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Join us for the book launch of An Anti-Zionist Path to Embodied Jewish Healing with author Wendy Elisheva Somerson (Wes) in conversation with filmmaker Irit Reinheimer.
In a time when antisemitism is being weaponized and used to justify genocide against Palestinians, Wes's book is unapologetically anti-Zionist, firmly rooted in Jewish spiritual values, and presents a liberatory model for Jewish healing.
The Israeli state perpetually manufactures Jewish consent for its violent genocidal regime by pitting Jewish safety against Palestinian freedom. It does so by activating Jewish historical trauma from histories of antisemitism.
We are currently witnessing the staggering consequences of unhealed Jewish embodied trauma and grief, which are being weaponized to support the genocide in Gaza.
Jewish folks need healing, so that we can remove ourselves from this zero-sum game that leverages the traumatic history of antisemitism to justify the oppression of Palestinians. Now more than ever, we need to learn the tools of embodied healing to break these traumatic cycles of violence and oppression.
Body-based healing helps Jews move from a past that overshadows our present to a present that is informed by but not determined by our past. When we can see our current context more clearly, we gain the tools to work for our own and each other’s liberation, emphatically including the liberation of Palestinians.
An Anti-Zionist Path to Embodied Jewish Healing invites us back into our bodies by framing healing as a political act that is integral to our organizing work as anti-Zionist Jews and situates healing inside an anti-Zionist political framework..
Rooted in justice, care, and spiritual depth, this book asks us to live into a Jewishness
beyond Zionism.
Wendy Elisheva Somerson (Wes) is a queer non-binary, disabled, cat- loving Ashkenazi Jewish somatic healer, writer, activist, and visual artist residing on Duwamish and Coast Salish land. One of the founders of the Seattle chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace, they have been active in Palestinian solidarity work for more than two decades. In their art and organizing they create ritual, images, and stories that help envision Jewish life beyond Zionism. As a politicized healer, Wes works at the intersection of personal and collective healing with individuals, groups, and organizations. They are the creator and facilitator of Ruach, an ongoing anti-Zionist, body-based Jewish healing group. At low tide, you can find them investigating tide pools. During high tide, they are likely covered in linoleum shavings and ink from their latest linocut creation.
Irit Reinheimer is an artist and writer based in Philadelphia. Her films Young, Jewish and Left, How the Bridge Works, I Told Her This Was Home, and Of Origin have screened internationally. Her memoir Push the Water, published by Thread Makes Blanket Press, weaves together descriptions of archival footage, home movies, and memories that prompt new recognitions of her Jewish family’s participation in settler colonialism and the occupation of Palestine. She is also a long-time member of Jewish Voice for Peace.