It’s summer 2025. Many states have been experiencing record-breaking hot temperatures. Rent prices are reaching astronomical heights. Accessing gender-affirming and reproductive healthcare feels deeply precarious. There is never enough government money for housing, food or education, but there is seemingly endless government money for bombs. Everyone seems to be doomscrolling and falling into despair.
When there is so much out of our control, it is natural to look for support in systems and politicians. It is natural to want an elected superhero to come in and save the day. However, if my years in movement and political organizing spaces have taught me anything, it’s that the same government that is wielding violence against us is not going to protect us from the impacts of that very same violence.
I know that this can feel scary — being abandoned by the Benevolent State that many of us were taught to imagine and to look to for support can feel hopeless and overwhelming. But, we are not alone. Just the opposite. When we realize that the state is not going to save us, we have no choice but to save each other. We have no choice but to care for each other. To learn how to protect ourselves and our communities.
Mutual aid, as defined by Jewish law professor and organizer Dean Spade, “describes the work we do in social movements to directly support each other’s survival needs, based on a shared understanding that the crises we are facing are caused by the system that we’re living under, and are worsened by those systems.” There are so many faces of mutual aid: giving out cold water on a hot day, paying an incarcerated person’s bail, planting a community garden, creating underground networks of healthcare sharing, driving a friend to an abortion clinic, refusing to allow an ICE agent into your workplace and everything in between and beyond.
I believe very deeply that mutual aid is the way that we survive the crises we are currently living under and the crises that will inevitably come. I am guided by the movement leaders of today who champion mutual aid across all areas of our current political reality, but I am even more so guided by the mutual aid work of our ancestors.
Our ancestors were no strangers to caring for each other under the most dire of circumstances. During World War II, Rokhl Auerbach, a Holocaust survivor and writer, effectively created a soup kitchen inside the Warsaw Ghetto. In the late 1800s, Jews who emigrated from Eastern Europe to the United States set up mutual aid societies known as landsmanshaftn, to ensure access to basic needs at a time when Jewish people were not integrated into mainstream society. Going even further back into our ancestry and traditions, we can look to the 613 mitzvot (good deeds) prescribed in the Torah.
Arguably, many mitzvot are deeply aligned with the core principles of mutual aid. Many of the mitzvot rely on concepts of wealth and resource distribution: “To leave the unreaped corner of the field or orchard for the poor” (Leviticus 19:9), “Not to refrain from maintaining a poor man and giving him what he needs” (Deuteronomy 15:7), “To give charity according to one’s means” (Deuteronomy 15:11). and an instruction to keep each other safe and to care for our communities: “To love the stranger” (Deuteronomy 10:19), “Not to wrong the stranger in speech” (Exodus 22:20), “Not to leave something that might cause hurt” (Deuteronomy 22:8).
While our ancestors did not explicitly use the language of mutual aid, it is clear from their writings that they were deeply spiritually rooted in the same principles of modern mutual aid work. Aspects of mutual aid are constantly showing up in our practices, from requiring a minyan (10 people) for prayer to organizing some of our rituals around communal meals, reminding us that our most holy work should not be done alone.
Jewish people around the world continue to find creative and expansive ways to interweave Judaism and mutual aid. This looks like Jewish college students hosting Shabbat for Ceasefire gatherings on their campuses to highlight Jewish and Palestinian solidarity, drop in centers for queer and trans Jewish youth and members of Chabad standing on the sidewalk handing out free Hanukkah candles to passersby. For me, this has looked like spending every Shabbat for the past few years with people who are incarcerated in my area.
Living out Jewish values — pikuach nefesh (the commandment to preserve life), b’tzelem elohim (the idea that everyone was made in the image of God), chesed (loving kindness) — means caring for the people around us. It means showing up even — especially — when it’s hard. To acknowledge the holiness and godliness within ourselves, our neighbors and each stranger we encounter, is to ensure that our safety cannot come at the expense of anyone else’s.
The Jewish prayer Hashkiveinu demands: “Spread over us the shelter of Your peace.” We can be each other’s shelter of peace. We can keep each other safe. It’s what has gotten us this far and it’s what will allow us to survive each rising tide, each fascist leader, each action taken by the state to try and divide and erase us.
We survive by remembering that we are more sacred together. We survive by loving our neighbors as ourselves (Leviticus 19:18). By remembering that all people, locally and globally, are our neighbors. And that, just as our ancestors cared for each other with enough strength and fortitude for us to be here today, we must do the same for the generations to come.
