Good afternoon, my name is Audrey Sasson and I’m the current executive director of JFREJ. It is deeply humbling to be here today, as we honor the life and legacy of the visionary, transformational  — I never got to meet Melanie personally– organizer who made it possible for us to dream and imagine and actively build the world of tomorrow.

I want to say a few words about who I am since I don’t know many of you, as a way of telling you the story of how I encountered Melanie with knowing her.

I joined JFREJ as a member approximately 10 years ago. I was a Mizrahi Jewish socialist from Montreal, Quebec, and I had never encountered anything like JFREJ where I spent my formative years. By the time I came across JFREJ, my life’s journey could have been defined as two parts – the first, growing up feeling a deep connection with my Jewish identity, but in Ashkenazi dominant spaces where the narrative of my people – so to speak – was narrowed down to a single arc starting with our persecution and genocide in Europe and ending with our redemption through Israel’s creation. I was being molded into what I call a Federation Jew, who would inevitably step into leadership and pass the narrative down to my 2.2 children in a staunchly Zionist household. The second part was coming into my own as an organizer and activist on a range of issues having nothing to do with my Jewish story (or so I thought). I was organizing on campus against racism in our curriculum, pursuing a social work degree, and ultimately getting my feet wet in organizing for the rights of tenants, welfare recipients, and homebound seniors. There was no way to reconcile being a budding socialist of Middle Eastern origin with the stories I had been told about who I was and what I was expected to believe and fight for. So I went from assimilating into white Ashkenazi & Zionist spaces to assimilating into activist spaces. I was becoming so disconnected from my Jewish identity – from my lineage, in fact – that I didn’t know I missed it and craved it.

Like many of you, I found in JFREJ a home where I could be my full self. I could be Jewish, I could be a socialist, I could be Mizrahi, I could organize on the issues that mattered to me – like housing and worker justice and police accountability – in deep and trusted coalition with groups across the city… but mostly, I could be a radical Jewish left diasporist, grounding myself in Doykait – a word I learned from Malanie’s work – and Ottomanism – another one – as Melanie so eloquently described in The Colors of Jews. Here was my lineage, and it was alive and well and breathing life into movements for justice across the city.

Melanie, I so wish I could have met you in person and spent time with you and learned with you and struggled with complicated questions with you and been curious with you. I also deeply hope you somehow were able to see, in those last hard years of your life, how dynamic and exquisite and transformative the organization you birthed – with Donna, and Marilyn, and Alisa, and Esther and so many others in this room – has become. Every day, new people join our ranks. For many of them, their stories are similar to my own – and yet, for everyone, their story is unique.

As you wrote so presciently in The Colors of Jews, “Diasporism means, given the multicultural nature of the Jewish community, inside “the” Jewish community we should expect to experience the simultaneity of home and strangeness.” And – “Diasporism recognizes our identity as simultaneously rock, forged under centuries of pressure, and water, infinitely flexible. Diasporism requires those who know and value past and existing tradition, and those who create new ones.”

I wish you could have joined us this year as we celebrated our first ever Juneteenth Seder – led by Black Jewish leaders, we gathered in our splendor and complexity as a multiracial, multiethnic, intergenerational, cross-class community, and wove together, like a braided challah, our multiple traditions in the creation of a new one – one that, through storytelling and ritual and “centering the margins” (as you write about) could truly imagine (or at the very least catch a beautiful momentary glimpse of) collective liberation, and could strive towards it with a deep sense of purpose and in genuine solidarity with one another. I wish you could have been there in body, but I know without a doubt that you were with us in spirit, guiding us along the way and joining us in song.

There’s so much more I want to share with you, Melanie – and with all of you here – to relay the depth and intensity of your impact and legacy. I want to tell you all about how our members launched The Jewish Vote this year, inserting a radical diasporist voice into local NYC elections and helping to shift the balance of power in Albany. I want to tell you about our work in bringing a more robust, intersectional, and liberatory analysis of antisemitism to our movement partners on the left and how immensely informed that work is by your teachings and all that you modeled in your extraordinary life. I could go on but I know that many others are eager to share their tributes here today – and I am eager to hear them.

So I will close by sharing a short note I sent to Donna, Marilyn, Alisa, and Esther after you passed:

For what it’s worth, I personally feel Melanie’s impact every day at JFREJ – it’s everywhere, in the water, in the ethos, in the way we think and build and draw connections and imagine. Especially these days, with the rise of far right nationalism, Melanie’s gift of “radical diasporism” gets me up every morning and gives me strength to organize in opposition to the raging politic of division, exclusion, and fear – and for a world in which “we chose solidarity as the highest expression of humanity”. How blessed we are to have her vision guiding the way.

Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz, presente!