Reform Judaism

Once a RAC LA, Always a RAC LA

2009-11-07T00:32:04Z

Rebecca Blake Chaikin is a former RAC Legislative Assistant who now serves on the Union for Reform Judaism's Resolutions Committee.

Twenty-five years ago Larry Milder wrote, "Wherever you go, there's always someone Jewish." (See his Biennial performance of it below!) Being at Biennial, I feel that wherever I go, there's always a current or former RAC Legislative Assistant!

Whether serving on committees or the URJ Board, running NFTY programming, working on the URJ staff or presenting at learning sessions, former RAC LAs have a considerable presence here. It is a testament to the dedication to Reform Judaism fostered by the intense, challenging, and immeasurably rewarding Eisendrath Legislative Assistant program that being a RAC LA is so often only the beginning of an adult life spent in service to the Movement.

As a member of the 2007-2008 class of LAs, I staffed the last Biennial in San Diego. I remember long days, snatching quick naps on the staff room floors, talking to the thousands of people who stopped by the RAC table and doggedly pursuing them to shoot hoops for our Nothing But Nets campaign. It was exhausting, but exhilarating. In so many ways, being a RAC LA at the Biennial puts you at the epicenter of Reform Jewish life. Our table is a hotbed of energy and enthusiasm, and the staff works as a cohesive team to ready featured resolutions and initiatives, to get our messages out to participants, and to shepherd the inspiring plenary speakers around the convention center.

Being back here as a participant this year, I find I miss the frenetic pace and the can-do spirit of the RAC team. In addition to attending learning sessions and full plenaries (which I missed out on last time around), I find myself standing at the ready to frantically box up prayer books after Shabbat services or to plug the RACNews "bookmarks" at every opportunity. Once a RAC LA, always a RAC LA. And I think that if I were to ask any of the other dozen or so former LAs roaming the convention center, they'd probably say the same thing.

Tomorrow: House to Vote on Health Care!

2009-11-06T22:53:54Z

by Kate Bigam
Press Secretary, RAC

We're here in Toronto for the Union for Reform Judaism's 70th Biennial Convention, where, on Wednesday, the URJ's Board of Trustees voted unanimously to support the Affordable Health Care for America Act. Read our full statement here.

Tomorrow morning, the House of Representatives will convene a special Saturday session to vote on its version of the Affordable Health Care for America Act. This legislation would expand coverage to 96% of Americans, contains a "public option," expands Medicaid, includes subsidies to ensure that low-income Americans can afford coverage, and is projected to reduced budget deficits by $104 billion over 10 years.

Urge your Representative to vote tomorrow to support the Affordable Health Care for America Act. The Capitol Switchboard can be reached at 202.224.3121, or you can send a quick, prewritten email. You can also sign our petition to Congress at JewsForHealthCareReform.org.

Now is the time for Congress to enact affordable, accessible health care for all. Let's help make it happen.

Resolutions Coast Through General Assembly (eh?)

2009-11-06T19:51:37Z

Aron Hirt-Manheimer is the Editor of Reform Judaism magazine

Shocking! All four resolutions passed without a soul grabbing the con microphone. I heard not even a whisper of opposition from among the 3000 delegates who voted on climate change and energy, the treatment of Israeli Arab citizens, special needs camping, and Reform day schools. What happened? This is in defiance of the Jewish maxim -- two Jews, three opinions! Well, there are two reasons, actually.

The first, as explained by the chair of the resolutions committee, Jennifer Kaufman, is that for the first time in Biennial history congregations received the resolutions sixty days in advance allowing for revisions in advance of the convention. So what comes before the delegates has few wrinkles and does not require an army of editors fighting over the placement of commas.

The second reason for the overwhelming passage of these resolutions is that they are totally in line with Reform Judaism's highest ideals. Social justice applies to the amendment on climate change, because the most vulnerable to environmental degradation are the poor -- many African nations, for example, are already experienceing impacts in the form of doughts and natural disasters. The resolution on Israeli Arab citizens, one-fifth of the Israeli population, is also about social justice. It calls on the Israeli government to address inequality among its Jewish and Arab citizens in accordance with it Declaration of Independence. As for the day school resolution, honoring the 18th anniversary of PARDeS, what could be more Jewish than fostering the study of Torah?

So on this morning, Reform Jews breathed the rarified air of consensus, and instead of spending hours revising resolutions, they were treated to a rousing speech by Canada's most famous human rights activist, MP Irwin Cotler, who received a Eisendrath "Bearer of Light" award, for his human rights activism around the world. Cotler's reflections of the prophetic Jewish values he imbibed from his parents were in perfect harmony with the resolutions passed by the general assembly moments earlier. One thing he said will remain with me, a teaching of Maimonides. It goes like this: The world is composed of good and evil in exactly equal measure. But one good deed by any of us can shift the balance and trigger a cosmic change. So do a good deed today. You have the power to save the world.

