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ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal
Awarded Grant for Safety, Equity Training
Sasha Rogelberg | Staff Writer
Photos by studiocandela.com
W hile some Jewish organizations
look to make their spaces safer
through hardened security, ALEPH:
Alliance for Jewish Renewal is address-
ing safety diff erently.

The SRE Network (Safety, Respect,
Equity) announced on Feb. 21 the
eight recipients of its $300,000 grant
for Jewish nonprofi ts to address
harassment and discrimination in the
workplace. ALEPH, a Philadelphia-
based organization that serves as a
hub for Jews aligned with the Jewish
Renewal movement, was among the
recipients. With the awarded $47,000 over two
years, ALEPH will provide training to
ordination program administrators and
faculty to “fortify skills around power
dynamics, interpersonal behavior, and
psychologically safe culture,” accord-
ing to a press release. ALEPH will also
collaborate with its affi liated network
communities on building inclusive
spaces and policies.

The trainings will address sexual
harassment in the workplace, struc-
tural pay or opportunity inequities and
discrimination. In religious and spiritual
communities, addressing psychological
safety is particularly important because
of the intimate nature of the discipline.

“Our communities are also workplaces,
and our seminaries are also workplaces,”
ALEPH Executive Director SooJi
Min-Maranda said. “The professional and
personal tend to get blurred in these
close spiritual environments that foster
feelings and emotions.”
ALEPH partners and network members,
like many other Jewish leaders, often
work with many organizations in a more
insular community. Therefore, if one
individual is discriminatory or violent,
their impact is likely to spread to multiple
organizations, posited Elana Wien, SRE
Network’s executive director.

Jewish people are not exempt from
workplace discrimination, despite having
minority status.

An ALEPH ordination ceremony in January
“Issues of gender-based harassment,
discrimination, other forms of harassment
and discrimination — it’s prevalent across
our entire society, and the Jewish commu-
nity isn’t immune to that,” Wien said.

Created fi ve years ago, SRE Network,
which consists of 160 organizations,
bases its mission on Jewish values.

“We do have a really vital tradition that
brings tremendous wisdom and oppor-
tunity to do this work around ethics in
a deeper way,” Wien said. “So we can
pull from that tradition and that Jewish
wisdom around teshuvah, around making
repair, to really ground this work.”
Though SRE Network fi rst created a
training grant in 2018, the latest itera-
tion of the grant was designed with
additional input from members. Finalists
for the 2023 grant were longer-term
partners with SRE Network.

For ALEPH, which previously received
an SRE Network grant, the new grant will
provide additional, in-depth training, as
well as opportunities to receive training
from SRE Network’s specialists.

Psychological safety, respect and
equity are important tenants to ALEPH,
the steward of the Jewish Renewal
movement. ALEPH, according to its
website, pushes for a Judaism that is
“joyous, creative, spiritually rich, socially
progressive, and earth-aware.”
However, Min-Maranda clarifi es that
Jewish Renewal is not a denomination of
Judaism, but rather a philosophy.

“It’s an approach to Judaism,”
Min-Maranda said.

Until 2018, ALEPH operated out of
a physical location in Mount Airy but
is now entirely virtual. However, many
Jews connected to the movement are
still based in the area, which is also the
host of many of ALEPH’s seminars.

ALEPH was founded by Rabbi Zalman
Schachter-Shalomi in Philadelphia in
1978 and fi rst called B’nai Or, which
later became ALEPH. The goal of the
movement was to reinvigorate Jews,
encouraging participation and drawing on
the joys of the Chasidic movement, while
also advocating for socially progressive
values. “The idea of it being a movement
alludes and evokes a spirit of movement,
that we are in motion — in motion and in
co-creation,” Min-Maranda said. “That
we are constantly changing, adapting,
responding, while being deeply rooted
in Jewish tradition.” ■
srogelberg@midatlanticmedia.com 
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