THE STOLEN BEAM SERIES:
A Study of Reparations for Descendants of Enslaved Africans in the United States
Led by Alison Marks and Shari Brenner
Mondays, July 11th, 18th and 25th and August 1st and 8th.
The name “Stolen Beam” is a reference to a rabbinic deliberation in an ancient Jewish text (the Mishnah) about the right thing to do when we discover that the house in which we live was built on a stolen beam. One rabbi argues that the entire house must be torn down and the beam returned; another rabbi argues that it makes no sense to destroy the home, yet some form of acknowledgment and compensation is owed to the owners of the stolen beam – thus the metaphor for the realization that our country was built on stolen land, with stolen lives and stolen labor.