Belonging | Here Now | Doikeit & Diaspora
with Andy Izenson
“A conscious and loving and incredibly unlikely and wildly beautiful universe full of conscious and loving and incredibly unlikely and wildly beautiful beings are you, Shekhinah, Goddess of the uncountable tiny coincidences and near misses and impossible connections and ancestral serendipities that have made it possible for each of us to be in this place doing what we are doing, it is unlikely to the point of being frankly bananas that we are alive and touching each other in this grogeous moment and yet, here we the fuck are, that rules, amen. ”
In this conversation between Taya Mâ & Andy Izenson, Andy speaks of inherent belonging and the power of doikeit & diaspora, and invites us into the radical prayer embracing the sacred right here and now. Andy teaches that “rootedness and belonging is not about trying to attain a prescribed set of cues, but about a flowing exploration of what feels aligned” and invites us to “root deeply in the body and let that transform you...”
Andy’s Lecha Dodi from the Faggots Against Empire Makhzor
Let's go faggots
Let's go comrades
Let's go all of the living beings of the world
It's time to welcome peace into our bodies like a lover
She comes to us as a wellspring
She comes to us as a burning cop car
She comes to us as a dandelion pushing through cracked concrete
She comes to us as clean air clean water no borders no prisons no walls soil without shrapnel and children without triggers
She comes to us as the world that is coming
And there is nothing any motherfucker can do to stop her
Let us welcome her with song
Where .. how ... with who do you Belong?
What supports you to know YOU belong?
Andy Izenson
…is a Spinozan pantheist weirdo Jew, a time traveling transsexual, and an attorney, law professor, and facilitator of transformative justice processes with fifteen years of experience in protest support and radical lawyering with the National Lawyers Guild. Andy is on the board of their renewal synagogue and they live on a tranarchist intentional community on Lenape land in the Hudson Valley of New York. Andy recently founded the teach-in series “The World That Is Coming: A Do’ikayt Teach-in” to unearth and explore a Jewish mystical anarchism, and have taught on the topic at Boston University’s Institute on Culture, Religion, and World Affairs, the Worker’s Circle, and been published on it in the Brill Journal of Religion and the Arts and the Sage Journal for Critical Research on Religion. Andy’s work explores the interplay between mystical diasporism, gender antinomianism, sadomasochism, and ancestor veneration with an eye towards the triumph of the forces of faggotry over the state.
Learn about | Join the Faggots Against Empire Kol Nidrei ~ Anarchist Yom Kippur Ball in the Streets, find the FAE Faggadah or contact Andy.