See the full list of resolutions at urj.org/resolutions

A Forum for Health Care Dialogue

2009-11-06T19:30:16Z

Rebecca Katz is an Eisendrath Legislative Assistant at the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism

What do an American rabbi, a Canadian professor, and the Chief Executive Officer of the Game Show Network have in common? The answer is none other than an invested interest in the boiling health care debate. At Biennial this afternoon, Rabbi Jonah Pesner moderated a health care forum featuring panelists Rabbi William Cutter, Dr. Raisa Deber, David Goldhill.

As a legislative assistant at the Religious Action Center, I work with a variety of issues including health care and was thrilled at the opportunity to help with this session. Rabbi Cutter discussed how we as Jews can take a stance on health care using the Talmud rhetorically, and keeping in mind caring for the stranger, attending to our neighbors, and seeking healing of body and soul. Following him was Dr. Deber, professor of health policy at University of Toronto, who outlined dimensions and models of health systems and explained health practices in Canada in contrast to the United States. Last was David Goldhill, CEO of the Game Show Network and author of an essay published in Atlantic Monthly entitled "How American Health Care Killed my Father." Goldhill shared his father's story and spoke of the moral imperative of health care coverage and also treatment of health care as an industry.
After listening to these three speakers, perhaps most compelling to me was the reaction of the forum attendees. Among the people who stepped up to the open microphone located in the center of the room were doctors, lawyers, nurses and activists, eager to share their perspectives and their experiences, and also their skepticisms about aspects of panelists' remarks.

This Biennial occurs at a crucial time in health reform. This Saturday, the House will hold a special session to vote on a crucial piece of legislation: its health care bill entitled the Affordable Health Care for America Act. Just yesterday morning, the Union for Reform Judaism's board voted unanimously to support the House bill, continuing the Movement's decades of advocacy for accessible, affordable and quality health care services for all Americans.

As participants lined up to make their voices heard to the panel and to the other participants, I could only feel that this forum was a model of what the URJ and the RAC are all about: without engagement in dialogue about key issues and the Jewish values surrounding them, we would not be practicing true Reform Judaism. I am a Reform Jew because I believe there to be a crucial intersect between modern interpretations of Jewish texts and today's political and cultural world. I am a Reform Jew because I know that my values informed by those Jewish texts are fundamental values that I can comfortably apply to my everyday life and my political beliefs.

Whether in agreement with each other on policy decisions or not, forum participants modeled how our Judaism serves as a guide, how we use it to inform our decisions differently, and how we can engage with the common understanding that we are all of the same faith, but that we have made Reform Judaism our own in some way or another. Being present at Biennial has cemented my identity as a Reform Jew, and I am proud to be part of a Movement that addresses such progressive legislative and social concerns.

Bridging the Divide: You'll Never Know 'Til You Try

2009-11-06T01:51:10Z

Daphne Price is the executive assistant and adviser to Rabbi David Saperstein, Director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism.

This afternoon, at the URJ Biennial Convention, I had the honor and pleasure to hear from Dr. Michael Meyer of Hebrew Union College. Dr. Meyer lectured on the topic of "American Orthodoxy." The description of the session read, "We shall discuss the history of Jewish Orthodoxy in the United States, the various shapes it assumes at present, its principles, its inner conflicts, and the direction in which it is moving. We shall then ask: Is there a common ground on which we, as Reform Jews, can build a relationship with our Orthodox brothers and sisters?"

Dr. Meyer described the growth of Orthodox Judaism in the United States - what Orthodoxy looked like in the early years, its "mushroom" Jews, the arrival of Rav Joseph B. Soloveitchik in the United States and his lasting influence as the founder of Modern Orthodoxy. He lectured on Charedi Jews and what it means to be an ultra-Orthodox Jew. He used Chabad as the most popular example, and spoke of the lasting impact of the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, who shaped the Chabad Movement when he was alive, and according to some, even more after his passing. He described Rabbi Norman Lamm's contribution to the Jewish community as the chancellor of Yeshiva University. In each case, Dr. Meyer described with vivid examples the great disparity and lack of cohesiveness within the Jewish community, placing Orthodoxy on the one side, and Conservative and Reform Judaism on the other. It felt like the disparity, as he described it, created a huge, unbridgeable chasm between the Reform and Orthodox worlds.

As I sat through Dr. Meyers' lecture, I heard people laugh at his description of Orthodoxy and Orthodox Jews. I felt more than a little uncomfortable, maybe even a little despondent. I am an Orthodox Jew, and even though my ideologies don't always jive with my Conservative and Reform friends, I've never considered our worlds unbridgeable. Indeed, Rabbi Nachman of Braslav once wrote, "kol ha'olam kulo, gesher tzar me'od. V'ha'ikar lo lephached klal," "The whole world is a narrow bridge. And the main thing is to not fear."

