JSP Anti-Racist Mission Statement

Jewish Studio Project (JSP) staff and board affirm unequivocally that Black lives matter. We also recognize the devastating and deadly impacts of racism and xenophobia on Latinx, AAPI, and Indigenous people and communities. In alignment with our mission of cultivating creativity as a Jewish practice for spiritual connection and social transformation, we commit ourselves to anti-racist practice in the Jewish community and beyond. For JSP, this requires centering racial equity in our organizational priorities, unlearning and undermining White Supremacy as a network, and leveraging our creative practice to work toward these goals and to be accountable in this process. As we center racial equity, we recognize that oppression is intersectional and we will work to address ableism, ageism, homophobia, transphobia, heteropatriarchy, and economic disparities in our community. We are grateful to the many folks within the JSP community and beyond who have been doing this work for decades - thank you for offering your wisdom, stories, and questions to our collective understandings of anti-racism.  

The creative process is JSP’s central tool for working toward a world of healing and liberation. Creative process can show us where we are in alignment with existing systems and where there is room for change and growth. It can help us to notice where we have work to do and offers us a practice for doing that work. Through JSP’s process we hope to support the creative capacity in everyone, especially those voices that racist dominant cultural narratives have erased. The restoration of those voices is what allows us to see how incomplete what we have been given is, and to glimpse the knowledge, wisdom and potential that has been erased and disallowed.

We imagine

We cannot build any future that we cannot first imagine. What does a world free from racism look like? What would it take to get there? Creative process is a practice of tending to the wilds of our imagination so that we become practiced at the art not only of seeing the reality that exists around us but of envisioning new, loving, just, and hopeful possibilities for what could be.

We work with what comes up

Creative process is a practice of willingly putting oneself in a place to discover where there is a block. What has been activated within us from living in a world imbued with racism? What gets stirred up for us in centering Black liberation? How does what we are encountering challenge what we think we already know? Through creative process we inquire more deeply into what is there for us and harvest insights and wisdom in order to be moved to action.

We cultivate courage

Creativity can be a pathway into our deepest power. How do we develop the emotional rigor to step into and claim the power we have to address racism in ourselves, our communities and our world? Creative process is a practice through which new ideas, insights and images can come to us and through us into the world. Through this work we become more clear, more connected to our own inner knowing, and more able to make the change we seek.

We do this together

The work of dismantling racism requires all of us. Creative process is a practice of resonance in which we can feel connected to and held by something bigger and beyond and deep within ourselves. And it is a practice for partnering with others who resonate with a vision of radical liberation and an anti-racist world. These connections can buoy, strengthen, deepen and sustain us in the work of social change.

Our Commitments

  • Rooted in recommendations from a 2021 anti-racist assessment conducted by Rachel Faulkner, we will deepen our engagement internally by creating a board-level equity committee. This committee will guide ongoing anti-racist training for the organization and hold staff and board accountable for implementation.

  • JSP will develop and implement a plan to recruit, retain, and support people of color on JSP’s board and staff so that JSP leadership better represents the full diversity of the Jewish community. JSP will work to increase accountability in our hiring procedures.

  • JSP will help bring forth new torah from a multicultural, multiracial network that continuously speaks to the systemic societal challenges and possibilities of our times.

  • JSP will collaboratively develop programs and design spaces that embrace and celebrate participants from a diversity of racial and ethnic backgrounds.

  • JSP will offer programs that nourish movements for equity and justice. 

  • JSP will create clear and visible processes for consent in our programs and to address harm when it is done.

  • JSP will provide scholarships for BIPOC applicants for participation in JSP trainings, leader studios and other immersive programs and continue offering public programs at no cost for participants who would not be able to participate otherwise.

  • JSP will provide support and resources for BIPOC affinity spaces, and partner with BIPOC facilitators in creating and sustaining new communities of practices. 

  • JSP will deepen relationships of collaboration and accountability with BIPOC communities. JSP will continue to partner with BIPOC facilitators, faculty and musicians.

  • JSP will provide regular, ongoing updates to our community regarding progress in working toward these commitments.