REBECCA VILKOMERSON

If you want to organize for the long haul, then you need to create a space where people can feel at home and feel like they can bring their full selves, their political selves, their spiritual selves, and their communal selves. There were times when this was very challenging and contradictory, but nevertheless, I think Jewish Voice for Peace has had so much longevity and has continued to grow because it centers the idea of building a home for people.

RABBI ALISSA WISE

Part of what it means to be a Jew today is to evolve Judaism and meet the political demands of the current moment. And so I think we are very squarely in that tradition. And over the years, it's been a tricky thing to figure out because the secularists aren't that excited about being brought into a ritual. When Rabbi Brant Rosen and I started the JVP Rabbinical Council, and Rebecca brought the idea to the JVP board, they said we would not submit to rabbinic authority. It was like it portrays a whole lineage of people who have felt stifled by the way that rabbinic authority has been wielded over Jewish life.

It would really be a shame if all that we learned wasn't put to use in other movements because we understand that there's something actually really translatable about organizing, like organizing as a craft in that way. And it really feels that other movements could benefit from some of what we learned.

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In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu talks with Rebecca Vilkomerson and Alissa Wise about their foundational work in starting and growing Jewish Voice for Peace. It’s a story captured in their new book, Solidarity Is the Political Version of Love: Lessons from Jewish Anti-Zionist Organizing. We learn about the different phases in the organization’s life—its growing pains, its key transitions and expansions, and the lessons it has learned on the way about organizing and activism for Palestine. As the title indicates, the book is fundamentally about discovering and growing an expansive notion of solidarity, and the love necessary to sustain a movement.

Rebecca Vilkomerson was the Executive Director of Jewish Voice for Peace from 2009-2019. She is now Co-Director of Funding Freedom, organizing within philanthropy.

Rabbi Alissa Wise is a community organizer, educator, organizational consultant, and ritual leader with over two decades of movement-building experience. Rabbi Wise co-founded the JVP Rabbinical Council in 2010, and was a staff leader at JVP from 2011-2021. She is currently the Lead Organizer of Rabbis for Ceasefire, which she founded in October 2023.

Speaking Out of Place, which carries on the spirit of Palumbo-Liu’s book of the same title, argues against the notion that we are voiceless and powerless, and that we need politicians and pundits and experts to speak for us.

Judith Butler on Speaking Out of Place:

“In this work we see how every critical analysis of homelessness, displacement, internment, violence, and exploitation is countered by emergent and intensifying social movements that move beyond national borders to the ideal of a planetary alliance. As an activist and a scholar, Palumbo-Liu shows us what vigilance means in these times.  This book takes us through the wretched landscape of our world to the ideals of social transformation, calling for a place, the planet, where collective passions can bring about a true and radical democracy.”

David Palumbo-Liu is the Louise Hewlett Nixon Professor and Professor of Comparative Literature at Stanford University. He has written widely on issues of literary criticism and theory, culture and society, race, ethnicity and indigeneity, human rights, and environmental justice. His books include The Deliverance of Others: Reading Literature in a Global Age, and Speaking Out of Place: Getting Our Political Voices Back. His writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Nation, Al Jazeera, Jacobin, Truthout, and other venues.
Bluesky @palumboliu.bsky.social
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