I kept thinking to myself, "Wait, you're missing such an important influence in so many Jewish lives, Rabbi Avi Weiss of Riverdale, NY," when suddenly, Rabbi Weiss' picture flashed on the screen. For the last part of his lecture, Dr. Meyer focused on Rabbi Weiss' Open Orthodoxy and his ideology - and how Reform and Conservative Jews could learn from this brand of Orthodox Judaism just as Rabbi Weiss proclaims to learn from his Conservative and Reform colleagues. Most specifically, Rabbi Weiss has fostered a reputation for himself as a rabbi of great compassion, an advocate for equality - within halacha - for women, and a heartfelt, authentic passion for Tikkun Olam.

At the end of the lecture there was a question about Orthodox Jews and Agriprocessors, the now-bankrupt kosher meat processor. There was a comment about the difficulty in collaborating with the Sephardic community. A woman commented about how she met other Orthodox women who were largely Jewishly uneducated. As the only Orthodox person in the room, I grew increasingly uncomfortable.

So then I did something very much out of character for me. I raised my hand, was recognized, and suddenly found myself before a large room speaking to the participants in this workshop. I thanked Dr. Meyer for his insightful comments. I remarked how I felt like he had described various parts of my own life. My parents are Chabad and raised me with those values, I spent two years studying at Bernard Revel (Yeshiva University's graduate program for Jewish Studies), at which time I was selected to be Rabbi Weiss' first Torat Miriam fellow, and, since then, for the last 10 years, I have been working at the RAC. (Dr. Meyer jokingly suggested that I might have some suggestions for his lecture -- I told him we could talk later.)

I told him (and the room) that I always get the feeling that someone is always the "other." In the context of this Biennial, I am Orthodox, but everyone else is something else. You are Reform, and I am the "other." And that this was a feeling that was hard to live with, and that couldn't be good for any of us, either as individual Jews, or as various denominations within the broader Jewish community. It just didn't (and doesn't) sit right with me.

I suggested that we were not without hope. At the RAC we partner, as much as we can, with the rabbinical arms of all the movements: RCA (Orthodox), the RA (Conservative) and the Reconstructionist Jewish Federation. And even if we don't agree on everything all the time, it doesn't mean that we can't ever find common ground.

I then turned to the audience, and suggested that perhaps, when Biennial participants returned to their own communities, they might try reach out to their Orthodox neighbors and try to build a new relationship. They could work together on common ground issues: Habitat for Humanity, Darfur, to name a few. The list is endless. There are far more issues of humanity and human rights that unite the community than those that divide. We tend to focus on the differences between us. But aren't we all mandated l'taken et ha'olam, to repair the world? Shouldn't that, if nothing else, serve as our common denominator?

I hope someone from Dr. Meyers' audience goes back to his or her community to try to bridge the gap and build a stronger Jewish community. And I hope and pray that those who try to reach out to their Orthodox neighbors, even if they are rejected, not give up; they must keep trying. If they are able to find one piece of common ground, surely they can find more. But even if not, at least, there will be that shared common ground with common goals.

And I urge you, when you leave this Biennial convention, to do the same. For many of you, who may have a history of bad relations or who harbor negative stereotypes, I'm not suggesting that it will be an easy step to take.

But you won't know until you try.

WRJ Assembly Kicks Off in Toronto

2009-11-04T23:24:53Z

Helene Dunbar is the Manager of Marketing and Communications for Women of Reform Judaism.

Women of Reform Judaism's 47th Assembly is well underway with committee and board meetings completed and our first round of workshops taking place this afternoon.

This first workshop block shows the diversity of the interests and the issues that are important to the women who make up Women of Reform Judaism. There are walking tours of Kensington Market and Toronto, as well as an introduction to assembly itself; what a thrill it must be to be attending for the first time!

WRJ is all about the bonds that women create and that is reflected in this workshop block. These bonds exist between each other ("Women Connecting with Other Women"), between themselves and the next generation ("The Special Bond of Sisterhood and Temple Youth") and between leadership ("For Sisterhood Presidents: A Conversation with Your Peers").
The pillars of prayer ("Writing a D'Var Torah: Sharing Our Wisdom and Insights") and repair of the world ("A Conversation about Proposed Resolutions") are explored, as is the issue at the core of WRJ ("Membership Matters", a workshop to introduce a new WRJ publication that explores how to grow your membership as well as how to nurture your existing membership).

As I write this, the WRJ staff (10 dedicated women under the instruction of Executive Director Shelley Lindauer) and with the assistance of a capable and dedicated local arrangements team, is manning registration and completing the preparations for our Lifeline and Endower reception and our opening plenary session tonight which will include remarks from outgoing WRJ President, Rosanne M. Selfon, and an address from peace proponent Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish, among other notable events that I can report on later.

We're off to a good start!

Klal Yisrael - One Jewish People

2009-11-04T12:43:31Z

by Rabbi Denise L. Eger
(Originally published on the RACBlog)

Rabbi Erger is the founding Rabbi of Congregation Kol Ami, West Hollywood's Reform Synagogue. She is the first female president of the Southern California Board of Rabbis and is also president of the Pacific Association of Reform Rabbis.

