Thanks for sitting down to speak with New Voices Magazine? Tell us a little bit about who you are beyond your organizing for the Workers Circle College Network.
Noa Baron: I’m a rising senior at NYU studying Judaic studies and public policy. I’m originally from Evanston, Illinois, and I’m passionate about Judaism and activism. I love learning and connection—I dream about someday becoming a rabbi. Outside of the Workers Circle College Network, I can be found co-leading weekly Friday night services for fellow college students and painting in my free time.
Brit Zak: I just graduated from Barnard College, where I majored in Latin and Jewish Studies. I grew up in Fort Worth, Texas, and lived in Baltimore for a few years doing Jewish social justice work at Johns Hopkins before moving to New York. I’m starting law school in the fall and hope to focus on healthcare policy and medical malpractice (which is super unrelated to everything I’m up to right now). I was also involved with the traditional egalitarian minyan at Columbia/Barnard.
How did both of you originally get involved with the Workers Circle?
NB: I attended a labor rights protest with some friends in November 2019, where I first encountered this organization. Workers Circle social Justice organizer Jonathan Taubes was holding a sign that said “Jewish Culture for a Just World,” and I approached him because I wanted to learn more. A month’s worth of emails and an informational interview later, I became a college organizer with the Workers Circle.
I had been looking for a way to plug into activism, Jewishly, in college, and was failing in my search. Nearly all of the social justice organizations for college students center around Israel and Palestine, and while that’s important, I was (and continue to be) particularly interested in domestic issues – I want my activism to be centered around where my feet are.
I later found out from my grandma that she thinks we have some family history with the Workers Circle (first called Workmen’s Circle, or Der Arbeter Ring). This kind of connection is not necessarily the norm for the College Network – most members do not have a direct family heritage in our organization, though some do.
BZ: Noa and I actually knew each other before I joined the Workers Circle from other organizing work. They approached me in August and told me about the College Network and that they were looking to add someone from the Columbia community to the team. I had known about the Workers Circle because my partner has told stories about their experience as a kid at Kinder Ring, a Workers Circle Camp, and I had seen over the summer that they were starting to form the College Network community. I was really drawn to the fact that the Network provided a path to work proudly as Jews in a community of college-aged peers. Most of my activism up to that point had revolved around Israel and Palestine, so it was refreshing for me to have an opportunity to ground domestic activism in my identity and the labor roots of the Workers Circle.
How did the idea for a Workers Circle College Network come about?
NB: After approaching Jonathan at the protest, he and I had a lengthy conversation at the Workers Circle office. We were both astounded that something like the College Network (a network of progressive Jewish students and alumni connected for social justice) didn’t already exist. In the last week of February 2020, I became an official Workers Circle intern, with the goal of helping build such a network. The pandemic hit just a couple of weeks later, and changed the shape of our plans, but not our goals.
Tell us more about your mission.
NB: The College Network connects progressive Jewish students and recent alumni for reflection and action for social justice. We draw upon Workers Circle’s unique history of activism, and we are inspired by Yiddish language, culture, and history. Through discussions, events, advocacy, and direct action, we aim to advance worker rights, immigrant rights, racial justice, and economic justice.
BZ: Noa summed it up nicely, but I think for me the College Network is about building community through activism and cultural engagement, creating space for young Jews to take action as Jews without grounding that work in religious ideas or communities, and to examine our role in the current political moment through a lens informed by the history of the Jewish left in this country.
Where are you in the world and how does your geography relate to your mission? Is this organization mostly in the digital diaspora in this era of the pandemic — and how has COVID impacted the beginnings of this organization?
BZ: We are all over! Because Noa and I are both in NYC, that’s probably where our strongest presence is, but we have clusters of folks in Florida, Pennsylvania, California, Maryland, and others in Vermont, North Carolina, Michigan, Hawai’i, and more. I think our geography actually has shaped the work that we are doing quite a bit—while we love showing up in person at protests in the NYC area, when we want to take action as a Network we typically choose targets on the national level and try to find ways that any member regardless of location can plug into the work. One way we have taken advantage of our geography is through Action Teams, where students join with Workers Circle members to advocate for legislation with congresspeople. Because we are so spread out, we have access to many more representatives and have been able to connect them with students in different states. Last year for example we had three College Network students meet with Senator Chuck Schumer’s staff about an immigrant-inclusive COVID-19 relief bill, and they were working with Workers Circle members from several generations, including one member in her 70s. Our relationship with the broader Workers Circle organization gives us opportunities to forge intergenerational connections between progressives of all ages, which is great because we as young people have a lot to teach and learn from older activists.
NB: We are definitely all over the country! I think some people actually tuned in from Canada at our Irena Klepfiz event, on Yiddish Socialism, LGBTQ+ Identity and the Bund.
The pandemic started right around when the College Network kicked off. The George Floyd protests began not long after, which opened up a conversation within our Network about the intersections of Jews, racism and racial justice. We were able to have this conversation, and others, on a national scale. In January, we had a cohort of 10 students from all over the country in a “Yiddish and Anti Racism: History, Justice, Practice” Seminar with Black Yiddish music-performer Anthony Russell. Though in some ways, it has been difficult organizing Jewish college students virtually, in other ways our Zoom world allows us to have a broader reach.
