April 2025 Newsletter

The 15th annual social justice Passover Seder will focus on trans and queer justice. We will tell the Passover story while making connections between the ancient narrative of moving from slavery to liberation. This year, we will be collaborating with USF's Performing Arts and Social Justice program, and incorporating theater, dance, and musical performances. 

In honor of Genocide Awareness Month, JSSJ proudly invites Channy Chhi Laux, a survivor of the Cambodian genocide, to share her personal testimony of survival and resilience. Ms. Laux was a young girl when the Khmer Rouge devastated her homeland, subjecting millions to torture and forced labor, and ultimately annihilating 30 percent of the population. Drawing on her personal experiences, she will recount the brutal realities of genocide and the strength she found to rebuild her life. Her testimony serves to honor all those who did not survive this atrocity and to remind us of the importance of working to prevent genocide.

Since 2022, Ms. Laux and JSSJ Professor Alexis Herr have been working together to increase awareness and educational opportunities on the Cambodian genocide through their organization, the Cambodian Genocide Resource Center. 

Learn more about the requirements for the JSSJ minor »
Questions? Email JSSJ Assistant Director Oren Kroll-Zeldin.

We are excited to announce a new JSSJ course taught by Professor Aaron Hahn Tapper, which fulfills students' Core D3 Ethics requirement.

Anti-Jewish ideology and behavior — antisemitism — has been part of Jewish identities since this community first emerged. But over the last decade, in relation to the re-emergence of American white supremacy, and the last few years, in relation to the State of Israel, there have also been rapid increases in antisemitic activities in the United States. This course will approach the questions of what antisemitism is, why antisemitism exists, and how studying its intersectionality with other forms of oppression helps us gain a better understanding of both it and other forms of injustice.

Topics for this course include, among others, mis/understandings of the signifier “Jew” relative to other social groups; the relationship between “anti-Israelism”, “anti-Zionism", and bigotry targeting the Jewish people; antisemitism and anti-Black racism; and trauma (individual, collective, and inter-generational). Our overarching goals are to deepen our theoretical and historical understanding of antisemitism while focusing on how anti-Jewishness functions in the world and connects to multiple other forms of oppression.

We are pleased to announce that registration is now open for the summer 2025 Hebrew San Francisco: Ulpan program! As in the past few years, this summer's program will take place online. The classes will meet from 2–5 p.m. PDT. Visit our web page for more information.

If you have any questions about the program, please contact Ulpan Director Dalit Gvirtsman.

We are pleased to announce that registration is now open for the summer 2025 Arabic San Francisco program! Welcoming anyone interested in the Arabic language, we offer two levels of instruction in small class settings. The focus of the program is on the Levantine dialect of Arabic, though students in Level 1 will spend the first part of the program learning to read and write in Arabic. All instruction for the program will take place online. Classes for Level 1 will meet from 10 a.m.–1 p.m., and Level 2 will meet from 3–6 p.m.

Please email Swig JSSJ Program Assistant Director Oren Kroll-Zeldin with any questions. Visit our web page for more information.

We are excited to announce that we are now accepting applications for our summer course, Disability and Jewish Social Justice with Rabbi Julia Watts Belser.

9 a.m.–1 p.m. PDT Pacific Time (remote synchronous)

June 9–13, 22

This course aims to help students deepen their capacity to create cultures of accessibility within Jewish social justice practice. We’ll bring classical Jewish texts into conversation with the lived experiences of contemporary disability activists to grapple with spiritual and political questions about access and equity, invisibility and shame, as well as practices for transforming social inequality. We’ll hone skills for recognizing and resisting ableism, as well as for understanding the way ableism intersects with racism, antisemitism, misogyny, queer, trans, fat hatred, and more. We’ll also examine the contours of hegemonic norms around decorum and behavior, pace and time, as well as physical and sensory access — and consider ways to transform our religious communities and cultural spaces so that they more fully welcome the vivid, complex diversity of all our bodies and minds.

Your generous support of the Swig Program in Jewish Studies and Social Justice will help us engage students in both theoretical and practical approaches of social justice and activism rooted in the Jewish traditions.