Statement in Solidarity with the Black Lives Matter Uprisings:
Nissan 2021/5781

In keeping with the intention we set out about six months ago in our Statement in Solidarity with the Black Lives Matter Uprisings: Tishrei 2020/5781, this is an update to the community about what we’ve been up to in the last six months. Below are the goals we set out and their respective updates:

  • Abundance Farm will form a working group with Congregation B’nai Israel’s Tikkun Olam (Social Justice) Committee that will continue our learning about reparations, with the goal of creating a proposal for making reparations as an organization.

We convened 21 CBI members, CBI staff, and Jewish community members to form the Reparations Working Group of Abundance Farm and CBI. Our group is multi-generational and multi-racial, and we prioritized reaching out to those with deep ties to CBI, those with a background in community organizing, and Jews of Color. Our first meeting was December 1, 2020, and we have met every month since then. Our goal for the first few meetings has been to answer the questions, “What are reparations?” and “What is the case for the American Jewish community to be making reparations?” Some of our research has included reading part of “The Reparations Now Toolkit” from the Movement for Black Lives; “The Case for Reparations”, by Ta-Nehisi Coates; “The Torah Case for Reparations”, by Aryeh Bernstein; “Native Presence in Nonotuck and Northampton”, by Margaret Bruchac; a few chapters from Slavery in the Connecticut Valley of Massachusetts, by Robert H. Romer, and a few chapters from The Jews of Paradise, by Penina Migdal Glazer and Myron Peretz Glazer. Historian Emma Zeig Winter from Historic Northampton came and spoke to us about the history of enslaved people in western Massachusetts. Our focus for the remaining months will shift into the “How-to” of reparations: who would receive reparations, how would we get reparations to them, and how much reparations should be given. We will be looking at other Jewish institutions for guidance, both in western Massachusetts and outside of it, that have committed to the project of reparations.

Part of engaging in this work has been noticing that we are a part of a groundswell of Jewish organizations supporting reparations. Rabbi Justin David will be running a five-week, text-based class on The Torah of Reparations, beginning on Sunday, April 11 at 10 AM (details can be found at cbinorthampton.org). We’ve connected with the Jewish Community of Amherst and Temple Israel in Greenfield as they talk more about reparations and we have been inspired by the Town of Amherst’s push for reparations.

  • Abundance Farm will commit to a strategy of de-escalation and call on the police as a last resort.

We facilitated two internal meetings about our organizational history with the police.  As a predominantly white institution, we don’t have a lot of practice in talking about or being explicit about our relationship to the police. Our goal has been to get practice working the muscle of having these conversations.

CBI staff have completed two de-escalation trainings, one with Clinical and Support Options (CSO) and one with CBI member Nick Fleisher, who is a very experienced trainer in this area.  We are continuing to work on a safety plan for Abundance Farm and CBI that includes de-escalation at its core. 

  • Abundance Farm will install a permanent tzedakah box where visitors can donate to local Black and Indigenous-led organizations doing land-based work.

We have partnered with local artisan and long-time Abundance Farm friend, Emmett Leader, who is making a beautiful tzedakah box that will be displayed at the front gate of the Farm. The money collected in this Tzedakah box will always go to local Black and Indigenous land-based organizations.  For the next 12 months we have committed this Tzedakah to Gardening the Community, in Springfield, MA, “a food justice organization engaged in youth development, urban agriculture and sustainable living to build healthy and equitable communities”. We are expecting to have it up by the time Pick Your Own starts on May 17th, 2021.  Come by and check it out!

As we continue counting the omer (the 7 weeks between the festivals of Passover and Shavuot), we know our anti-racism work is not done and that our job is to keep seeing these goals through and making sure that they are done well. At this point in the year, we have passed Ahmaud Arbery’s yahrzeit (anniversary of death) on February 23, Breonna Taylor’s yahrzeit on March 13, and George Floyd’s yahrzeit will be on May 25th. These yahrzeits are the time to honor those who have been lost to anti-Black racism and to continue taking action to address it. You can expect another update from us in 6 months with fresh commitments for our work.