Last week I was part of a very historic mission to Israel sponsored by our Los Angeles Consul General, Yaakov Dayan. It was his vision and leadership that brought together 18 of Los Angeles' most prominent rabbis representing Reform, Conservative and Orthodox congregations and communities in Los Angeles. We traveled to together for a whirlwind trip to Eretz Yisrael. We were in Israel for a very short time - 58 hours on the ground and almost as much time in the air!

The group of rabbis also included: Rabbi Marvin Hier, Dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center; Rabbi Robert Wexler, president of the American Jewish University; Rabbi David Wolpe of Temple Sinai; Rabbi Laura Geller of Temple Emanuel of Beverly Hills; Rabbi Eli Herscher, Sr. Rabbi of Stephen S. Wise Temple; and Rabbi Elazar Muskin of Young Israel of Century City; Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky of the Orthodox B'nai David-Judea congregation; Rabbi Stewart Vogel of Conservative congregation Temple Aliyah; Conservative rabbi Sharon Brous of Ikar and several others. Diverse indeed! But we came to Israel with one thing in mind - unity. We came in solidarity to show the Los Angeles Jewish community our commitment to Israel. We came in solidarity to show Israel that it is possible for rabbinic leaders of all stripes to join in dialogue and in spite of our differences, to show our commitment to the notion of Klal Yisrael - the peoplehood of the state of Israel is a sacred tenet that we all share.

As soon as we got off the plane, we went to Tel Aviv to visit the remarkable Bialik-Rogozin school. This is a school that serves children K-12 and is supported in part by funds from the Los Angeles Jewish Federation. There are children and teens from all kinds of families, and, in particular, a number of children of foreign workers whose parents had been invited to Israel by the government. For many, the only home they have known is Israel. There are Hebrew speakers; there are children of Sudanese and Darfuri refugees; there are Israeli Arab children, both Christian and Muslim. We met the principal and several of the children who spoke to us about how they love the diversity of their school because it looks like the world. But sadly, the Shas member Eli Yishai, Minister of the Interior, has proposed a policy that would deport the children of foreign workers, even if the children were born in Israel and know no other country as home. And the Ministry of Defense has proposed other legislation that would make it crime for refugees who seek asylum even if they are running from genocide like in Darfur to come to Israel. They propose imprisonment for a minimum of seven years and propose to make it a crime for organizations that might provide humanitarian aid to any refugee including food and shelter.

Several Israeli news organizations covered our visit and brought this cruel policy plan to public awareness. Our Board of Rabbis of Southern California, of which I have the honor of being the president, sent a letter of concern and protest over the possible deportation of the children at this school. Where are the values that our ancestor Abraham taught us so well of hospitality? And where are the values that our Torah teaches to welcome the stranger because you were once strangers in the land of Egypt and to treat the citizen and stranger in your midst with one law?

We had the privilege of visiting with President Shimon Peres at the Presidential Residence for a private session, where we were able to discuss with him his vision of peace. Rabbi Daniel Bouskila, rabbi of the Sephardic Temple, asked President Peres what defined this late period in Israel's life. Peres responded "the pursuit of peace." Israel has been, since the Oslo Accords, trying to be a rodef shalom - a pursuer of peace even when there is no peace partner on the other side. At 86 years of age, President Peres maintained his optimism for Israel's future and felt that our unity mission was a model for Israeli society of how different aspects of Judaism should pursue peace too. We were privileged to meet the head of military intelligence and he brought us up to date on the situation with Iran and its proxies Hamas and Hizbollah and we met Dr. Ruth Gavison, eminent jurist and academic, who raised the issue of Jewish identity in Israel and raised the question of how do you maintain the connection to heritage in our world. She also spoke about her role in the Winograd commission, which closely examined the ethics of the IDF.

We heard from Daniel Taub, Senior Legal Advisor in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who analyzed why the UN's Goldstone report unfairly attacks Israel and the findings of Israeli's own internal investigations - more than 100 of them - about the conduct of the IDF in the Gaza operation of December '08 - January '09. The Goldstone report will be used by Israel's enemies to further delegitimize Israel's right to exist; that doesn't mean that Israel must and should examine itself. It is doing that and more.

And we met with young people who are living out David Ben Gurion's dream of greening the Negev in project Ayalim and experts on water scarcity in the Middle East and water management and creation! We spent time with the President and faculty of Ben Gurion University in Beer Sheva. Dr. Rivka Carmi is Israel's first female University President, and the passionate faculty was truly an inspiration. Not only were they dedicated to their students and the research and teaching that they do, but also to the vision of Ben Gurion University to be tied to and support the growth of the Negev!

We worked in a soup kitchen in Jerusalem feeding the hungry including impoverished Holocaust survivors at Hazon Yeshaya. Together, Rabbi Don Goor of Temple Judea and I peeled potatoes, scooped out spaghetti from giant pots and drained it, while Rabbi Isaac Jerret of Rancho Palace Verdes' Temple Ner Tamid mixed in the tomato sauce for the lunch time service.

