30 years on, Stand Up’s social justice vision turns full circle

When you ask a social justice or human rights group to name their biggest achievement, you expect to hear an answer that’s noble, decent – and bland. But when the leaders of Stand Up were asked to consider this question on the organisation’s 30^th anniversary, their response was, perhaps unwittingly, rather radical.

“Stand Up has changed the conversation around such social justice within the Australian Jewish community. It’s normalised the idea of Jewish charity and philanthropy facing outward, not inward,” say Chair Dean Levitan.

There’s a powerful subtext to the word “normalising”: it’s a criticism of the Jewish establishment, suggesting Jewish communal philanthropy has been so focussed on helping other Jews that the idea of looking to help others outside the community seems unusual, strange. Not that Jews don’t give individually to the broader community, but that institutionally it was not top-of-head, something that came naturally.

Whether or not that judgment is accurate, the question of looking inward and outward has never been more relevant than it is now. A year after October 7, 2023, the Melbourne-based social justice organisation faces a set of challenges it could never have contemplated when it was set up in 1994 by a group led by academic Mark Baker in response to the Rwandan genocide.

The founding of Keshet, as Stand Up was known at the time, marked “the first time an Australian Jewish organisation launched an appeal to directly support non-Jewish survivors and refugees,” the group says.

Stand Up has focussed on channelling the concept of tikkun olam (“repairing the world”) among young Jews who wanted to help others outside their own community. The concept has taken root and Stand Up is claiming a large chunk of credit for that. “Tikkun olam is now popular,” says Winter-Peters. “People recognise it; the meaning resonates with them.”

Looking back on the past 30 years, Stand Up cites several landmarks among its plethora of campaigns with marginalised communities. “We started partnering with the Sudanese community in 2007,” says Levitan. “Twice a week 15-20 Jewish women would meet with Sudanese women and help them fill out government forms, or navigating school issues, or with children.

At the same time, a group of Year 12 Sudanese students would come to Elsternwick (in Melbourne) and get tutored by Jewish people who had done well at school. Over time, their community became more and more self-sufficient. And about five years ago, we decided that they no longer needed us.”

Winter-Peters says the group’s longest partnership, coming up to 20 years next year, is with the Indigenous communities of Toomelah and Boggabilla in the far north of NSW, near Moree. The Derech Eertz initiative, which was founded by Shalom and embraced by Stand Up through its former CEO, Gary Samowitz, ranges from community school holiday programs to young adults, which brings them to Sydney.

“People want to see numbers; it's really hard to measure impact. But when we go up there, we’re known as the Jewish mob. There’s a really close understanding and respect for who we are and the relationships that have been built.” She mentions one community member called Tyler, from Boggabilla, who is now studying fashion design in Sydney, and who Stand Up supported to get into his course.

One of stand Up’s most prominent campaigns was focussed on last year’s ill-fated indigenous Voice to Parliament referendum. Kol Halev, as it was called, involved 23 events nationally, backed by hundreds of volunteers across the country in partnerships with Jewish organisations, finding them speakers, informing their members.

Despite the outcome, and the hesitancy of many Jewish organisations to engage, Winter-Peters saw the campaign as a positive expression of Stand Up’s ability to mobilise and educate large numbers of people.

By the time the referendum was held, on October 14, the Australian Jewish community was already focused on another far more visceral issue. Levitan acknowledges that for Stand Up, as for all Jews, the world changed after October 7.

Although it has partnered with groups mainly on the left of the political divide, Winter-Peters and Levitan say they have not experienced any backlash post-October 7. “All our partners reached out to us, even those that were deep in the last week of Voice campaigning. I think that speaks to the work that we've been doing,” says Levitan.

They say security of funding, a perennial anxiety for small civil society groups, was not affected either. “We've seen these Jewish people – volunteers, donors - coming back. They've been engaging with causes, whether it's First Nations, whether it's climate. In a post-October 7 world, they're looking to do that somewhere where they feel safe and connected, and Stand Up provides that home for them.”

In the bigger picture, the Hamas attacks, and the war that has followed in Gaza, have raised serious questions about Stand Up’s future role and purpose. “For a long time, our view has been that [the Jewish] community is self-sufficient, powerful, capable, and we can help others,” says Levitan. “After October 7, with rising antisemitism, the question was asked: are we now marginalised community? Do we need to help ourselves?”

After “robust conversations at board level”, the group decided that “our community has a number of fantastic organisations who are focused on antisemitism and the security of the community. But we can continue to be of unique value by engaging with other communities,” he says.

However, that does not mean Stand Up is ignoring the ugly ripples spreading out of the war in Gaza. The group has embarked on a strategic shift to acknowledge the pain and insecurity being felt across the Australian Jewish community.

“We need to think about our own community, and the first step in terms of inspiring and educating Jewish communal change makers is to provide a safe home for them,” says Winter-Peters. “We recognise that's been a slight shift for us, to create a space for Jewish people to engage with their Jewish values and what social justice means to them through a Jewish lens.”

An immediate response has been the setting up of “Breaking Bread” events. “We've always had truth telling, with First Nations voices in Jewish homes, sharing their history and their story. But since October 7, there's been a shift within our own community, wanting to connect with each and share their values.”

Stand Up has now hosted 30 Breaking Bread events, in which people from First Nations, refugees and other communities are invited into synagogues and Jewish homes, for shabbat dinners or lunches, to hear about Jewish values. The first one in Sydney was with The Jewish independent and Emmanuel synagogue. They hosted another in Melbourne with First Nations partners, and another in Sydney for Refugee Week.

Looking ahead, there will be other mechanisms for connecting back to the Jewish community. Instead of sending ten people every year out to an indigenous community, as they have in the past, Stand Up will put a group of Jewish people between 20-35 in a fellowship program that provides a Jewish lens on their learning, Winter-Peters explains.

“There’s a ripple effect that, while hard to measure, is probably more impactful than just sending 10 people direct to an indigenous community, because we're changing the way that those ten people actually live their lives.”

Significantly, they say Stand Up will now also try to incubate projects in social justice through partnerships with organisations within the Jewish community as well as outside it.

And so, on its 30^th birthday, a generation after it was founded, Stand Up’s vision has gone full circle, looking inward as well as outward. The focus may have broadened but Winter-Peters and Levitan say its commitment to social justice and helping those in need, Jews or non-Jews, remains unchanged.