This statement was composed with input from multiple leaders of The Rhapsody Project and will be posted to our website. We stand forever with those who call out injustice, and condemn our own government’s continued complicity – historical and current – in the genocides now taking place.
The Rhapsody Project is a community built from many backgrounds, but everyone here has been, to some extent, severed from our roots by the violence of oppression and forced acculturation. For some of us, this is taking place in the present. For others, it is present in our community or family histories. The Rhapsody Project’s work is to renew these connections, together. Celebrating community through our roots, through our folkways and expressive cultures, is how we do our part in Tikkun Olam, in healing the world and making it whole.
Yet, not all of this work is celebration. We cannot do the work of repair and reconnection without facing the violence of settler-colonialism and climate destruction that continue to shape the world we live in. This is why we talk about these issues when learning music together. This is also why we must speak out when this same violence that hurt us or our ancestors is used against others, because none of us are free until all of us are free.
Our community is attempting to process and find some impactful response to the settler-colonial genocide perpetrated against Palestinians by Israel and the United States. In the last eight months, Israel with the support of the United States government, has killed over 40,000 people, 15,000 of them being children. Additionally, the Israeli military has injured over 85,000 and displaced 1.7 million people in Gaza, often displacing the same people multiple times. Currently, nowhere in Gaza is safe, as Israel bombs refugee camps with US-made bombs and uses starvation as a weapon of war.
As the Rhapsody Project, we call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza and an end to Israeli apartheid. The United States must stop sending weapons to Israel. The systems of political Zionism* and American Christian white supremacy that support this genocide must be dismantled alongside all other forms of ethno-nationalism that colonial powers have cultivated to control other countries. Never again means never again for anyone, including Palestinians, Congolese people, Sudanese people, Rohinga people, Uyghur people, and all others experiencing genocide who our governments and media organizations don’t mention, often because of the color of their skin. While the terrible legacy of colonialism is present in many genocides, we choose to focus on Palestine at this moment because our government is so directly involved and has so much power to influence the situation.
As The Rhapsody Project, we also see a need to address the rise of anti-Jewish hate and Islamophobia at home as a result of what’s happening in Israel and Palestine. Attacking people for being Jewish or Muslim is never okay, and we oppose all acts of bigotry against Jews, Muslims, and anyone else.
Speaking as the director of The Rhapsody Project’s Yiddish Music and Heritage programming, I also must insist that anti-Zionism is not the same as anti-Jewish hate, and criticizing Israel is not a threat to Jewish safety. While Israel murders, starves, and brutalizes Palestinians in the name of Jewish safety, I am heartbroken, horrified, and more in danger as a result. As a Jew, I must speak out against this loudly and publicly alongside everyone at The Rhapsody Project and my own Jewish community. This genocidal violence does not keep us safe. The lessons of Jewish history and the teachings of Jewish tradition require us to speak and act against oppressive governments, as many Jews have done before in this country by participating in the labor movement and the civil rights movement. The safety and liberation of Jews and Palestinians are bound together with the liberation of all oppressed people and all other communities who have experienced genocide.
Beyond making a public statement, we will do what we do best: getting together to talk, eat, and play music. In Fall 2024, we will host our first community listening session about what’s happening in Israel and Palestine. We will hear from a featured facilitator and then open it up for us to listen to one another. At the end, we will play some music and let ourselves process what we’ve talked about. This event will be in hybrid format: simultaneously held in person at The Rhapsody Workshop in King Street Station and available to attend via Zoom. However you feel about our position or the language we have used in this statement, we hope you will join us so we can hear what you have to say too.
The Arabic word salam, the Hebrew word shalom, and the Yiddish word sholem all mean peace and all come from the same root word, the true meaning of which is wholeness. The city of Jerusalem, cleaved in two by settler-colonial borders, shares this root too. Let us hope for a land between the Jordan River and The Mediterranean Sea that is whole, where everyone living there can do so in peace.
Thank you for reading.
Jimmy Austin
Director of Yiddish Music and Heritage Programming
The Rhapsody Project
* A bit more about our use of the term, “Zionism”: By “Zionism,” we mean a political ideology and system that gives Jewish people certain rights in Israel and occupied Palestine which it refuses to Palestinians, and which steals the homes and lives of Palestinians. It is a system that erases Palestinian culture most of all, but also Jewish diaspora culture (especially Jewish culture from outside Europe). When we say this system should be dismantled, we are not endorsing an expulsion of Jews, just as we do not endorse the ongoing expulsion of Palestinians.
The founders of Zionism were very specific that it was a colonial project. For more information about how the concepts of settler colonialism, Zionism, and Indigeneity apply to this situation, please read this thoughtful article by rabbinic student, Daniel Delgado, who is Quechua and Ashkenazi.
