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When Emet entered hospice in December 2018, he said he did not want to be alone. The hospice also would not allow Emet to stay because of his service dog unless someone stayed with Emet to walk Roxy. Emet’s classmates at Reconstructing Judaism and his friends from If Not Now Philadelphia organized to ensure Emet was never alone.

Emet’s classmates are some of the coolest rabbis practicing now, and they reflect on Emet’s hospice room functioning as a kind of lab space, in which they practiced, experimented, and innovated the pastoral care and chaplaincy skills they were learning in the classroom. They compare Emet’s hospice room to a kind of living shiva house (a house of mourning), or a living shomer (person who sits with the deceased).

This project is intended to recreate the atmosphere of Emet’s hospice room, to be an immersive virtual drop in shiva house, a kind of virtual death over Shabbat dinner. Come visit Emet. Sit down and watch an interview and you will feel as if you are talking to a friend, just as we were.

Emet wanted to teach people about what dying and grief show us about how to live. We learned that we should live all the time like we did with Emet. This virtual space is an opportunity to practice.

This project is modeled on the American Jewish Peace Archives, which chronicles the history of many of the social movement ancestors from which If Not Now evolved. In 2015, Noah worked on the American Jewish Peace Archives, transcribing interviews for Aliza Becker.

Emet served on the National Council on Independent Living, and Emet’s hospice room was a cross disability space. This project is modeled on Crip Camp, a story of our movement ancestors. Crip Camp is the story of Jewish young disabled friends, children of Holocaust survivors, organizing to found NCIL and to pass Section 504, and the Americans with Disabilities Act. Crip Camp was released on March 25, 2020, Emet’s first yahrzeit.

We hope for our imperfect fledgling mutual aid organizing to be an example of crip care networks as a place to start. This project is partially entitled Connective Tissue, because folks with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome don’t have functional collagen, or connective tissue. However, they know more about what connects us to each other than anyone else. This is a story of the connective tissue of a community. Emet always said “If you can’t connect the issues, think connective tissues!” The same holds true for a society.

Emet’s hospice room was the hearth of the Jewish queer disabled left and we hope to offer a snapshot of a moment in a movement. Social movements incubate and cross pollinate each other. In gratitude to the social movements which showed solidarity to Emet, we offer the lessons we learned. May they be a gift to the future. At every step of the process, this project was collaborative, from Emet’s ideas, Niko’s drawings, Shayn’s photography, to the interviews, to strategizing.

Friends: Now and then you showed up and gave your best. May this project, built of our cooperation, be a blessing to you.

Several organizations were crucial thought partners throughout the development of this project: Disability Belongs, Shomer Collective, and Tribe 12.

Emet’s friends from If Not Now Philadelphia reflect in their interviews about how they utilized the decentralized organizing model of their movement to organize with Emet. This project is modeled on the ACT UP Oral History Project to locate us historically and politically. Emet died in a hospice center originally created for HIV/AIDS patients, so as young queer and trans people, we honor our movement ancestors and the use of oral history as a medium by modeling this project on a project created by HIV/AIDS patients. We felt comforted knowing we weren’t the first young queer and trans people to be accompanying a dying young friend there. We knew we weren’t the first young people to not know what we were doing there as many of us encountered grief for the first time, and we hope other young people facing grief for the first time will find wisdom in this project.

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