history | наша история
In Summer 2019, Sophia Sobko put out a call for a live, online discussion group for queer & gender-marginalized post-Soviet Jewish immigrant-settlers, as part participatory art project/part phd project on immigrant whiteness. At that time Rivka Yeker had already been gathering queer, post-Soviet Jews on Facebook, and Stepha Velednitsky was looking for us on Instagram. At last, we found each other!
Using a co-facilitation model, Sophia developed the project through its first two “seasons.” Now in its fourth season, the group is stewarded by a 7 person committee: Domik Druzei and is working in a project-based and event-based capacity. The kolektiv continues to articulate its values, objectives & strategies as an emergent cultural-political organizing project.
The Domik Druzei currently stewards the kolektiv.
about | о нас
what - что
We are a U.S./Canadian collective of 43 gender-marginalized, queer and trans, post-Soviet Jewish first- and second-generation immigrant-settlers who have been gathering virtually in co-facilitated sessions since October 2019. Our group began in the context of Sophia’s dissertation project on immigrant whiteness, but met a larger existing yearning for connection around shared life experiences, positionalities, questions, and a politic of collective liberation. Our current work includes political education, cultural production, ritual-making, ancestral healing, mutual aid, and relationship building. As we articulate our values, we seek to form coalitions with other immigrant groups and to be in accountability to impacted people, including BIPOC, Palestinians, and post-Soviet Jews of color in the U.S.
who - кто
While we share some subject positions, our life experiences and identifications vary. As an immigrant/settler diasporic group, we are scattered across Turtle Island (the U.S. and Canada). We are Ukrainian, Georgian, Azerbaijani, Russian, Belorussian, Kavkazi. We are secular and religious, polovinki, trans, cis, genderqueer, and some of us live with disabilities and chronic illness. Some of us were the first in our families to be born here, while others immigrated with our families, directly or through Austria, Italy, Palestine, and elsewhere. We speak Russian, English, Hebrew, and Yiddish. We are writers, artists, scholars, healers, clowns, worker-organizers, and cultural workers.
Though our current membership does not represent the entire post-Soviet Jewish diaspora- which includes Jews of color, mixed-race Jews, white Jews, Ashkenazi, Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews, Jews of the Caucus, Bukharian Jews and Georgian Jews- we welcome people all of these backgrounds and identifications. We believe it is our work to speak from our specific subject positions, as people who carry familial and ancestral histories of persecution and who are now implicated in U.S. (and Canadian) systems of settler colonialism and white supremacy.
why - почему
While we are still in the process of articulating a collective vision, we are oriented toward co- liberation. We recognize that we are all settlers on this land, and that our immigrant stories are sometimes used to obscure settler colonialism. We also recognize that, whether white or brown, we have been relegated to play various roles in upholding violent systems of racial capitalism and anti-Blackness. Furthermore, as Palestinian lands have been stolen and colonized for an imperialist enterprise packaged as a “Jewish state,” violent suppression of Palestinians’ right to self-determination continues in our names.
These systems benefit many of us materially, as they perpetuate harm. We therefore stand in solidarity with oppressed groups for the liberation of all people and toward forging a right relationship with the Earth. Even as we recognize the contradictions of working towards justice from positions of relative power, we call on ourselves to address our own complicity, answering both to our own ancestors and to those people fighting for liberation today.
Thus, our collective cultural and political work is a practice of challenging the harms of internalized white supremacy, patriarchy, homophobia, zionism, and anti-semitism. We know we have a structural/material role to play in redistribution of wealth, abolition, and decolonization. We also believe that our own healing and liberation has the power to heal our ancestral lineages and generations to come, and to make possible the collective liberation we long for.