Hinenu member Mariya Strass spoke on Yom Kippur about giving to Hinenu in the new year.
I know we are here to do the work or connecting with —or annoying—our ancestors. To honor our Jewish past and atone and keep ourselves accountable. But Rabbi said last night that this is the day when time collapses, and past present and future are one. I have a little story for you all.
I was raised by a Unitarian and an atheist red diaper baby from the Cleveland shtetl. My Dad’s parents, communists who I’ve been annoying this past year by looking into how they lived (a process this rabbi has been wonderfully present for), saw the Orthodox Judaism they brought with them as a barrier between them and other communities, and they rejected it. And their families rejected them right back. So they broke with the traditions, became atheists, bar mitzvahed my dads brother but not my dad, and tried in their own ways to preserve parts of the yiddishkeit culture they still loved. My grandfather wrote almost all of his articles in Yiddish and did his organizing work in Yiddish. My dad never learned the language or absorbed the culture, but he did learn that working for justice was important. By 1978, all of them except my dad were gone. For me and my siblings, the totality of their absence was compounded by the fact that Dad had found it too painful to mourn them. Instead he plunged forward, working for justice but not working much to remember them or hold on to any part of yiddishkeit much less Judaism. Life before me, death behind me.
So I’ve started to try to do some of this cultural repair. This past year as I have fumbled to re establish some of those broken connections with my atheist Jewish communist grandparents, I’ve found myself drawn to fiction for reading: specifically science fiction written by African American authors like Octavia Butler, NK Jemisin, Nnedi Okorafor, Marlon James. The genre they write is called Afro futurism and the core idea is that the world ends and ends and ends and apocalypses happen and people die or endure horrific things, but that the structures of African tribal and collectivist cultures contain at the DNA level the seeds of human civilization that will cause the species to creatively regenerate anywhere in the universe.
See where I am going with this? Hinenu is part of a movement in this country of Judeo Futurists. My story is just one of many. We are a group of folks who live every day in our full vulnerable broken tender humanity. Many of us have survived family rejections, structural oppressions, and suffered real damage from others’ harmful responses to us living our truth. I’m still an atheist. But we’ve figured out that connecting to Jewish ritual and culture makes that vulnerability into a regenerative superpower, that makes us another of the people’s with the power to regenerate humanity anywhere in the universe. And now we have an opportunity to give to that! To give money directly to the people who are both among those most targeted for destruction and who are also best positioned to remake the world after it ends and ends and ends. Babies are being named in this shul already. Klezmer music rocks our celebrations and sparks joy. Our rabbi is putting her body on the line demonstrating in solidarity with undocumented migrants. Meals are getting cooked and brought to the homes of those caring for or who have lost chosen family as well as blood relatives. Disabled folks and Jews of color and queer and transgender and neurodiverse folks aren’t included, they are running the show.
We regenerate from a powerful vulnerability even in the midst of harm and fear. I indulge myself in visionary Judeofuturism and throw my money at this group every chance I get. Now all of us, visitors, members, curious relatives, friends, fellow travelers, you have a chance to do the same! After sunset tonight, break the fast, pull out your phone, go to the Hinenu website; click on the link to donate, and give what you would most like to give. Indulge yourself in this dream with us. Become a Judeofuturist.