Support BWC’s Year-End Fundraiser: A Letter from Rebecca Zimmerman Hornstein
Dear Boston Workers Circle,
We live in a time where we are told our only option is to build walls and look out for ourselves alone. Author and Activist Naomi Klein calls this a “fortress mentality,” and it is an outlook that increasingly shapes our world. We see the impacts of this fortress mentality as ICE raids terrorize our communities, as our fundamental rights and whatever we had of a social safety net are dismantled piece by piece, and as peace with justice in Israel/Palestine continues to feel so far away. Authoritarianism feeds off of this fortress mentality.
In this time of walls, our Boston Workers Circle lineage connects us to a different way of being–it connects us to a bridge mentality. It is a mentality that compels us to take the risks necessary to reach out to each other in empathy, humility, and vulnerability. It is a worldview based in the truth that we are all connected and that our fates are intertwined. It is a mentality that teaches the future of the Jewish people is bound up in a shared future with our neighbors, wherever we are.
Today, I write to ask you to build this bridge with us by giving generously to ensure that together, we can continue to fight fascism and fight for justice for another 125 years.
We continue to develop a thriving progressive secular Jewish home in Boston. This last year Boston Workers Circle:
- Grew our membership to over 1000 dues paying members.
- Came together in community at sold-out holiday celebrations (200+ attendees at our Passover Seder, 325+ attendees at Gragger, and 500+ people at our High Holidays celebrations).
- Taught 100 students through our Shule and Circle Playtime programs and our Teens Acting for Social Change program.
- Taught Yiddish language classes to over 60 students.
- Organized our members to fight for immigrant justice, promote peace with justice in Israel/Palestine, oppose the building of a new women’s prison in Massachusetts with our partners Families for Justice as Healing, fight against antisemitism, and fight against the use of bad faith accusations of antisemitism to stifle free speech and civil liberties.
- Served over 1,700 people through our intergenerational programming.
Because of your support, we are able to take courageous stances for justice and stay focused on our values and our vision. We are a self-sustaining community, both in leadership and in funding, which means we are accountable to maintaining BWC’s vibrancy without intervention from donors who do not align with our values. This is the backbone of our collective work together, creating the thriving Jewish future we can be proud to be part of.
Please join me in the building of this future through a generous donation this year. It is you, our members and friends, who build our community and create a future where all can thrive. Thank you.
In community,
Rebecca Zimmerman Hornstein
Executive Director
