Stepping Back

Newsletter June 16, 2025 Together, we're #keepingitsacred...

When my kids need a haircut and we have a few extra minutes in a day, I’ll take them to the closest place. Recently, this scenario led us to a Black-owned barber shop. As my kid pointed out, we were the only non-black people in the business and this point was definitely noticed by the staff as well, who immediately changed the rap music video on the television screen to a Marvel movie of action heroes. Did they change it to be more welcoming to the customer and what they thought our cultural sensibilities were? Probably, yes.I’m not here to say whether that was wrong or right. I mean, how could they know I have appreciated the beautiful tradition of resistance reflected in the cultural tradition of hip hop. But I did notice.

And how did I feel about it? I’m not here to judge that either. On the one hand, I recognized that what they did was trying to make the space more welcoming to me and my kids, their customers, but, in the process they were making it more what they assumed would be more “palatable” to me and my perceived cultural sensibilities. Their doing this made me aware of the space I was taking up without meaning to; I mean, why should they change what they’re listening to just for me? Why should they whitewash what they’re doing? Ironically, because of my consciousness of what was happening, their act of welcome made me uncomfortable.

It made me really notice, pretty obviously, this dance we do around people. Switching codes and assuming things about other people. I think it happens a lot that when a white person shows up, it changes the space. It is because of the power dynamics, rooted in a history of oppression and the establishment of “business norms” that are really white cultural codes. There is a way that white people entering the world takes up space and changes the dynamics.

This is why I affirm the right of people of color and others to create affinity spaces just for them. Spaces where people can just be fully and authentically their full selves out from under the space that other traditions impose. It is important to know when and how to step back and allow others space to be themselves and to not impose one's cultural norms or power structures.

This practice of stepping back and allowing space for others has a word in Hebrew. And it is a word and concept that God did even before creating the world. In fact it was the essential prior step that allowed for the creation of the world. God did tzimtzum which literally means “retraction.” The concept is this: God was so big and so all-encompassing that God filled up the whole universe and there was no room for any other creative expression. And so, God had to tzimzum/retract to create a void into which the world could be created.

In this activity, God teaches: when you are so puffed up you fill every space, you create no room for others to exist. This is how I think about entering into spaces of cultural expression, particularly cultural expression different from my own, whether it is in Black barber shops, Catholic Churches, Korean BBQ restaurants, or any other place that celebrates traditions in which I don’t have lived cultural experience. I enter with a sense of humility and openness. I don’t need to be centered all the time. 

And, in social justice work that I engage in, I do this there, too. When we are doing racial justice work, I take a supportive role. Not an absent role. But one that helps out in ways that always centers leaders who are living the experience and who, therefore, know and see and feel the pain points and decide which to address first. Not directing the strategy or direction, but supporting.

This principle of engaging in spaces with tzimtzum makes space for everyone to be a leader of their own struggles for freedom, and everyone to share their beautiful cultures, truths, and priorities. This is how we move together with purpose and solidarity. And not just during weeks like this; the week of Juneteenth. This is how we keep it sacred all the time. 

Together, we’re #keepingitsacred…

Rabbi Heather Miller

Founder, Keeping It Sacred

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