April Rosenblum
The Cop in the Head of the Jewish Left:
Breaking Out of 19th Century Norms to Organize Our People
"Cop in the Head" is my course for Jewish activists, based on my Master's research. You can invite me to teach this course in your community or organization. CITH is available virtually or in person, as 2-hour classes over 4 weeks, a full-day workshop, or a slower-paced weekend workshop. To inquire about bringing me to teach, contact me.
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"Cop in the Head" was piloted for 100 participants by Boston Workers Circle in Fall 2024, with gratitude to Zohar Berman for organizing.
About this course
The Jewish Left is contained by invisible walls that prevent us from fully claiming our power and steering our people in a new direction. We aren’t just up against obvious things, like the entanglement of many Jews in privilege and white supremacy, or well-funded Right-wing strategies. We are held in place by limitations dreamed up for us more than a century ago by the European Left.
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To rise to all the challenges we face – including the immediate challenge of seeking Palestinian freedom and the imminent challenges to democracy and the earth’s climate – it is essential that we break out of these limits so that we can access our full power and help our people play our strongest, most liberatory role. We’ll use April’s MA research, the wisdom of the organizing tradition, analysis of Christian dominance, and participants’ own reflections to make visible what has been holding us back.
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This course is for Jewish Leftists who want to strengthen their leadership and critical thinking skills and come out with a bolder sense of Jews’ place in movements and in the world.
Preparation: Participants are asked to read or listen to “To the New Jewish Left” (2021).
Sessions:
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Session #1: Setting the scene in the late 19th century, and grounding ourselves in organizing wisdom
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Session #2: Dueling visions for Jews in the first half of the 20th century, and how the expectations of the European Left created the mold for today
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Session #3: The creation of an Invisible Jewish Left in the 1960s, and why we don’t question existing theory
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Session #4: Building a 21st-century Jewish Left and moving beyond cultures of domination
About the instructor
April Rosenblum (she/her) is a Jewish writer and activist who studies race, class, Jewish identity and movement-building in the 20th century. Born into a multigenerational activist lineage, she is dedicated to building healthier and more powerful movements. She is at work on a popular history of Black/Jewish interconnection, and her essays have been featured in The Washington Post, Haaretz, Jewish Currents and in the election 2024 video #VoteLikeARadical. Her most well-known work, the Left manual on antisemitism The Past Didn't Go Anywhere (2007), helped to shape the consciousness of many activists who helped to lead Jewish resistance in the Trump era. Find April’s newest tools on antisemitism on Instagram: @aprilrosenblum5784
