“Let us search and try our ways”: Trouble to See prelude

The lowest point of the Jewish calendar, the day of mourning known as Tisha B’av, commemorating destruction of the Temples and other calamities, calls us:

“Let us search and try our ways, and return to the LORD” (Lamentations 3:40).

As we move on from this day, through the season of repentance and beyond, I invite Jews — and others interested — to join me in an effort to “search and try our ways,” looking closely at the ways in which race has formed our lives and the life of this country so that we might build something new.

Here is my beginning, with resources and background —

Many things are “fully as terrible” 60 years on

What formed the background assumptions, about race and justice, of your life?

We must neither discount experience and work of different generations nor turn past Jewish racial justice efforts into symbolic moments to applaud

Trouble to See #1: Expelling Creases from the Fold

Trouble to See #2: Beyond Central Casting

Trouble to See #3: Beyond the Romance

Trouble to See #4: Peeling Back Some Tricky Layers

Trouble to See Related Resources