Next Monday night, Pursuers will kick off the week at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe with change-maker, activist and performer Jenni Wolfson. As a preview, we asked Jenni a few questions about her work and inspiration. Interested in joining us? RSVP here!
How did you become interested in human rights work?
I have been involved in human rights work for as long as I can remember. As a teenager, I was an active member of Amnesty International and other NGOs. As a member of a prison reform NGO, I wrote letters for years to an 18 year-old man in prison. After high school, I volunteered to work in Israel with Ethiopian immigrants. And I went undercover as a university student to Russia to help Soviet Jews get out. When I discovered a masters program in human rights, it was an obvious next step for me. Shortly after that I wound up with the UN in Rwanda just after the genocide investigating human rights abuses and there was no looking back.
It is hard to imagine doing anything else. I have always had a strong sense of justice or, should I say, injustice? It always struck me as so random where we might be born and how our religion, race, colour, sex etc might adversely impact our lives. I was aware of how fortunate I was to be born into a privileged family, community and country. I wanted to fight with people who were denied their basic human rights.
How do you balance this work with your artistic pursuits? Do you have advice for Pursuers looking to do both?
They are definitely quite split in terms of my time. WITNESS is for sure my full-time job, and writing and performing is something I do in my spare time. There are times though when they do overlap. I recently performed my play RASH at TEDxEast in New York. During the conference, I met a fantastic person who went on to donate an auction item for the WITNESS annual benefit. Given that my play is essentially about my life as human rights activist, they are of course not separate in essence and it is easy for me to switch from one thing to the other. My artistic pursuits definitely fuel a different side of me and so the enjoyment I get from them makes it easy to devote that extra time needed outside of work.
However, on the days when I perform, I always take the day off. It definitely helps me to be more creative and energetic on stage when I can free my mind from the pressures of work. In fact, quite a few of the staff at WITNESS are also writers, musicians, dancers and other performers. I think it’s great when you are working in the intense world of human rights, where we are continually faced with dark side of this world, to invest in other outlets that lighten our minds.
How does your Jewish identity relate to what you do?
It is core to what I do in the sense that it shaped who I am today and the path I have chosen. To see as a young child the shocking pictures of the Holocaust had a powerful impact on how I saw the world. Growing up in Glasgow, Scotland, I experienced quite a lot of anti-Semitism. On my first day at high school, I walked across the playground and a boy threw a coin in front of me and said, “Pick that up, Jew.” Those experiences helped me identify firsthand with what it’s like to experience discrimination. But on the plus side, I was exposed early on to the concept of tzedakah (charity). I grew up in a family that was actively engaged in the community, and I learnt all my swear words from my father who would go and fundraise door to door and colourfully express his frustrations with those who didn’t give!
Jenni Wolfson is the managing director at WITNESS. Her complete bio is posted on the Meet the Change event page.
{ 1 trackback }
{ 0 comments… add one now }