What we saw was vibrant country with challenges like any nation-state in this global reality. But Israel's challenges are made starker by the threats that surround it with Hamas and Hizbollah and Iran committed to Israel's destruction and an international questioning by Arab and Muslim countries of Israel's right to exist. Israel as a country is not going anywhere. The beauty, history and creativity of this wonderful place are real in her people, in society, in the land itself.

But perhaps the most powerful part of our entire trip was the collegiality between us. We might differ on the way to daven, while some supported AIPAC and others J Street; we nevertheless through our intense time together knew that we had much more in common. We modeled the real ideal of Klal Yisrael - one Jewish people. We surprised one another about what we had shared from our hearts and each person's humanity and devotion to the Jewish people became clear. We came home to Los Angeles committed to preserving the good will and cooperation among us and have been emailing back and forth to see what projects we might engage in together. There were many dates made for pulpit exchanges and teaching sessions in one another's community.

We Reform Jews spend lots of time on interfaith issues, as we should. But we also have to spend time on intra-faith issues - working more closely with our Conservative and Orthodox communities and its leaders for the betterment of Jewish life.

We hope that our whirlwind visit brought this message home to the State of Israel, its leaders and our Los Angeles Jewish community. God spoke to Job out of the whirlwind. Perhaps this is the voice of God speaking about unity of the People Israel out of our whirlwind of a trip.

Rabbi Sharon Brous, Rabbi Marvin Hier, Rabbi Morley Feinstein, Rabbi Kalman Topp study study today on their trip to Israel.

Rabbis Don Goor and Denise Eger serve at a soup kitchen in Israel. This photo was taken by Karmel Melamed, a blogger on our unity mission, and originally appeared in the Park La Brea News.

Group shot of the rabbis on the unity mission with with President Shimon Peres. Photo taken by Karmel Melamed.

Hates Crimes Are Different

2009-10-25T20:11:00Z

by Rabbi David Saperstein
Director, RAC

This post originally appeared in the Washington Post's On Faith section, where Rabbi Saperstein is a regular panelist. It is reprinted with permission.

This week's On Faith question asks, "Congress is expected to expand federal hate crimes laws to add "sexual orientation" to a list that already includes "race, color, religion or national origin." Is this necessary? Should there be special laws against crimes motivated by intolerance, bigotry and hatred? Isn't a crime a crime?"

As the quintessential victims of religious persecution in the history of Western civilization, the Jewish community has long supported hate crime legislation. We know all too well that hate crimes are different from other crimes. They are more than mere acts of violence. They are more than individual murders, beatings, and assaults. Rather, they seek to terrorize entire groups of Americans. Hate crimes are nothing less than attacks on those values that are the pillars of our republic and the guarantors of our freedom. They erode our national well being. Those who commit these crimes do so fully intending to tear at the too-often frayed threads of diversity that bind us together and make us strong. They seek to divide and conquer. They seek to tear us apart from within, pitting American against American, fomenting violence and civil discord.

As to this legislation, by providing federal officials the authority to investigate and prosecute cases in which violence occurs because of victims' real or perceived sexual orientation, gender identity, gender or disability, the "Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act" will significantly strengthen federal response to these horrific crimes. Already, such protection exists where crimes are committed on the grounds of race, religion and national origin.

Of course, states will continue to play the primary role investigating and prosecuting bias-motivated violence, but the Act will allow the federal government to intervene in cases where local authorities are either unable or unwilling to do so. Local law enforcement will be supported by federal officials through training and technical assistance, ensuring that these egregious crimes are handled properly and that affected communities are set on a path toward healing.

Some religious leaders have opposed this legislation on the grounds it would make a crime of their opposition to homosexuality. Not so. This legislation only applies to bias-motivated violent crimes and will not affect lawful public speech or preaching by religious (or secular) leaders or organizations expressing their views.

We cherish the biblical commandment found in Leviticus 19:17: "You shall not hate another in your heart." We know all too well the dangers of unchecked persecution and intimidation and of failing to recognize hate crimes for what they are: acts designed to target and terrorize an entire community. This legislation is an effective and appropriate response to such crimes.

Raising our Voices, One Blog Post at a Time

2009-10-15T14:18:53Z

by Rachel Cohen
Senior Legislative Assistant, RAC
(Originally published at RACblog)

Today, more than 8,000 individuals and organizations in 120 countries will raise their voices together for the 2009 Blog Action Day on climate change. In what is becoming an annual tribute to the power of online media and social networking, Blog Action Day brings together diverse voices throughout the advocacy and activist communities to focus attention - from the grassroots to elected officials - on an urgent issue facing our global community.

The call to action on climate change could not come at a better time. Just two weeks ago, Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Barbara Boxer (D-CA) introduced the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act, and there is a new sense of optimism about the bill moving soon. In December, representatives from around the world will gather in Copenhagen for the UN Climate Change conference, where they will attempt to craft an international deal to reduce global carbon emissions and build a sustainable, clean energy future. It is critical for the Senate to act now, and for the U.S. to lead the way at Copenhagen.

