how to work through, I mean, noticing the commonality. Even if we were very diverse groups, noticing the commonality in some of our experiences as Jews and as women, and then figuring how to work through that. It's very reminiscent of the consciousness raising groups in the 70s. I think they're still a really important place for that kind of work. So certain reforming groups would advocate for where women to share, feel relatively safe in sharing things that have happened and figuring out how to work through those things. Some of the specific ways of doing it are as simple as just reframing, not just, but these internalized messages we have like Jews sometimes were called loud and pushy. And that's from a Protestant culture that behaves differently. It doesn't mean one is better or worse than the other. Actually, a liberal Jewish liberation leader Sherry Brown talks about the differences between Protestants and Jews in terms of fear. When Protestants are afraid, tend to have a stiff upper lip and very stoic. When Jews are terrified, at least Jewish activists, we run out and start five new organizations. But in terms of reframing, saying, "Well, I'm not loud. I'm passionate." That's one way of reframing. Another idea is acting in opposition to those messages. So finding a healing word that's opposite of what we're trying to work through, like asking ourselves, "How would I act if I felt powerful right now? How would I act if I knew that I belonged? How would I act if I knew I was attractive?" And the idea is that when you ask that question, your mind comes up with the answer. And we actually did that in our group. We practiced that. Another one was, "Well, you started the program off with really noticing, what do I love about being Jewish? What brings me joy as a Jewish woman?" And really focusing there. In our group, I had a group of Jewish women that I met with for a year, and that was the basis of my doctoral dissertation work. And this book is a popular version of that. And when I asked that question in our group, "What brings this joy as Jewish women?" One of the women started laughing and said, "Are you kidding?" You know, I never even thought about that this was something joyful. And to me, and this is a really wonderful, smart, funny woman, and the fact that she could say that to me was such an indication of what I would call internalized antisemitism. And she grew up in Chicago, a working-class neighborhood in the '60s around a lot of Holocaust survivors. And she grew up with a lot of fear and that whole narrative of suffering, which has certainly been true. But it's not our experience as Jews in the U.S. today. And I think when that becomes foremost and dictates how we think and how we see the world, that's really a problem. It keeps us from experiencing the joy that's possible. And it also can kind of get us locked into this victim mentality of us or them, circle the wagons, a very defensive posture that just doesn't serve us in terms of reaching out and having alliances and working for justice. Then there's other ways. I really think we can't work through the internalized, whether it's trauma or oppression, whatever, the way that fits inside our bodies. I think it's really important to read, like reading my book and talking and going to talks and things. But it also involves doing things that help move that energy out of our bodies. It could be doing arts. It could be doing music. It could be doing medication or martial arts or yoga. It could be doing breastwork. It could be doing somatic work, body work. It could be doing emotional healing, therapy or counseling. There are many different modalities. It really depends on what works for different people. But I really think that's part of the healing process, the recovery process. And it's lifelong. It's not a one-stop kind of practice. But I just, from personal experience, once I started doing some of the practices I mentioned and being in the group, my life has shifted dramatically. I mean, my own story is one of my internalized antisemitism is mainly the result of assimilation, even though I was raised Jewish and went to Sunday school. A telling story in my book is how I say when I grew old and I was growing up in the 1950s in Northern Virginia in a very Protestant neighborhood. People would often say, "Gee, Penny, you don't look Jewish." And I would shrug my shoulders and say, "Thank you." That's what I thought I was supposed to say. When I remember that many, many years later, I was pretty horrified, but I think it's a real indicator of the antisemitism that was in the air in those 1950s, white Christian, no-class suburbs. And I absorbed that. And I wanted to be cool. Like the Christian kids around me, I didn't want to be Jewish. But, you know, I was able to really reclaim that, again, getting exposed to Jewish feminism and then, you know, working through the internalized antisemitism. You know, I certainly benefited growing up assimilated in terms of having my voice, which was white and middle class. But as a friend pointed out in one of our sessions, I had lost my Jewish voice. I'd lost my connection to my people, of where I came from, and that real deep sense of doing good about who I was. One of the kind of underlying themes of the book is that when we feel good about who we are and where we come from, we treat other people better. And our lives are bigger and richer and more fulfilling, and our activism for justice is more effective. So in that way, I think my message can relate to anyone. That's what I mean. The book is just as it's about very much focused on Jews and Jewish liberation. It's also about human liberation. I've actually just finished 50 different events all over the country. And I've really been thrilled to see how many Jews certainly relate to what I'm talking about, but a lot of non-Jews and not just women, but men as well. Saying, "Wow, I totally relate to what you're talking about." So I think there's some really, I don't know if they're universal themes, but themes in the book that many people relate to. I think people want healing. You know, there's ways it's an oppressive society. We've all been oppressed in different ways. We want to heal, and that's entirely possible. Yeah, and we need that healing from so many different directions. One of the pieces