Sophie Ellman-Golan
The Jewish Activist Who Powered The Women’s March
Sophie Ellman-Golan is an activist at the forefront of the fight for social and racial equality.
After working at Everytown for Gun Safety, the nation’s largest gun violence prevention organization, she became the deputy head of communications and outreach for the Women’s March, the nationwide protest movement that brought millions of people into the streets around the country to protest President Trump the day after he was inaugurated.
In these spaces, and in her work as a core member of Jews for Racial & Economic Justice, Ellman-Golan, 25, is carving out a unique place for Jews. “We as a community have been disengaged from movements for social justice for decades,” she wrote in the Forward in response to the riots in Charlottesville, Virginia.
She argued that Jews must lend their privilege to the fight for social and racial justice. She also wrote about her fellow Women’s March leaders, including Linda Sarsour. “Sometimes we say things that cause each other pain,” she wrote. “But we trust and respect each other…. We are committed to these discussions despite our discomfort and tears.”
It is a new model of solidarity — but also an old one for Jews who have always believed in the paradoxical possibilities of commitment through disagreement, and argumentation out of love.
“We must remember that we cannot keep relying on the legacy of Abraham Joshua Heschel as our ticket into anti-racism work,” Ellman-Golan wrote.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
