Not having celebrated becoming a bar mitzvah when I was a teenager, I decided to learn how to read Torah for my 25th birthday. My parashah was from Genesis, taking place just after Jacob deceives his father and steals the birthright from his brother. We find him on the road, fleeing the potentially violent consequences of his actions. As the sun begins to set on his journey, Jacob stops to rest. He is so exhausted that he lays his head down on a rock and falls asleep. And then he dreams – of a ladder connecting heaven and earth and God standing near him, promising that despite his current situation, a better future lay ahead. Jacob wakes up and exclaims, “Surely God is present in this place, yet I did not know it!”

One of the lessons of this story is that the possibility for change exists in the world around us, if only we look for it. Jacob is a product of his context. He lies, but so did his father and his grandfather. He takes his brother’s birthright, but he is also the second son of a second son who did the same thing. His mother is the one who gives him the tools for deception. Before it was stolen, his brother Esau had already spurned his inheritance. Jacob is acting within the family system that he was born into. A different future didn’t occur to him until he was awakened to its existence, in the form of a dream. And suddenly, the place – or Makom – where he finds himself transforms, even though it is still the same landscape that surrounded Jacob when he fell asleep.

This is the mission of the JCUA, to awaken the potential that already exists in our makom: our city, our state, and our country. As residents of Chicago and as people living in the United States of America, we have inherited systems of injustice, oppression, and hate that were put into place long before we were born. It would be easy to believe that this is just the way things are (and how often we hear this as an excuse for resisting change). Yet each of us, in coming to this work, has a moment – like Jacob – when we were first made aware that the world as it is does not have to be the world as it will be.

I am grateful for the community organizers and activists who shared their dream of a better future, allowing me to see the place where I stood through new eyes. JCUA is a critical part of that story, connecting me with individuals who are working hard to make this city one that cares about and cares for the people who call it home. On a recent tour of projects supported by our Community Ventures Program, I had the opportunity to meet folks who saw the possibility for change where others did not. From transitional housing for people struggling with homelessness to job placement for recent migrants, these individuals understood that “just the way things are” (even if that’s the way they’ve been for a long time) is not the way things need to be.

As JCUA celebrates 60 years of transforming the social and political landscape of Chicago, we are using what we have learned from our journey so far to chart a bold course for the future. You can read about our Makom 60 campaign in more detail here. By expanding our capacity for education, community building, and organizing we are helping people awaken to the possibility for change that already exists around them, in their makom, and the ways they can help make that potential a reality. JCUA understands that we already have what it takes to dismantle injustice, lift people from oppression, and replace hatred with allyship. Sometimes the hardest work is helping people see that. Yet once we glimpse the promise of what could be, it is impossible not to see it everywhere.

Rabbi Steven Philp is the Associate Rabbi of Mishkan Chicago and a Board member of the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs, where he helps lead our LGBTQ+ Caucus.