that, because I didn't grow up Jewish, I mean, I grew up Catholic, so even though Catholics were a minority in the country, they're such a large minority in such an accepted part of the big picture that my existence as a Catholic was never called into question. In the 1960s, when I was growing up, however, Catholics were a minority compared to this big group called Protestants, and a Protestant and a Catholic were not supposed to marry, and that direction came both from the Catholic Church. It's not a real marriage if you're not marrying a Catholic, but it's also, it's like I don't want to have anything to do with those terrible Catholics, and I was kind of surprised to find out that was a general societal view. That certainly receded over the last 50 years. Is it your feeling that in the US that that kind of anti-Semitism and all of that has had a similar steep decline in the US? Oh, it definitely has. I mean, the high tide of anti-Semitism in this country was in the 1930s and 1940s, and even though it was never violent in the way it was in Europe, like heaven. And it's certainly on the rise in Europe right now, including in terms of violence, violence against Europe, against Roma people, gypsies, and Muslims. But the high tide in this country was in the 30s and 40s, and, you know, like there was a demagogue, Fr. Charles Copeland, who essentially blamed all the problems that were happening in the US right then, especially the economic crisis, blamed it on Jews, and he had millions of followers and millions of people believed him, and would sometimes violently attack Jews, but more often scapegoat Jews for the problems, and say, you know, there was a Jewish power that was trying to control the world, and that narrative still exists. You know, with the recent economic crisis, I think it's a real marker of how much anti-Semitism has declined that there certainly were on, you know, conservative websites. They were places where Jews were blamed for the economic crisis, but it didn't happen in a major way. But also, you know, like during World War II, I mean, Henry Ford had a picture of Hitler in his office and received an award from Hitler and made, you know, was involved in some of the work camps in Nazi Germany and profited from those, where Jews were victimized. This IBM made some of -- made the cards the technology that was used in the concentration camps and the death camps to track Jews and made money off of that. US corporations were completely culpable to some and made money from the Nazi genocide. The US repeatedly during that time refused to relax immigration restrictions, so that a few Jews were -- who were escaping Hitler were allowed to come here, but most were not, and ended up, you know, if they survived going to Israel Palestine, because that, you know, that's where they could get in, but most countries in the world wouldn't let us in. So anyway, that's just to say there were -- the US was certainly culpable in that way in ways that could have saved thousands, perhaps millions of Jews and did not, but things have really shifted in this country. And, you know, the GI Bill, which was after World War II, really, I mean, it's been called the biggest affirmative action program in the history of this country, and it benefited Jews and many, especially white immigrants, like from Eastern Europe, who were working class when they returned from serving in World War II, those who survived, giving benefits in terms of college scholarships or money to go to college, money to buy houses or to get loans, employment opportunities. And that really boosted -- it was just sort of the labor needs of the country at that time, but it boosted huge populations of working class people into the middle class, and Jews especially really benefited from that. And we -- you know, it's been a real success story, and that's a good thing. You know, that there is significantly less anti-Semitism in this country today, and you can look at the anti-defamation league statistics. I think it's something like 13 percent. Most of that is people really on the far right wings and still believe that Jews killed Jesus or the Jews are running the country or, you know, have too much power, and then there's a lot of people that have ideas like that, but I don't think really are anti-Semitic or not anti-Jewish, but it's kind of like they innocently heard the information, and they think it's true. And that's really -- that's the good news, that's a wonderful thing, and we are -- I feel blessed to -- you know, that that is how it is right now, and so I'm appreciating that. And like I said, just as in Europe, things are not good right now, things are rough right now, and some of that is very connected to what's happening in Israel, Palestine, people who are understandably outraged at the Israeli oppression of Palestinians and have demonstrations about that, and then some of that bleeds into attacking -- like attacking the synagogue in France, for example. That's anti-Semitic when you turn rage at what Israel is doing into attacking Jewish people as Jews. That's a real problem, and that's something that we have to consistently speak out against. And there are, you know, Jews in France resisting and non-Jews there resisting as well. I want to confide to you one of my fears and see if you can relate to it at all. As people reach positions of privilege, as they reach those positions, they sometimes lose touch with their roots or what it's like to be the underdog. So they lose some of their compassion. Usually they carry some of that attitude with them, the compassion, the understanding, but at a certain point it's like, no, I'm here and I want to -- I have my interests now. So one of my fears is, as any group reaches that position of safety for themselves, that they'll close off their minds and their hearts to those further down the ladder. I worry about that happening with Jews. I worry about it happening. Actually, as gays and lesbians become more and more accepted in this country, I've actually had a gay activist tell me that he had that concern. He saw that because at the same time that a lot of gays and lesbians were activists from having experienced some of that oppression, that their economic interests led them to be more conservative. And so anyway, I have this concern that even though I work