Jews, Money, and 2025: JLF’s Annual Political Education Series
This year's theme is "surviving and building after the crash." Across three sessions this December, we'll take you on a journey to understand the forces at play in this moment of crisis, grieve what we've lost, move towards hope for a better future, and hear from leaders who are building the institutions our movement needs.
The Series:
Session 2: From Grief; Towards Possibility | December 8, 3pm ET
Session 3: Putting the World Back Together | December 22, 7pm ET
Throughout this series, we'll analyze the role that American Jewish philanthropy plays in each of these topics: how it's shaped where we are, and how it can help us build where we need to go.
Featured Speakers
Dania Rajendra is an organizer and writer, examining the lessons from the US labor movement for Jews organizing desperately-needed new religious and cultural institutions. Her recent essays have appeared in Spectre Journal, Truthout, Dilettante Army, and In These Times, and her poetry in Killing the Buddha.
Lila Corwin Berman is the Paul & Sylvia Steinberg Professor of American Jewish History at New York University, where she directs the Goldstein-Goren Center for American Jewish History. Her most recent book, The American Jewish Philanthropic Complex: The History of a Multibillion-Dollar Institution, was awarded the 2021 Ellis W. Hawley Prize from the Organization of American Historians. In addition to her scholarly articles, Berman has also written guest columns for the Washington Post, the Chronicle of Higher Education, MSNBC, and the Chronicle of Philanthropy. Her new book, Who Is American? Belonging and the Question of Jewish Citizenship (Princeton University Press), will be published next spring.
Dove Kent (Moderator) has over two decades of experience in grassroots organizing, political education, and movement building. She currently serves as the Acting Director of Diaspora Alliance, an international project that fights antisemitism and its political misuse.
Session 2: From Grief; Towards Possibility | December 8, 3pm ET
emet ezell (b. 1995, Texas) is an artist living and working in Berlin. Trained in the studio of Polish typographer Robert Sawa, ezell engages the letter as a visceral unit of composition. In addition to prints, they make paper by hand, preserving forgotten techniques through practice. Their work spans themes of devotion, dispossession, ruin, and return. ezell has received support from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, European Commission for Culture and Creativity, and the Berlin Senate, among others. Recent work appears in The American Poetry Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, and Best New Poets. Their first solo exhibition, "Destruction Is and Is Not Forever," debuted at the Sabile Arts and Culture Center in Latvia. They are a 2025-26 New Jewish Culture Fellow.
Rabbi Sandra Lawson is the Executive Director of Carolina Jews for Justice, a statewide grassroots organization mobilizing Jewish communities across North Carolina to build a more just and compassionate world. She lives in North Carolina with her wife Susan and three dogs Bridget, Simon and Stella.
Keren Soffer-Roth (she/her) is the director of Rise Up Initiative. She brings over a decade of leadership experience in the Jewish social justice sector and nearly two decades in the government and nonprofit sectors. Before joining Rise Up, Keren was a senior organizer at Jews For Racial & Economic Justice, where she founded the first ever Mizrahi/Sephardi Caucus in the country; built the largest education and organizing program in JFREJ's then-30 year history; and co-authored the groundbreaking resource, Understanding Antisemitism: An Offering To Our Movement.
Rebecca Katz is an artist and educator born and raised in Brooklyn, NY. Through community art projects, workshops, and cultural organizing, she creates spaces where people can access their creativity and explore their connection to community, identity, and place. She's currently working on a graphic novel about circumcision and was a 2023 LABA Fellow. Her comics have been published in Lilith magazine, “Jewish Women in Comics: Bodies and Borders” (Syracuse University Press, April 15, 2023), and her organizing and art has been featured in Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Kveller, Canvas Compendium. With Jews for Racial and Economic Justice and the artist Rachel Schragis, Rebecca cofacilitated the creation of Jews for Racial and Economic Justice's “Unraveling Antisemitism,” a cultural organizing project and map for discussion, organizing, and struggle to win a world free from antisemitism.
Session 3: Putting the World Back Together | December 22, 7pm ET
Joanna Ware (she/her) is the Executive Director of the Jewish Liberation Fund. She is an organizer, facilitator, and educator. She has spent over a decade working with organizations – inside and outside of the Jewish world - to bring forth a more just, whole, and liberatory world. Joanna has worked as a diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) consultant, Adaptive Leadership teacher and practitioner, community organizer, and popular educator at the intersections of identity, power, leadership, and social justice.
Arielle Angel is the editor-in-chief of Jewish Currents and a frequent host of the magazine's podcast, On the Nose.
Rabbi Alissa Wise is a community organizer, educator, organizational consultant, and ritual leader with over two decades of movement-building experience. She is the Founding Director of Rabbis for Ceasefire. She is co-author of Solidarity is the Political Version of Love: Lessons from Jewish Anti-Zionist Organizing (Haymarket, 2024).
Sarah Anne Minkin (Moderator), PhD, works at the intersection of human and civil rights advocacy, philanthropy, and education, with a special focus on Israel/Palestine. She currently serves as the Director of Programs and Partnerships at the Foundation for Middle East Peace. She is an affiliated faculty member at University of California, Berkeley's Center for Right-Wing Studies and was a lecturer at San Francisco University and UC Berkeley. She earned her PhD in Sociology from the University of California, Berkeley for research focusing on the sociology of emotion, nationalism, and Jewish Americans' relationships with Israel/Palestine. She is a trained community mediator, a chaplain-in-training, and a Board member at Jewish Currents.