Who is part of this group? What kind of community are you seeking to build through the Workers Circle College Network?
NB: This group is mostly made up of college students, as well as some recent alumni, and anyone who’s young-adult-aged is welcome. We are trying to build a Jewish activist community that is warm, engaging, and action-oriented. As a Network we often engage in dialogue and fun events together. We’re trying to create a space that’s fun and light: activism doesn’t always have to be this big, serious, scary thing. For example, we held a Zoom play reading of “Rent Strike,” a short play translated from yiddish about an abusive landlord. Our events are often filled with a lot of laughter, and “bopping” yiddish tunes. We want to build a better world, and we also want to explore the whimsical side of our history, and the Jewish left. We also encourage members to come to us with ideas of events they want to do – we want the College Network to be a place where we can all learn from one another.
Do you consider the Workers Circle College Network a religious, cultural, or political organization? How do you negotiate these categories as young Jews?
NB: The Workers Circle College Network is primarily a political organization, as well as a cultural one. We are centered around fighting for social justice and exploring Yiddishkeit, and its relation to our activism. This is not to say that members in our network aren’t religious—many are. Brit and I are also both observant in our own ways outside of this group, but I think there is something special about creating a Jewish space that really grounds our advocacy in an understanding of history and material reality.
What political philosophies are alive in the Workers Circle College Network? How do you see the relationship between Jewish identity and social justice?
BZ: I think it works for a lot of people to connect their progressive values to Jewish tradition, whether that means religiously, culturally/historically, or both. I think for me, I hesitate to say that my Jewish identity drives my activism. Maybe it’s because I converted and was a leftist before I was Jewish, but I see my Jewish identity separately from my political identity. The relationship for me is more about community. I think it’s powerful for a group of people who are connected by a shared identity (whether that’s being Jewish, being queer, etc.) to show up in solidarity for other movements and build multicultural and multigenerational support for progressive change. I think organizing in a Jewish identity based organization can allow you to think materially about how the Jewish community can leverage its power in social movements, but it also allows you the space to let your Jewish identity exist without justification and without worrying that you’re being “too Jewish” or that your identity is taking up too much space.
NB: At this moment in my life, I feel that my Jewish identity and my progressive identity are intertwined. In part, I think it’s because as Jewish people, we are consistently seeking betterment—personal, communal, political, cultural, ideological, and/or religious betterment. Most of us can name multiple Jews who fight for a better world, or want to fulfill more mitzvot, or try to create new art, or want to adapt a way of thinking about things. As a people we are never settled, we are always building and rebuilding, and trying to make things better. (A great number of the influential and radical thinkers from the modern era were in some way Jewish—Albert Einstein, Karl Marx, Emma Goldman, Sigmund Freud, Rosa Luxemburg…) Maybe this is a product of persecution, maybe it’s rooted in Torah, or it could be both. Either way, I cannot separate my deeply held belief that the world can and should be better from my identity as a Jew.
What projects are you working on right now?
NB: Our main priority right now is engaging in climate justice work. We just launched our “Young Jews for a Green New Deal” campaign last month, including a kickoff concert with Adah Hetko and other events to circulate our petition to congress to pass the BUILD GREEN Infrastructure and Jobs Act, the Recognizing the duty of the Federal Government to create a Federal job guarantee Resolution, and the Green New Deal for Public Housing Act. We believe that climate justice includes racial justice and economic justice, and fighting for a Green New Deal feels very relevant to us as young Jews today. We have a dedicated “Green Team” made of a handful of College Network members who are particularly passionate about this issue and want to get more involved. If that sounds like you, don’t hesitate to reach out!
BZ: In addition to the YJ4GND campaign, we have been working on a series of projects related to Anthony Russell’s Yiddish & Anti Racism seminar. One of the participants Jenna Zucker led one of the events to come out of this, titled “Yiddish Socialism, LGBTQ+ Identity, and the Bund with Irena Klepfisz,” which got more than 45 people onto a Zoom call, which is pretty hard to do at this stage of the pandemic. We also have a Pride month event in the works that we will promo soon!
That’s amazing. What’s next?
BZ: Because I’m moving on to law school soon, I’m really invested in developing more leaders within the Network to whom I can pass the torch. It’s hard to maintain institutional memory and continuity when working with a population that is by nature transient. We are really excited about the influx of new students that will arrive in the fall, especially those matriculating from the Workers Circle’s Youth Stand Up for Justice high school activist cohort. We also just hired a new organizer, C.C. Wilder, from Marymount Manhattan College. I’m excited to incorporate all the great ideas she is bringing to the table!
NB: We have some exciting programming coming up! Stay tuned!
How can our New Voices readers get involved?
BZ: Have a one-on-one with us! As much as we want to bring more students into the work the Network is doing, we also want to bring the work that other students are doing to the Network. We want to hear what student activists are up to and what they are passionate about so we can connect them to Network members with similar interests.
NB: Also, follow us on instagram @workerscirclecollege, and join our facebook group (search for Workers Circle College Network). Feel free to email me at nbaron@circle.org with any questions or ideas, or to set up a one-on-one!
