I learn most in collective settings, where discussions take place, and I watch people practice discourse like volleys in tennis - throwing back-and-forth questions, potentially slices in their responses - buzzwords that don’t always make sense, references to theorists that jumble the mind - sometimes it aligns, other times it doesn’t. It’s been five years since I graduated college, where I studied Media & Cinema Studies (& Public Relations/Advertising + Creative Writing), but I mainly found deep comfort and excitement in the movie theater-style classrooms, where we dissected the male gaze, Walter Benjamin’s Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction and bits and pieces of concise Adorno excerpts that were often filled with complex jargon, sharpening the mind into a tool for understanding Ideas.
After being so in it, I had to take myself out of it to realize how silly it was. Sure, I can appreciate and learn about the theories, but without actually making them accessible and applying them to everyday reality, they’re useless - and what is the point of someone’s musings if I can’t incorporate them into a real life application? Plus, most of what I wrote about was how Hollywood was a white supremacist institution that upheld its status through active gatekeeping with concepts like The Auteur, an individualist idea - or brand - that we often slap onto men who are prone to repetition - think Quentin Tarantino, Wes Anderson, Scorcese, you know what I’m talking about.
(Meanwhile, I eat up Coen Brothers + certain Wes Anderson movies, and so much other “auteur” slop… I’m not exempt from being a filmbro).
I recently have been having more group discussions, rather than just frantically calling friends and having long conversations about our political reality. I’ve been trying to learn more, trying to shut my mouth up and learn from people who have done more research, studied more on the particular things I have questions about. In this case, I found myself curious about the history of anti-Zionist organizing in America. In particular, in Chicago. I learned a little bit about the Chutzpah Collective through a group I started back in 2016 called Cool Chicago Jews, a leftist Jewish group that existed/s outside of institution and intentionally without Israel as a defining marker of our identities - as many mainstream Jewish spaces typically tend to do.
A friend of mine recently brought up this interesting question: “What about all of the people who were organizing where Judaism wasn’t central to their identity? How do we include them in looking at this organizing history? They were leftists and also happened to be Jews, but they weren’t necessarily organizing as Jews.” It’s had me thinking a lot about my own praxis.
I have always said this: culture should be at the center of all political movements.
I’ve thought this since I was 18, when I started to organize poetry events at the coffee shop I worked at, when I began to organize leftist Jewish spaces, when I truly started understanding my own niche identity. Part of my own theory is rooted in this anti-assimilationist / diasporist concept that if we actually know ourselves, if we actually know where are come from - or at least try to - and can build some sort of relationship with our ancestors, our history, our identities that is separate from the current Empire we contribute to, then our political motives will actually come from a place of genuine solidarity. In simple terms, if we don’t have something of our own to hold onto or believe in, then what’s the point? We have to build with a mentality of abundance, not scarcity, from a place of desire to connect, not isolate - or take from others.
So what does this mean for someone like me, a passionate creator and cultivator of community spaces, but is also a person who has a hard time actually letting myself be part of intimate community - not just as an organizer, but as a participant?
In 2019, I helped start Kolektiv Goluboy Vagon, a collective centered around queer post-Soviet Jewish people. We created online curriculum before Zoom was cool, organized virtual holidays and I became part of the “Domik Druzei” or “House of Friends” - or also known as the stewarding committee. This group fed a part of me that I didn’t know could ever be catered to - an identity that I always thought would be lost in the rubble, one isolated from all the other ones, this niche and complicated multi-layered reality that I cannot deny. The Domik would go on the occasional retreat - some of us in Chicago, some in the Bay Area and would grow closer with each one. It was like getting to be with family without all the trauma, though there was trauma-bonding - of course there was.
Over the years, the kolektiv evolved, the domik stopped acting as the main organizing force, Sonya finished her dissertation, we published a zine, and we have grew mostly into a newsletter and occasional space for social needs, celebrations, commemorations of members’ accomplishments and acknowledgements of what everyone’s up to. But recently, Kolektiv members decided to take it upon themselves to get funding for another retreat to make a second zine! And after missing the first retreat, which consisted of mushroom foraging, I knew I had to get my ass to the bay and enjoy a weekend of making art, eating cured fresh on eastern rye bread, and looking over the ocean - and that is exactly what we did.
We had zine workshops lead by kolektiv members, made prints out of stone fruit, I lead various Jewish rituals with the glorious and mystical Rivkah Khanin, including one centering symbolic red string - weaving our stories, experiences, and protections together. After we did Shabbat rituals, we of course lead an intention-setting ritual for the weekend. My intention was to be completely present and to not overextend or perform, but to just be myself. This is something I rarely do. I always feel the need to do the most, to be an entertainment channel for the entire crew and then feel depleted by the end of it.
What, in the past, has made other American Jewish spaces hokey or potentially alienating for me did not exist here. If I felt uncomfortable with something, I was straightforward about it. We were/are blunt, direct, honest about our feelings. People cleaned up after themselves. They helped out when someone needed it. It felt so innate. There was even a time where everyone was doing something else and I just picked up a biography of Sophia Parnok and read while Vlada crafted at the table. For someone who often felt like living on the outside, to exist so naturally felt like a mindfuck. This was not my first time spending time with other queer post Soviet Jews, so it’s not like it was my first experience similar to this, it was just the first time I truly intentionally decided to not be so god damn in my head about everything.
We played games (poop smoothie), performed (as a choice) at our own talent show while Aravah hosted as the famous Soviet + Russian pop star Alla Pugacheva. There was poetry recited, gymnastic routines (sometimes both at the same time), music, comedic sets. It was truly a nourishing and beautiful experience where I could be fully engulfed in my culture - which is mostly a time capsule - but without all the added family stressors. The zine we were working on, the discussions we had - informally and formally - were reflections on how some family members have stopped talking to us altogether since Oct. 7th, about interrogating the state of Israel, the ongoing genocide, nationalism at large, Jewish history, and so forth. For every interrogation about my Judaism is a reminder of my impassioned connection to being Jewish through people who align with my values and visions of life. Each time we think we can do this alone, remember that you’ll learn more in discussions and community with others than not.
See photos for all the joy.
Keep eyes peeled for zine info once we publish this new one. I’ll be back with more writing + a playlist very soon.
With warmth,
Rivka