And the Union for Reform Judaism and our friends and colleagues throughout the Jewish community have never been more engaged in this work. We are working with partners throughout the faith community to highlight the human impacts - especially on the poor - of climate change, pushing the Senate to take action now, and making cleaner, greener, more sustainable choices in our individual and congregational lives. Next week, as we celebrate Shabbat with the reading of Parashat Noach, Jewish communities around the world will again come together to bring attention to the climate and energy crisis, and take steps to begin the process of healing our broken world.

The goal of Blog Action Day is to create a discussion, and hopefully you'll take a minute to read and comment on a few posts around the web today. But that is only the beginning, and words without actions carry little weight. Last Sunday, Senators John Kerry and Lindsay Graham together published a bi-partisan road map to successful Senate climate legislation in the New York Times. It's a powerful piece, but their words alone will do nothing to stop climate change, ensure our energy security, or create green jobs. It is time to move in our own lives, communal lives, and roles as citizens to engage - today and everyday - in action to reduce our carbon footprint and help those who are already facing the consequences of climate change adapt to those environmental, economic, and security challenges.

Remembering Capt. Benjamin Sklaver

2009-10-08T15:25:20Z

Rabbi Harold L. Robinson, Rear Admiral CHC USN Ret, is the Director of JWB Jewish Chaplains Council.

The world, and specifically the community of Reform Judaism, lost a very special neshama with the death by enemy action in Afghanistan of Captain Benjamin Sklaver, US Army, 32, of Hamden, Conn.

Ben was a product of Mishkan Israel of Hamden, Vice President of NFTY-NE in 1994-95 and was a graduate of both Tufts and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts.

While employed at the Centers for Disease Control, he joined the Army Reserve in 2003 as a civil affairs expert and deployed to the Horn of Africa where he was touched by the high rates of child mortality linked to dirty drinking water. After his demobilization and return to civilian life, Ben founded ClearWater Initiative, an organization based in New Haven that sought to provide potable water in underdeveloped Ugandan villages. In northern Uganda, Ben was known as "Moses Ben." According to its Web site, ClearWater Initiative has constructed wells for more than 6,500 people since 2007.

Ben moved back to New England to be near his fiancée but was again mobilized even though his Army Reserve commitment was nearly complete. He was still on active duty since the "stop loss" rules do not allow for release of a solder during a period of mobilization.

As a NFTY friend of my son (now our colleague) Yair and daughter Dori, Ben had been a guest in our home. He was kind, humble, tall, blonde, athletic, clever and a committed Jew. He was an immense credit to his family, our movement, our people and our country a very special and gutina neshama.

Yihi zecher tsadeek Livracha. Moadeem lisimcha.

Photo from the Connecticut Jewish Ledger.

Sukkot and a Sustainable Harvest

2009-10-02T16:08:10Z

by Rachel Cohen
Senior Legislative Assistant, RAC
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah)

It is only a few days after Yom Kippur, and already another season is about to end. Not for us as Jews or North Americans, but for the earth. Today begins one of the most joyous weeks of the Jewish year as we celebrate the harvest, and mark the end of the agricultural season, with the festival of Sukkot. And just as Sukkot ends, on Shemini Atzeret, we pray for an abundant rainy season following the dry summer months and enjoy the gifts of the earth - fruit, grains, and water - with which we are blessed once again.

We call ourselves the "People of the Book," yet our calendar and our celebrations remind us that we have always been a people of the land. Greeting cards and gifts aside, the most important holidays in traditional Judaism have always been the three harvest festivals: Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot. These holidays each mark not only an historical event (the Exodus, the giving of the Ten Commandments, and the wandering of the Israelites through the desert) but also a pivotal point in the agricultural calendar (the beginning of spring, the new planting season, and the last harvest before the winter rains). Every year at these critical moments we stop to take stock of where we are - in relation to our earth above all else - give thanks for what we have, and carefully consider our next steps.

For the next seven days we will throw ourselves back into the 'natural world' by eating, praying, and (for a brave few) sleeping in an outdoor hut shaded from the sun but exposed to the starlight, and the elements. We will revel in the sunshine and the simplicity of the Sukkah, and acknowledge the bounty and diversity of the natural world with prayers over the lulav, haddasim, arravot and etrog. Every aspect of the holiday serves as a powerful reminder of our intimate connection with and dependence on our natural resources - and how far so many of us have strayed from this connection. Like any beloved Jewish holiday, Sukkot is largely about food, and revolves around prayers that recognize and celebrate the sources of our sustenance. So how do we celebrate in a society where the vast majority of us are deeply disconnected from what is in our food and how it is produced? And as our climate changes - and rainfall and temperature patterns change as well - what sort of harvest will we and our children celebrate 10, 20, or 100 years from now?

