By AJDS Executive
Dear AJDS members and supporters,
We would like to welcome you back to the AJDS newsletter, now named – Just Voices – after a year-long hiatus. We hope this platform can provide you with an informative space for intelligent writing and art on pertinent issues.
This edition of Just Voices comes at an important moment in both the Jewish and the Australian calendars. In both of these intertwining spaces, we stand on the edge of something new. In Jewish terms, we are close to Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, a time when we can reflect on our behaviour and ways of interacting with our friends, communities, families and the broader world. We can renew our commitment to live in a way which is meaningful and that endeavours to bring about ethical change. What precisely this means for each of us is something that we will hopefully ponder over the coming weeks.
The AJDS decided this newsletter should focus on refugees for a number of reasons. Refugees’ lives are treated by many of those in Australian politics and the Australian public in despicable ways, as though they are a problem, or a waste product, to be dispensed with. Recognising this, and repudiating the racism inherent in such attitudes, the AJDS wants to be part of the movement, which changes that narrative and instead recognises the bravery of refugees who leave their homes to seek a fresh start. As we start a new year, we can embrace these stories of change and renewal, and stand alongside local refugee and asylum seeker organisations such as RISE and the ASRC, and work towards a new beginning.
Just Voices is intended as an open space and if you would like to contribute to future editions, we welcome you to contact us at: editor(at)ajds.org.au.
We wish you all a gut yontif and shana tova, and we hope that all our members and readers have a fulfilling, enriching, challenging, and renewing time in the coming days.
The Australian Jewish Democratic Society (AJDS)
Rosh Hashana Newsletter – An Introduction
