March 2025 Newsletter

The fourth annual Alvin H. Baum Jr. Memorial Lecture in honor of an LGBTQIA+ Jewish social justice activist will be delivered by Rabbi Sydney Mintz. She will give a lecture titled "What a Long Strange Trip It’s Been: Rabbinic Tales of Resistance and Resilience." Rabbi Mintz has served as rabbi of the historic Congregation Emanu-El in San Francisco for the past 28 years. As a spiritual leader and activist, Mintz has been on the national board of Bend the Arc: A Jewish Partnership for Justice and the advisory board of The Reimagine End of Life Festival; served as rabbinic scholar for the American Jewish World Service; served as senior rabbinic fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem; and is the founder of Emanu-El's award-winning young adult program, Late Shabbat. Filled with music and uplifting energy, this creative and innovative program has engaged thousands of young adults as they have rediscovered and redefined Judaism on their own terms.

At this year's lecture, we will announce the student recipient of the Robert Holgate Pride Fellowship Award in Queering Religion, which spotlights student activism in queering religion on the USF campus. This award honors the ongoing generosity and commitment of Robert Holgate, whose support enables the queering religion ministry to create more inclusive programs and build spiritual communities.

Please join us for a screening of the Oscar Award-winning documentary film No Other Land. This film follows Basel Adra, a young Palestinian activist from Masafer Yatta, who has been fighting his community's mass expulsion by the Israeli military since childhood. Basel documents the gradual erasure of Masafer Yatta as soldiers destroy the homes of families in the largest single act of forced transfer ever carried out in the occupied West Bank to date. He crosses paths with Yuval Abraham, a Jewish Israeli journalist who joins his struggle, and for over half a decade they fight against the expulsion, growing closer in the process. Their complex bond is haunted by the extreme inequality between them: Basel, living under a brutal military occupation, and Yuval, unrestricted and free.

Immediately after the film there will be a brief discussion led by USF faculty.

This film screening is co-sponsored by the College of Arts & Sciences Deans Office, the Program in Middle Eastern Studies, the Department of Politics, and the Department of Global Studies.

Due to unforeseen circumstances, the presenters are no longer able to come to campus. This event is canceled. Instead, we will be screening the award-winning documentary No Other Land (see above).

In today’s world, activism and spirituality often seem to occupy separate spaces. But what if, threaded together, they can create something greater? What if we could create a space for people of all faiths or none, where students, colleagues, and changemakers could connect, reflect, and share the struggles they face and the wisdom that helps them move forward?

What You’ll Experience:

Questions? Please contact Rabbi Chel Mandell.

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 the 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. 

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. 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.

Avodah's mission is to develop lifelong social justice leaders whose work is informed by Jewish values and who inspire the Jewish community to work toward a more just and equitable world. One of the ways Avodah strives to fulfill its mission is through their flagship program, The Jewish Service Corps. The Service Corps is a yearlong program for individuals ages 21-26 to build a lifetime of leadership skills, an active Jewish community, a powerful professional network, and a more just society.

Avodah is currently accepting applications on a rolling basis for the 2025-26 cohort and are looking for recent grads who are excited to work, live, and learn at the intersection of activism and Jewish life. If you are interested, you can apply here.

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.