really hard for equality for all people in compassion and get rid of this oppression, even though I work diligently for that, I'm afraid that people are going to lose their compassion once they are safe. How do you see that? Do you know people? Do you see examples? Is that something that figures in your calculus? I think it's a dynamic. I mean, you can't apply one thing to all people. Historically, in this country, the Jews, for example, there's what we call horizontal hostility. The earlier waves of Jewish immigrants in the early 1800s were German middle-class Jews. When the second wave came over, started to come over in the late 1800s, they were more working class or poorer from Eastern Europe. And the German Jews were not thrilled about this because these other folks, the German Jews kind of looked down and the middle-class American Jews looked down on the immigrants feeling like they were kind of schleppy and they weren't smart enough and they weren't cultured. They weren't middle-class enough. They had strong accents, but I think underneath that was the same dynamic you're talking about. The fear, oh my gosh, we've managed to succeed here and we don't want, with all these other people coming over, maybe it will, you know, increase antisemitism and it'll come back at us. I haven't thought about it as much in terms of the gay or queer community, though I do think any of it is about internalized oppression. I mean, one of the things I believe about that is any time that any member of our group, the group that we're in, whether it's women or queer or old folks or young folks or whatever, makes this cringe, that's usually a signal that we have some kind of internalized oppression. There's some way that we have in just or been taught. There's some way that we're not okay is that population of people and then we try to separate and go, "Well, I'm the good one." And those are the not-so-good ones. And that just divides us, which really doesn't serve social justice movements. And in terms of Jews in this country, I know that undergirding it is a lot of fear that drive from Jews, for example, for upward mobility. And often, this doesn't always happen, but also when people have more money, they become more conservative because they want to hold on to what they have. And it's huge they want to hold on to what they have because after centuries of persecution, at least if you had money, sometimes you could, that could allow you some security or you could escape from a bad situation. That wasn't always true. But that's how upward mobility, sometimes that can drive upward mobility. And cause folks to make deals, make compromises out of this very real fear of survival. But that kind of relates to what we were talking about earlier in terms of trauma. If you're from a people that's been traumatized and you haven't worked through that trauma then that sense of victimization and persecution can change very really. You can confuse the past with the present and think that things are really, your survival is in jeopardy right in the present moment, not in the past. And then make decisions that are kind of compromising your integrity, which can lead us to turning on each other. So I think that kind of responds to what you were talking about. I know that you have other obligations to run to Penny. I do want to remind our listeners who we've been speaking to and to encourage them to get her newest book and look at her previous books. Her previous books include visionary voices, women on power, conversations with shamans, activists, teachers, artists, and healers, and another one called Voices from a Promised Land. Palestinian and Israeli peace activists speak their hearts, both at pennyrosanelaser.com. And folks can get my current book hoping to practice Jewish women choosing justice despite our fears from A.K. Press. It's A.K. Press.org or from Amazon. Or I would love it if folks ask their local bookstore to order it. Or their local library to order it, because it would really help to get it into that. I did want to close it. This is a good time to do that. I had a quote I wanted to read from the book. Is this a good time? It's a very good time. So this is from a group called Young Jewish Proud. And this is the youth wing of Jewish Voice for Peace. And they wrote a beautiful declaration, which if you Google Young Jewish Proud.org, you can read, but this is an excerpt from it. And they write, "We are punks and students and parents and janitors and rabbis and freedom fighters. We are your children, your nieces and nephews, your grandchildren. We remember brave, desperate resistance. We remember the labor movement. We remember the camps. We remember solidarity as a means of survival and an act of affirmation. And we are proud. We refuse to knowingly oppress others, and we refuse to oppress each other. We will not carry the legacy of terror. We won't buy the logic that slaughter means safety. We commit to equality, solidarity, and integrity. We seek breathing room and dignity for all people." What a beautiful, beautiful inspirational statement. Again, that's shared by Penny Rosenwasser. Find her at PennyRosenwasser.com. If you don't know how to spell it, come via the link on NorthernSpiritRadio.org. Penny, thank you so much for your continuing work being a lifelong, heartfelt, raffle rouser for social justice and for joining me today for spirit and action. Thanks so much, Mark. I really appreciate it. And in appreciation for the many gifts I have received from my Jewish friends and from Jewish culture, I'll close out with a snippet of a song that I mentioned toward the beginning of the program, the one that I used to sing and dance with my infant son in my arms to comfort him. It's Manavu, and we'll see you next week for spirit in action. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] The theme music for this program is Turning of the World, performed by Sarah Thompson. This spirit in action program is an effort of NorthernSpiritRadio. You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website, northernspiritradio.org. Thank you for listening. I am your host, Mark Helpsmeet, and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is spirit in action. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along, and our lives will feel the echo of our healing. You