It is our Jewish Community to Shape: Creating Safe Places and Spaces
Why is WRJ Says STOP important?
Together we can change the culture of power dynamic abuse, bullying, gender-based harassment, and assault while securing a safer and more respectful community environment for our Jewish communal spaces.
This toolkit provides educational materials, tools, and advocacy opportunities to build a safer environment and future. We hope participants can become self-advocates, informed upstanders, and empowered change-makers within our synagogues, communities, the Reform Movement, and society at large. By working together - lay leaders, professionals and clergy - we have the hard conversations in our communities, and then we can start to create an environment of courageous outspokenness in our broader world.
Jewish Framing
We learn in our Torah, our sacred tradition, in our Holiness Code, the center of our scroll, the beating heart of our text:
לֹֽא־תֵלֵ֤ךְ רָכִיל בְּעַמֶּ֔יךָ לֹ֥א תַֽעֲמֹ֖ד עַל־דַּ֣ם רֵעֶ֑ךָ אֲנִ֖י יְהוָֹֽה
Do not deal basely with members of your people.
Do not profit by the blood of your fellow
I am the Eternal your God (Leviticus 19-16)
For we know, in our heart of hearts:
We are neighbors.
We are a community.
Whatever harms we have suffered, created, or observed --
We must speak out bravely and create space for all.
View WRJ Executive Director Rabbi Liz P.G. Hirsch’s prayer for this initiative.
Action options:
- Actions for a sisterhood and/or organization to do in person
- Actions for a sisterhood and/or organization to do virtually
- Actions for one person or a small group to do
- Using the WRJ says STOP resources
For further information please visit the WRJ Says STOP homepage.
For questions or concerns, please contact Rena Crawford, WRJ Social Justice Manager, rcrawford@wrj.org.