My dear movement, 

We stand at a crossroads now. Our movement has been through a 4 year long stabilizing process as we pull through covid and infighting. We are not the same movement now, and you are not children anymore. 

Yesterday, in the Hagshama and Demand peula, when we were brainstorming what structures the movement should have to allow maapilimot to achieve their visions, I heard many answers given in the passive voice: “seminars should be more accessible,” “shana should be talked about more at machaneh,” etc. 

This passive voice absolves us all of responsibility. The Movement can do nothing because The Movement is nothing more than a collective of actors. If the collective chooses not to act and only says the movement should do this and the movement should do that, this is also the passive voice. Responsibility begins with I. The Movement is only Us.

Now is the time for you to decide if you want to answer the call. There is nobody who will make the things you want to see happen — you have to make them happen. 

I want to take this moment to celebrate someone who chose to speak in the active voice: “I will do it.” Judah, in a time when everybody said “No, this is important, but I can’t do it, somebody else will do it,” you responded “Somebody else is dead. There is only me left.” You chose to take on the responsibility of leading the movement, in a time when leading the movement will require more than 3 people can physically do. Your decision to attempt a flight to the moon is one that I hope people will remember and look up to in the future. 

And for me it is personal as well. Without your making this decision, I would be alone next year. And whatever you would have otherwise done, you would have been alone too. I so deeply appreciate your decision to choose togetherness, radical collectivity, and I can’t wait to see what our scrappy little tzevet will accomplish next year. 

To the rest of you ma’apilimot standing in front of me, Mazkirut Artzit 5784 needs you. Judah and I cannot do it alone. Do not come to us and say “the movement should do this, the movement should do that.” Come to us and say “I will do this with and for the movement, and this is what I need from the movement to make it happen.” Come to us and say “What is the best way I can make my dream happen in the movement?” Come to us with your dreams, but come to us with your hands and feet ready to build as well. 

We are the movement and the movement is us. It does not exist out there somewhere. The Movement is not somebody else. Somebody else is dead. 

I have a deep belief in your ability to impact the movement and the world. Find that belief inside yourselves and act on it because you are the rains that will fill the rivers of justice and the ever-lasting streams of righteousness. The time has come for you all to water the Earth, and I feel so grateful to have the privilege of being a raindrop alongside each and every one of you.

Aleh v’Hagshem