How do you want your community to be different this new Jewish year?
While I’ve had to do a lot of learning as I engaged more deeply and broadly with my Judaism, knowledge wasn’t my main barrier. And while @ask-jumblr has helped fill lots of folks’ factual needs, and even facilitated the giving of personal, social, and spiritual advice, I think we, as a jumblr community, are in a unique position to help each other improve our irl Jewish communities.
I tried to make a master-post/hashtag called #JewishCommunitySolutions but it flopped for some really good reasons. Not only was it a clunky tag, but it had a weird, rigid format and I was trying to build it from scratch. And over time it started to weirdly remind me of Hitler’s “Final Solution” terminology which was just weird, awful, and...um nope.
Despite plan A’s failure, I still there’s both a need and an ability for us to help each other improve our off-internet communities. Jumblrs have posted about racism, financial barriers, and unclear communication, among other issues. From my off-jumblr network, I know that issues of accessibility, and shul drama can also make communities less than welcoming. As a post on the original system mentioned, many synagogues also face pressing structural and financial problems.
I wondered how y’all would feel about a lower-key designated tag for questions along these lines. I would be happy to facilitate this through @ask-jumblr, both by posing questions and by posting them. However, I wouldn’t want that to stop anyone from posting with the hashtag on their own blog. If we start getting repeat questions, I could make a page off of @ask-jumblr with the chosen #hashtag as a title to let people find--and contribute to--old quandaries repeating in their own communities, or that they’ve got new ideas on how to solve.
Below are my current hashtag ideas, but I’d really love to hear yours too. Especially because I’m not super impressed by my own:
#HospitalityHavruta
#Edah or #EdahEdits
#Tikkunity
#SynagogueSuggestions
If you’ve got opinions, please make them known! Yes, that includes thinking one (or all!) of these is laughably bad! If there are ways to grammatically improve these tags, please let me know too. My Hebrew grammar skills are mostly guess & hope I get corrected...
If you see some issues with using @ask-jumblr as a platform for these conversations (alongside continuing with its current functions ofc), then please make that known too. These questions would be restricted to the asker’s irl community, or one that they tried to join because it should/seemed in line with their values. I’m hoping that framework should help keep it productive by preventing any kind of interdenominational/intercommunal fire-war. @ask-jumblr‘s FOR system also may help.