Williams College Jewish Association

12/08/2024

What an amazing night of klezmer music with Ezekiel's Wheels! Thank you, Jewish Federation of the Berkshires, for your support and partnership all throughout the year, and especially for helping to make last night's event such a success!

12/06/2021

Photos from tonight's Hanukkah party!!

12/06/2021

Amazing evening, celebrating the last bright night of Hanukkah with over 120 people at the Williams College Jewish Religious Center!

02/23/2021

Team Latke: Joe Cruz & Rabbi Seth
VERSUS
Team Hamantaschen: Alan Hirsch & Sidney Rothstein

RSVP here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScWLlRcdWAfXqgkDioaSqyPZwgR7rbHdtAyDM0eeMVgjZ10pw/viewform?usp=sf_link

12/03/2020

Thanks to all who donated for the WCJA Initiative for Racial Justice! We raised $490.25 before the WCJA board's $265 of matching to the Equal Justice Initiative, bringing the total amount of money donated to certain racial justice-aligned charities (The Bail Project, The Innocence Project, The NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and The Equal Justice Initiative) to $755.25! While this is very exciting, we acknowledge that our work as a board and as an organization is far from over, and we also encourage more donations to these groups and that we all keep racial justice on the forefront of our hearts and minds.

10/12/2020

https://jewish.williams.edu/tzedakah/

06/04/2020

Tzedek, tzedek, tirdof. Justice, justice, shall you pursue (Deut. 16:20).

Our Jewish tradition – and indeed the very fiber of our moral consciousness – requires us to speak and act to combat injustice against anyone. We support and stand in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement, in the wake of the murder of George Floyd and many others, as they face pain and suffering in a country in which racism and injustice have continued for far too long. The Jewish concept of tikkun olam, meaning “repair the world,” demands that each and every person take action to improve the world. The members of the board of the Williams College Jewish Association (WCJA) unequivocally stand with the Black community in the fight for justice against systemic racism, violence, and police brutality.

We recognize the historically complex relationship between Black and Jewish communities in the United States and aim to continue and strengthen our solidarity. We seek to continue the historical unity of Jews fighting racism and African-Americans fighting antisemitism, and we will strive to create peace and obtain justice. We specifically recognize the racism within our own community and the way Jews of Color, including Black Jews, are othered, mistreated, and rejected. We commit ourselves to addressing and removing these prejudices from our own spaces at Williams College and beyond.

We acknowledge and condemn historic and contemporary injustices against Black people in America, including the violent systems of oppression from which white and white-passing people benefit. We are so sorry that it has taken so long, and so many Black lives, to galvanize these actions and apologize that WCJA as an organization has waited until these protests to make this statement, which should have come years ago. We affirm our commitment to ending any and all complicity we have with systemic injustices, which extends far beyond the words of any statement. We will hold ourselves and each other accountable for our implicit and explicit biases and work towards desperately needed changes to our unjust law enforcement, criminal justice, and economic systems.

We pledge to take the following actions in the upcoming school year to support the Black Lives Matter movement and engage in this often difficult but always necessary work towards justice:
-Hold fundraiser(s) for racial justice organizations;
-Host programming that centers the experiences and identities of marginalized Jews and other marginalized communities;
-Reach out to anti-racist organizations in the Berkshires;
-Build alliances with other student groups at Williams;
-Require Davis Center implicit bias training for all board members;
We will adapt our plans as necessary given the uncertainty surrounding the upcoming semesters.

As students, Jews, and global citizens, we are recommitting WCJA to justice work within our community and beyond. We strive to make WCJA a community of comfort, justice, peace, and love for all.

L’shalom,
WCJA Board 2020-21

06/03/2020

Hello Everyone,

This past week has been a major moment in exposing the extent of police brutality and the pervasiveness of anti-Blackness in America as well as the growth of the resistance against these forces. The leadership of WCJA have been working on writing a statement sharing our support for the Black Lives Matter movement as well as starting to consider ways we can combat the normative racism in WCJA and make sure our organization remains open and supportive to Black Jews, Jew of Color, and all other marginalized members of our community.

We are writing to invite you to a Zoom meeting (password 9F207G if prompted) at 2:30pm EST tomorrow, June 3rd, to discuss this statement as well as some of the programs and initiatives we can invest in to ensure that WCJA becomes and stays an inclusive space. We look forward to starting these conversations.

- WCJA Board

04/09/2020

Happy Passover everyone! A few Seder plates from around the country... 💜 Don’t forget to join the WCJA Seder tonight at 8 pm EST on zoom! Email any of the religious directors (Melvin ([email protected]) Mackenzie ([email protected]), or Regina ([email protected])) for the Zoom link.

01/30/2020

Yay Isaiah!

“Lemme tell ya, Isaiah is a mensch.” When I asked Williams College Jewish Association (WCJA) co-Religious Director Melvin Lewis ’22 to tell me about Isaiah Krugman ’20, these were the first words out of his mouth.  Krugman is one of two Jewish Religious Center (JRC) kitchen directors, along...

11/15/2019

Another successful week of Challah for Hunger baking! Come by Paresky tomorrow between 11:45-1:15 pm to buy challah and help fight food insecurity on college campuses. Come while supplies last!

If you have any interest in getting more involved in Challah for Hunger, email Emma, the tzedek director, at eml6 with any questions.