Mizrahi Struggle and Palestinian Solidarity: Conversation with Reuven Abergel

Note: This is a hybrid in-person and livestreamed event! It will take place at Temple Beth Zion at 1566 Beacon Street in Brookline, MA, which is a wheelchair accessible space. Attendees in-person must be vaccinated against Covid and be masked for the event. Information about accessing the livestream will be sent to all registrants, and closed captioning will be available.

If you have accommodation requests or questions about accessibility, please reach out to nadav.david10@gmail.com.

The Israeli Black Panthers led a movement starting in the early 1970s to challenge Israel’s oppression of Jews from Arab and Muslim countries (later known as Mizrahim). Inspired by the Black Panther Party in the US, they fought for racial and economic justice in housing, employment, and beyond.

This event will feature a conversation and Q&A with Reuven Abergel, one of the founders of the Israeli Black Panthers. Abergel was born in Rabat, Morocco in 1943 and arrived with his family to Israel/Palestine in 1950. Abergel has been a social and political activist in Israel/Palestine for fifty years, combining social and environmental struggles within Israeli society with the struggle for Palestinian rights and human rights.

He will be joined in conversation by Sapir Sluzker-Amran, a Mizrahi feminist lawyer and community organizer, and leader of the Breaking Walls grassroots movement, who is spending a year in Harvard’s Conflict and Peace program.

Kavod’s Jews of Color, Indigenous Jews, Sephardim and Mizrahim (JOCISM) caucus first gathered in February 2018, after more than a year of dreaming, visioning, and planning by its co-founders. Since then the caucus has flourished, meeting regularly to celebrate, reclaim, mourn, grow, and heal. Highlights since our founding include three JOCISM pesach seders featuring our very own haggadah, two years of egalitarian Sephardi High Holiday services led by Mizrahi women, a Tisha B’Av Vigil for Black lives, one caucus retreat, and numerous other community gatherings along the way. Last fall we were honored to host Mizrahi artist and activist Rafram Haddad, and today the caucus is proud to host Reuven Abergel, helping us to continue our tradition of uplifting Sephardi and Mizrahi voices and deepening our community’s knowledge about Mizrahi activism around the world.