BGSQD presents: The World That Is Coming – A Do’ikayt Teach-in (in person only)

Wednesday January 31st, 6-9 PM, Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, in room 210 of The LGBT Community Center, 208 W 13th St, New York, NY 10011 (doors close at 7 for a protected circle practice, attendance capped at 35, masks required and provided)

The conversation will NOT be recorded or shared publicly, to allow people to share freely, to be courageous, to integrate the new.

Do’ikayt is the yiddish word for “here-ness.” It describes a movement that came into being at the same time as, and in conversation with, the nascent zionist political project in the late 1800s, and it is based on the idea that wherever we are, that is our homeland; that our task as Jews is to build solidarity and fight for liberation in the places where we already live and work.

It’s difficult for many diasporic Jews to imagine a praxis that integrates all of the ancestral trauma that we carry with the drive for peace and justice for all peoples to which we are commanded. Do’ikayt offers as a possibility that tikkun olam (“repairing the world”) will come when ALL borders fall and ALL states dissolve.

We are in a climate of unbearable propaganda; we are being thrown bodily into the memories of generations of screaming ancestors who yearn for sanctuary. This is being crafted intentionally by agents of states who need us to be too dissociated, too triggered, and too terrified to connect across difference so that they can get on with their work of exploitation and domination. Our only job right now is to resist that, to push through the dissociation and the fear and the trauma to reach out for each other, to dismantle the borders and walls and protections that the fear and trauma spring up around us, to remember that we are not each other’s enemy.

When we tear down the walls around our hearts, we are making ourselves into channels through which olam haba’a (“the world to come“) can be born, and when we tear down the walls in the world, letting the sacred peace of Shabbat rush in like undammed water, letting the artificial mechanisms of the state be washed away by a river of solidarity, we are bringing it to pass.

If you want to open yourself to the possibility of do’ikayt as medicine, and want to do it in community, please join us to explore the history, tradition, and possibility of a way of being Jewish that does not accept the violence that we are being asked to tolerate in the name of our own safety.

************************************************************

Do’ikayt Teach-In: Community Agreements

Please read and agree to these before entering the space.

1. We are here to keep each other safe, and to let ourselves be uncomfortable.

“what does safety mean” is one of the things we’ll be exploring, but one of our responsibilities is to learn the difference between discomfort and danger. When we trust ourselves and each other enough to tolerate discomfort and open to the new, it opens up space for us to be brave together. Call for a time-out if you need to, and then try to dare to step back in. By choosing to enter this space, you’re agreeing to do your best to be brave.

1. Let yourself be guided.

If you are being overtly disruptive of the connections and conversations, a facilitator will ask you to stop. If you’re not able to stop when you’re asked to stop, you’ll be asked to step out or away. By choosing to enter this space, you’re agreeing that you’ll do your best to trust the facilitators and each other, stop when you’re asked to stop, and step out or away if you’re asked to.

1. We are not each other’s enemy.

You might be feeling angry, afraid, triggered, dissociated, or any of a million other things, and those feelings might make it hard for you to be kind. Whatever you’re feeling is welcome here, but no matter how hard it is, you have to do your best to be kind anyway. By choosing to enter this space, you’re agreeing that you’ll do your best to act with compassion towards the other people in this space no matter how you’re feeling.

1. Focus on here and now.

As Jews, our ancestral trauma is being intentionally triggered by propaganda machines that need us afraid and dissociated. We can only build a better world if we can distinguish between those triggers and the here-and-now, and we do that by coming back to the body. By choosing to enter this space, you’re agreeing that you’ll do your best to honor your ancestors and your living family by noticing those triggers, honoring them, and then returning to the here-and-now and to the body.

1. Another world is possible.

It’s okay if this feels distant, maybe even like fantasy. But by choosing to enter this space, you’re agreeing that you’ll do your best to at least be curious about if it’s true.

Psalm 27 ends with the following words: chazak veya’ametz libecha.

Be strong, and strengthen your heart.

***

This event will take place in person at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, on the second floor (room 210) of The LGBT Community Center, 208 W. 13th St., NYC, 10011.

Registration is not required. Seating is first come, first served.

Suggested donation $10 to benefit the Bureau’s work.

All are welcome to attend, with or without donation.

We will pass a bag for donations at the start of the event, but we can also take credit card donations at the register or on Venmo @bgsqd

***

Biography of the event organizer and facilitator:

Andy is a Spinozan pantheist weirdo Jew, a time traveling transsexual, and an attorney, mediator, and facilitator of transformative justice processes with fifteen years of experience in protest support and radical lawyering with the National Lawyers Guild. Andy is on the board of their renewal synagogue, Kol Hai, and they live on a tranarchist intentional community in the Hudson Valley. Andy’s work explores the interplay between mystical diasporism, gender antinomianism, sadomasochism, and ancestor veneration with an eye towards the triumph of the forces of faggotry over the state.

Andy recommends the following titles if you want to learn more about the history and practice of radical Judaism and diasporism. Please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com if you’d like to purchase any of these at this event or at any other time and we’ll confirm that we have them in stock.

Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!

The No State Solution: A Jewish Manifesto, Daniel Boyarin (Yale University Press, 2023, hardcover, $30)

Revolutionary Yiddishland, Alain Brossat and Sylvie Klingberg (Verso, 2017, paperback, $19.95)

There Is Nothing So Whole As A Broken Heart, Cindy Milstein, ed. (AK Press, 2021, paperback $23).

Days of Awe: Reimagining Jewishness In Solidarity With Palestinians, Atalia Omer (University of Chicago Press, 2019, paperback $38)

The Colors of Jews: Racial Politics and Radical Diasporism, Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (Indiana University Press, 2007, paperback, $24.95)

To The Ghosts Who Are Still Living, Ami Weintraub (Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness, 2023, paperback, $20)