Our working Mission Statement

Judaism On Our Own Terms (JOOOT) is a cross-national organization and movement that aims to create and build a network of student-governed and liberation-aligned Jewish communities on campuses across the so-called North American continent. 

We work to build Jewish communal life that is free from dictates of the legacy Jewish institutions that constrain us and distort Judaism. The Jewish communities that we seek to collectively empower are both in solidarity with all oppressed and colonized communities across the world and radically inclusive of many different notions of, experiences within, and ways of relating to Judaism. Local JOOOT groups might articulate this solidarity in ways that make sense for their local context. JOOOT is an autonomous organization that strives to be anti-racist, internationalist, anti-imperialist, and anti-capitalist. This necessitates an anti-Zionist politic, which we see as a rejection of a manufactured piece of Jewish identity propagated by the Jewish establishment. We aim to build and sustain Jewish communities and organizations that center liberation as a necessary means for pursuing vibrant Jewish life.

Our Working Points of Unity

As a movement comprised of individual campus groups,  we represent a diverse set of communities with various ideologies and missions. Through this, we are united by our six principles for Jewish campus life, which groups in our network sign on to:

  1. Establish and support democratically-run Jewish campus organizations by and for students within which students have the primary authority to determine leadership structure, and collectively decide rules, programming, and organizational mission.

  2. Resolve never to jeopardize student needs in the name of donors’ political interests.

  3. Protect and empower Jewish students facing increasingly common attempts to silence their voices, perspectives, and political opinions — especially regarding Palestine — by working against attempts to intimidate students who are part of, or in solidarity with, liberatory efforts.

  4. Embrace solidarity with all oppressed and colonized groups, locally and internationally, while rejecting calls, politics, and alliances that stifle liberatory movements. 

  5. Embrace students’ diverse Jewish identities and understandings of “being Jewish” without delegitimization because of race, conversion status, sexual orientation, gender, or class.

  6. Create vibrant Jewish spaces for ritual, discourse, and engagement with liberatory movements, along with mechanisms for these spaces to share resources and support one another.

This will not be easy work, but we believe it is a crucial next step for the long-term sustainability and vibrancy of the “North American” Jewish community. We are excited to continue this work of building student-run, democratically administered, liberation-aligned, and inclusive Jewish communities on campuses.

We invite our fellow Jewish students to join with us by either building new student-run groups or committing existing organizations to this mission.

Both our mission statement and collective points of unity are constantly in process and we invite the JOOOT community to actively engage with them. Please see our Frequently Asked and Anticipated Questions for more information and elaboration.