When our food system distances us - not always geographically, but psychologically - from the plants, animals, farmers and factories that make our food, it is no wonder that food safety remains a habitual problem, obesity is on the rise, and food waste overflows our landfills. We go to the supermarket regularly yet barely think about where the thousands of available products actually come from and what is actually in them. We genetically modify crops for the laudable goals of increasing yields and nutritional value, but the effects of GMO crops on the long-term health of the land and on global food prices often go unconsidered. We can enjoy corn products in infinite varieties, yet many of us go without fresh produce on a regular basis. Farmers' markets and organic alternatives may help some of us bridge the gap between our food and its origins, but these options remain geographically and economically inaccessible to millions of North Americans.

From water and energy scarcity around the world to massive fish kills on our own coasts, we are not 'harvesting' in a sustainable way, and the disconnect between us as food consumers and our food supply enables and exemplifies this trend. As we acknowledge the bounty of our natural world on Sukkot, we also think about where we are taking too much - and what we can do about it. This begins with learning about where our food comes from and raising awareness of its ecological footprint; did you know, for example, that nearly 20% of our national energy consumption (and resulting greenhouse gas emissions) comes from growing, transporting, and storing our food; or that the average meal travels 1,500 miles from 'farm to fork' in the United States? As we start to think about the real costs of our food system (beyond the supermarket price stickers), we can begin to make food choices that are healthier for people and the planet.

We cannot conquer any of the great challenges we face today - from health care to the energy crisis - without thinking seriously about what we eat and how it affects us and our environment. And Sukkot creates the time and space to step back and ask these questions. This year, let's begin to take the steps to ensure many successful - and sustainable - harvest seasons and celebrations to come.

To learn more about the steps the Reform Movement is taking toward sustainability and how you can get involved, visit our new GreeningRJ online resource where you'll find everything from Jewish texts and teaching on the environment to room-by-room greening guides for your home and congregation.

And as you prepare to join us in Toronto for the 2009 North American URJ Biennial, find out what we are doing to make this the greenest Biennial yet!

Be the Image of Justice!

2009-09-30T15:20:53Z

by Kate Bigam
Press Secretary, RAC

As a Reform Jew, you pursue social justice in your everyday life and participate in tikkun olam, the repair of our broken world, whenever possible. To recognize and celebrate these good deeds, we're launching Images of Justice, a Facebook-based contest that invites Reform Jews across North America to show us all how you're bettering the world through your personal pursuit of social justice. To participate, all you need is a camera (or a camera phone!), a Facebook account & a passion for putting your Jewish values into action - and you'll be entered to win great prizes from the Reform Movement! Here's how to enter:

Become a fan of the RAC on Facebook at www.facebook.com/therac
Post a photo on our Facebook wall of you engaged in tikkun olam - a past or present photo of you doing anything from planting a tree to participating in a march, rally or protest to serving food at a soup kitchen. Be creative! Entry deadline is Friday, October 16, 2009, at 4pm Eastern.

The RAC staff will choose one grand prize winner based on effort, creativity and enthusiasm. The winner will receive a $118 gift certificate redeemable for any RAC-sponsored conference or event, along with a surprise bag packed with Reform Movement swag. Five runners up will receive prizes, too, & all submissions will appear in a blog post on the RACblog & RJ.org.

Spread the word, grab your camera & be the image of justice! We can't wait to see your submissions.

JanetheWriter Goes to Washington: A One-Day Sabbatical Adventure

2009-09-29T01:33:43Z

by JanetheWriter

Earlier this month, I marked the completion of my seventh year of work with the Union for Reform Judaism. Ah-ha, I thought, time for a sabbatical!

And so it was that this past Wednesday, I boarded an Amtrak train in New York's Penn Station and headed to Washington DC to visit - for the first time -- the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, the Reform Movement's advocacy and lobbying arm.

Once outside Union Station, my first stop was the Rayburn House Office Building where, Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the RAC was scheduled to testify at the House Education and Labor Committee's hearing on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA). Long overdue and, it seems to me, a "no brainer," this legislation (H.R. 3017-S. 1584) would prohibit employers from discriminating against employees based on sexual orientation or gender identity. Unbelievable as it seems, even today, in more than two dozen states, discrimination based on sexual orientation and in more than three dozen states based on gender identity is still legal.

By the time there was space in the hearing room for several RAC staffers and me to enter, the committee was about to hear from the second set of panelists that morning. We were directed to seats in the first row - right behind those queued up to testify. Just as I sat down, Vandy Beth Glenn began her remarks, which you can watch here:

(Yes, that's me just over her right shoulder, watching a wall-mounted monitor in order to see her face.) As I listened to her powerful words, I was infuriated at the Georgia General Assembly, moved by her story, and inspired by her bravery.

In testimony that followed Ms. Glenn's, Rabbi Saperstein noted, "Our belief in ENDA's importance stems from a core teaching shared by an array of faith traditions, Jewish and non-Jewish alike. In the words of Genesis, (1:27), 'And God created humans in God's own image, in the image of God, God created them; male and female God created them.' We oppose discrimination against all individuals, including gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender men and women, for the stamp of the Divine is imprinted on the souls of each and every one of us."

