March 23, 2021:
Meet Rabbi David Jaffe, founder of The Inside Out Wisdom and Action (IOWA) Project. Rabbi Jaffe is a nationally recognized leader in the contemporary Mussar movement and will be our guest speaker in the final session of our Coastside Mussar series on Tuesday, March 23. The IOWA Project provides training and support for Jewish social justice activists.
Rabbi David Jaffe was a young organizer working with the homeless community in San Francisco. The work was rewarding and heartbreaking at the same time. For every victory changing a city policy or helping someone into a job there were numerous defeats. David felt completely committed to working for social change but wondered how he could possibly have the internal resources to face so much suffering over the long haul. He looked around and noticed that the people who stayed in social justice work the longest seemed to have powerful personal spiritual practice, particularly the Franciscan nuns who were a fixture in the city’s shelters. Thus began a decades long search for the spiritual resources in his own Jewish tradition to support a lifetime commitment to social change.
Inspired by the Jewish wisdom traditions of Mussar (applied Jewish ethics) and Chassidut (applied Jewish mysticism) and others experimenting with how to integrate their spiritual lives and their justice work, Rabbi David Jaffe wrote Changing the World from the Inside Out to articulate a Jewish path of personal and social change. His Inside Out Wisdom and Action Project builds on these teachings and seeks to support change makers to access deep Jewish wisdom to make their work more spiritually grounded, nourishing and sustainable.
Classic Jewish spiritual practices offer Jewish activists a counterpoint to the dominant White, Protestant culture. They offer a grounding in Jewish heritage that emphasizes connection to all people, moral integrity and community. This body of wisdom and practice has the potential to ground and elevate Jewish social justice activists to meet the complex challenges of this era.
*Students already enrolled in Coastside Mussar are not required to register or make an additional donation.