6 | DECEMBER 5 • 2019 

guest column
Coming Home to Something New

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Kendra
I 

knew I would return to Michigan at 
some point after college, though I did 
not expect it to happen so soon. During 
my junior year at the University of North 
Carolina at Chapel Hill, I participated in 
an alternative spring break trip with Repair 
the World in Brooklyn. As soon as I learned 
that Repair had a program in Detroit, I 
knew that this could be a way for me to 
come home and do meaningful work in the 
Jewish community.
Much of my time as a Repair the World 
Detroit Fellow is spent with my partner 
organization, Detroit Jews for Justice 
(DJJ), and developing our youth program, 
PeerCorps Detroit, alongside my supervisor. 
In working with both DJJ and PeerCorps, I 
have shifted my understanding of service. 
As an organization working to mobilize 
the Jewish community in Metro Detroit for 
racial and economic justice, service takes 
the form of making the personal politi-
cal — listening to people’
s stories, drawing 
connections and zooming out to see where 
power needs to shift so that our needs and 
the needs of our neighbors are met fairly 
and with the dignity we all deserve. 
In PeerCorps, I am able to facilitate 
learning experiences where our young com-
munity members learn to see themselves as 
part of something larger. 
Finding connections between my Jewish 
life in North Carolina and my work here 
in Detroit has been an exciting experience. 
It was in North Carolina that I began to 
get involved in the Jewish community. 
With small Jewish communities scattered 
throughout the South, I learned quickly 
what intentional community looks like, and 
that everyone plays a vital role in keeping 
things going. Because of the effort it takes to 
maintain and grow this kind of community, 
I played a number of roles — teacher, ritual 
leader, organizer, host, etc. 
And while suburban Metro Detroit has a 
large and highly resourced Jewish commu-
nity, I have found a similar energy around 
co-creation and organic community devel-

opment within Jewish Detroit. The skills, 
commitments and relationships I built in 
my small Southern Jewish community have 
come in handy, albeit in slightly different 
ways, in my work as a Detroit Repair Fellow 
and as a member of this community. 
Coming to Detroit for the Fellowship has 
been a homecoming in many ways, but hav-
ing not been involved in the Jewish com-
munity here in my childhood, it has been a 
new and welcome experience to learn about 
the Metro Detroit Jewish community as an 
adult. As someone who considers themself 
a Midwestern Southerner and has a deep 
affinity and connection for both regions, 
I am not sure where I will end up in the 
long run; but, for now, I am grateful to 
be surrounded by old friends, family and 
Michigan’
s beautiful lakes. 

Ben
E

very Monday, I have the pleasure 
and privilege of spending my day 
at Coleman A. Young Elementary 
School (CAY) in northwest Detroit. It’
s a 
beautiful place: a mural of black authors, 
artists and freedom fighters covers the 
first-floor hallway. There’
s a tiny garden 
on raised beds behind the gym. And, 
of course, there are the students I get to 
spend time with each week. Even when I 
walk in the door exhausted, their joy and 
excitement just to be at school leave me 
grinning by the time I head back into the 
chilly Michigan evening.
When people ask, I usually describe 
what I do there as “volunteering,” both 
as a literacy tutor and helping to run the 
afterschool program. And it is true; that is 
technically my role. But this always feels a 
bit simplistic and detached from the real 
reason my time there feels meaningful. In 
just a few months at CAY, I have learned 
the real value of this work is in the rela-
tionships I have built — with the students 
I have mentored, with the parents whose 

KENDRA WATKINS AND BEN RATNER

Ben at Coleman A. Young Elementary School

Kendra and the folks at Detroit Jews for Justice

Finding connections 
between my Jewish life 
in North Carolina and 
my work here in Detroit 
has been an exciting 
experience. 

— KENDRA WATKINS

continued on page 10

