jeudi 3 octobre 2024

16:30 - 18:30

In Brussels, Rosh Hashana 5785 Beyond Borders : Jewish New Year for free Palestine – Sprouting our Seeds of Resistance

Room SPAAK 5C50, European Parliament, Brussels

Evènement organisé par : European Jews for Palestine (EJP)

Global Rosh Hashanah 2024 – Let’s Free Palestine from Zionism

From 27th of Elul 5784 to 2nd of Tishri 5785, from October 2nd to 4th, 2024, from 28 to 30 Rabiʿ Al-Awwal 1446, at -? before an era of Universal Communion, we will celebrate Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year and the almost one-year anniversary of the genocidal war waged by the colonial state of Israel to annihilate the Palestinian people and erase the existence of Palestine.

This year, we’ll be celebrating the New Year so that the year to come is what it should be: a year of resistance, in which the struggle continues everywhere for the emancipation of Palestine and Jewish liberation from Zionist ethnonationalism.

On October 3, we invite you to join us for Rosh Hashana:

. in Brussels at 04:30 pm or

. in Paris at 06:30 pm

From our past revolutions, how do we capture time?

More than ever, at the invitation of Global Jews for Palestine, it’s time to seize this opportunity to create transnational actions through rituals.

Bundist Rosh Hashana, on our hereness

This international Rosh Hashana weaves links between our communities just as it weaves in our histories. In a Bundist tradition (General Union of Jewish Workers of Lithuania, Poland and Russia, anti-Zionist), each of the cities where our resistance will be celebrated draws the map of our diasporas.

We refer to the DoyKayt, the “hereness”, which in Bundist thought consisted of putting down roots in one’s native land and claiming the right to live there. This distinguished them from the “thereness” of Zionist organizations that were being created at the same time. Today, our struggles join those being waged where we live, where we grow up, in our territories. The power of decolonial social struggles is built on a radical opposition to a Zionist, nationalist, cleansing and sovereign vision.

From the here-and-now of our multiple existences, our networked ceremonies and social bodies in struggle, we are the people, against the republican banquet and its racist and colonial policies.

Rosh Hashana, resistant New Year rituals

Among many traditions, at Rosh Hashana we eat the seeds of the pomegranate.

The pomegranate is a fruit with a thousand stories, and its seeds live in community and cohabit within it, united, taking on the shape of others as they ripen.

The pomegranate is a fruit of Palestine, deeply rooted in its peasant culture.  As the fruit matures, the grapes become extremely sweet, the figs ripen and the pomegranate opens up to reveal its heart. It’s long due for the seeds to embrace and then free themselves from their enclave.

The pomegranate is a symbol of renewal and ethics, of stolen land, of food boycotts and anti-capitalism. The pomegranate is a symbol of the common and the specific, red like the anti-fascist triangle and that of the Palestinian flag, guarding its seeds preciously for future spurts. It is renewal, the prayers of a year of change, introspection and commitment.

We are all the seeds of the pomegranate, and our struggles are united.

May the “day after” spring from these liberated seeds.

Let’s get together!

This Rosh Hashana will be marked by a bloody year, but also by the celebration of our journey and our hopes, through the construction of a fairer world.

That’s why we’re inviting you, individuals and organizations, to bring your grain, your dishes, your rituals to this participatory celebration: to share with one and all, through words or another medium, the stories of our diasporas and weave together our trajectories.

Program of the event:

  • Short speeches
  • Jewish New Year’s symbolic celebration sharing pomegranates
  • Public launch of the new network European Jews for Palestine (EJP)
  • Photo opportunity, etc.

List of confirmed speakers (not in this order):

MEPs:

  • Marc Botenga, MEP (Belgium, The Left)
  • Mounir Satouri, MEP (France, The Greens)
  • Per Clausen, MEP (Denmark, The Left)

European Jews for Palestine:

  • Joy Kummer, Jews for Just Peace 5784, Denmark
  • Fenya Fischler, EAJS, Belgium
  • Joana Cavaco, Erev Rav, Netherlands
  • Éleonore Merza-Bronstein, AJAB, Belgium
  • Avi Melka, TSEDEK!, France

Partners:

  • Julie Pescoet, ENAR
  • Sarah Chander, EQUINOX

(Languages: EN, FR)

Moderator: Gabi Kaplan, European Jews for Palestine (EJP)