Miknaf Ha’aretz was founded to create a space for radically reimagining Jewish belonging to land beyond zionism, to build community and a movement rooted in principles of earth-based radical-diasporism. Our work aims to re-connect the Jewish community in the UK to regenerative food and farming practices, organise around food and land justice issues, articulate a ‘Jewish land justice’, and collaborate with other diasporic communities to pursue an agro-ecological approach to farming which truly affirms and celebrates the diversity of land-workers across the UK. We began to organise around these issues in March 2020 and set up formally as a CIC Summer 2022.
Jewish histories of displacement have meant, like for many diasporic communities, that without being around others who share the racialised experience of being Jewish, many in the Jewish community feel fear of living and being in rural spaces. Many of us have felt isolated in rural spaces, land based communities and the food and land justice movement where a Jewish positionality wasn’t being considered or articulated. We wanted to explore our unique set of circumstances within the British Jewish community, and the broader diaspora communities of the UK, whose access to land has been affected by empire, persecution, racism and the diasporic experience.
Our work to build diasporist jewish community is being increasingly recognised as a tangible antidote to the violence of zionism that we are seeing play out right now in its most extreme form. As we fight for justice in Palestine and as many in our community become more and more disillusioned with zionism, our work feels part of a significant shift in the jewish imagination towards collective liberation and belonging to land through solidarity and justice.
In the coming year we are intending to:
- Organise a delegation to Palestine, deepening connections with Palestinian liberation theology orgs & farmers across Palestine and especially in the West Bank, supporting with the olive harvest and offering protective presence in a time of immense struggle and violence.
- Hold our ‘Doikeyt Fellowship’ – building and developing a cohort of jewish movement leaders in the UK, delving deep into identity and belonging, organizing for land justice in the UK and internationally, deeply committed to a liberated Palestine, learning from movement partners across the world, inspired by the radical Jewish labour movement of the 20th century who insisted on ‘doykeit’, Yiddish for herenessbuilding home and fighting for justice for everyone wherever we are.
- Continue to deepen and build our radical interfaith work – gathering and collaborating with radical faith leaders in the UK and building political awareness and power across faith communities.
- Host a virtual learning series, exploring radical ideas of homeland – with sessions on migrant justice, the Kurdish movement, democratic confederalism, Palestinian liberation, decolonial relationships to plants, radical ecology and more.
- Produce our annual zine with submissions from across our community exploring the issues at the heart of our work.