Storytelling as Future-Making: Jewish Traditions and Democratic Imagination

Jewish practices of storytelling and embodied imagination—from the Passover seder to the Purim spiel—are not merely commemorative; they are technologies for remembering complex pasts and for imagining and rehearsing futures not yet realized. But narratives can also narrow: sanitized histories, whether of Jewish tradition or American democracy, produce impoverished visions of what is possible. Our class will draw on Jewish liturgy and legacies of resistance to authoritarianism to explore how the stories we tell about the past shape the futures we can imagine––whether it is for the future of Jewish life or American democracy.

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Ami Fields-Meyer is a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School and a former senior policy advisor at the White House, where he led U.S. policy initiatives related to civil rights, consumer protection, and technology policy. Fields-Meyer’s writing on democracy and public policy has been published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Foreign Policy. His first book, On Courage: How to Be a Dissident in an Age of Fear with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Julia Angwin, will be published by Mariner/HarperCollins on June 30th. A former speechwriter, he is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Becca Leviss draws upon her background in academia, Jewish practice, and community organizing to lead The Judeofuturism Project, a multidisciplinary initiative shifting American Jewish communities from fear-based narratives to imagination-driven futures. Becca designs workshops and develops frameworks that help communities reorient beyond short-term futures towards expansive and collective thriving. She is currently putting together a virtual and physical art exhibition imagining American Judaism in 2070. She has served in fundraising and strategic development roles for multiple nonprofits strengthening and resourcing broad coalitions for US democracy. She holds a Masters in Religion, Ethics, and Politics from Harvard Divinity School and a BA in Sociology and Research Analysis from Tufts University.