Making Mensches: Not Your Bubbe's Torah School
Jun 15, 2026 · 1 hr 2 min · 17 segments
Join the Making Mensches team (Elana, Jesi/Rocki, and Jessie) and Rachel Joy (they/she) for the third episode of our Judaism and Abolition series! Rachel is an abolitionist social worker, lay…
Rachel JoyGuestAlanaHostJessieHostJesiHostToday we're really excited to be talking to my dear friend Rachel.
Rachel Joy is an abolitionist social worker, lay leader, and organizer who has been teaching, leading Jewish services, and community building with folks inside jails for the past five years.
Rachel spent the last nine months organizing with Matir Assyriim, the Jewish Care Network for Incarcerated People, and also started the New York City Resource Library, which is a database of free resources across New York City and an in-person mutual aid distribution.
Wow, Rachel, we're so excited to have you here.
It means believing in a world where we can respond to harm, to conflict, to community issues with care and with love and with safety instead of with violence.
mechanisms of state violence, of jails, of prisons, of immigrant detention, of all of those agencies that enforce jails and prisons and immigrant detention, and also the way that we allow those carceral spaces to infiltrate our day-to-day lives, our interpersonal relationships, our community relationships, our organizing.
the things that we do that keep us isolated from each other, that have us lead with punishment and with violence in our own communities.
The world that abolition imagines is one where we can move through anything that is in front of us with care and softness and community and that we can move through everything together, whereas all of these other systems require that people move through the most difficult times in their life alone and with shame.
care.
Thank you so much for that, Rachel.
Today we're really excited to be talking to my dear friend Rachel.
Rachel Joy is an abolitionist social worker, lay leader, and organizer who has been teaching, leading Jewish services, and community building with folks inside jails for the past five years.
Rachel spent the last nine months organizing with Matir Assyriim, the Jewish Care Network for Incarcerated People, and also started the New York City Resource Library, which is a database of free resources across New York City and an in-person mutual aid distribution.
Wow, Rachel, we're so excited to have you here.
It means believing in a world where we can respond to harm, to conflict, to community issues with care and with love and with safety instead of with violence.
mechanisms of state violence, of jails, of prisons, of immigrant detention, of all of those agencies that enforce jails and prisons and immigrant detention, and also the way that we allow those carceral spaces to infiltrate our day-to-day lives, our interpersonal relationships, our community relationships, our organizing.
the things that we do that keep us isolated from each other, that have us lead with punishment and with violence in our own communities.
The world that abolition imagines is one where we can move through anything that is in front of us with care and softness and community and that we can move through everything together, whereas all of these other systems require that people move through the most difficult times in their life alone and with shame.
care.
Thank you so much for that, Rachel.
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