"Of course," Rabbi Saperstein continued, "support for ENDA rooted in biblical text alone is insufficient justification for public policy that applies to Americans of all faiths and no faith. We also believe this legislation to be a wise and measured civil rights bill that addresses the scourge of employment discrimination and upholds the values on which our nation was founded, equality and justice chief among them. Indeed, the struggle for equality is a defining narrative of our nation. From the abolition movement, to the suffrage movement to the civil rights movement to the gay rights movement, women and minorities in this nation have worked tirelessly to achieve equal rights as guaranteed them in the founding visions of the United States. It is this vision too that compels us to support ENDA." You can view Rabbi Saperstein's testimony in its entirety here:

* * *

Often I hear leaders of our Movement -- in response to those who claim that politics has no role in religion and that it is not the place of religious organizations to take positions in this realm - espouse the belief that indeed it is our prophetic mandate to address the great moral issues of the day. So often in fact do I hear and write these words that, for me, they have become, sadly, almost rote.

That sense of rote, though, was dispelled last week as I sat in the nerve center of our nation's public policy infrastructure. Listening to Rabbi Saperstein's eloquent and pointed message, I was reminded of just how powerfully the directives in our ancient Torah tradition dovetail with our own efforts to fight contemporary injustice in its many ugly forms.

Indeed, my "sabbatical" on the Hill and later at the RAC -- the richly historic building where so much of our Reform Jewish policy gets shaped -- did just what a sabbatical is supposed to do. It refreshed my soul, renewed my spirit and inspired me to continue to work, in my own small way, to set the world aright.

Rabbi Saperstein's ENDA Testimony

2009-09-25T20:37:51Z

by Kate Bigam
Press Secretary, RAC
(Originally posted at RACblog)

Rabbi David Saperstein, Director of the Religious Action Center, testified Wednesday morning before the House Education and Labor Committee in support of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), a civil rights bill that would make it illegal to fire, refuse to hire, demote or fail to promote an employee based on his or her sexual orientation or gender identity.

The full text of Rabbi Saperstein's submitted testimony is after the jump; you can also watch a webcast of it (his testimony begins at the 1:46:34 marker). You can make your voice heard in this civil rights debate by checking out our action alert to write to your Members of Congress asking them to support ENDA.

Thank you for inviting me to be here this morning. My name is Rabbi David Saperstein and I represent the national Reform Jewish Movement, the largest segment of American Jewry. I am also an attorney who teaches Jewish law and Church-State law at the Georgetown University Law Center and have addressed free exercise, establishment clause and civil rights legal issues in a number of books and articles.

On behalf of the 900 congregations of the Union for Reform Judaism, with 1.5 million members across North America, and the Central Conference of American Rabbis, with a membership of 1,800 rabbis, I appreciate the opportunity to express our strong support for the Employment Non-Discrimination Act.

Our belief in ENDA's importance stems from a core teaching shared by an array of faith traditions, Jewish and non-Jewish alike. In the words of Genesis, (1:27), "And God created humans in God's own image, in the image of God, God created them; male and female God created them." We oppose discrimination against all individuals, including gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender men and women, for the stamp of the Divine is imprinted on the souls of each and every one of us.

We Jews have historical sensitivities raised by the effort to ban job discrimination, for we have been among the quintessential victims of group hatred, persecution, and discrimination in western civilization. We know all too well the impact of discrimination and second-class citizenship, of what it is like to be denied opportunities for jobs or other benefits because of who we are. Even after the Enlightenment began and the promise of equality existed without laws to enforce it, we often were forced to hide our identity, keeping our Judaism in our private lives while remaining ambiguous about who we were in our public lives if we wished to find employment or advancement in the educational, social, political, or business arenas of our societies. So we feel a keen empathy for those who can still be victimized because of who they are, deprived of opportunities, jobs, or advancement because of their identity.

Of course, support for ENDA rooted in biblical text alone is insufficient justification for public policy that applies to Americans of all faiths and no faith. We also believe this legislation to be a wise and measured civil rights bill that addresses the scourge of employment discrimination and upholds the values on which our nation was founded, equality and justice chief among them. Indeed, the struggle for equality is a defining narrative of our nation. From the abolition movement, to the suffrage movement to the civil rights movement to the gay rights movement, women and minorities in this nation have worked tirelessly to achieve equal rights as guaranteed them in the founding visions of the United States. It is this vision too that compels us to support ENDA.

It is clear that within our nation's diversity of faith traditions, there are, however, differing views about homosexuality. Every faith is entitled to its own interpretation of its holy texts, and every individual is entitled to believe in a way of his or her own choosing. At the same time, the government is and should be free to enact legislation that protects values that differ from some of these beliefs. When that occurs, however, the government also should strive to protect the freedom of religious communities with differing beliefs to practice their faith as they see fit.

That is why Section 6 of ENDA, the exemption for religious organizations, is an essential part of this legislation. A bill that did not permit houses of worship, seminaries, religious schools and other religious organizations to be guided by the tenets and teachings that embody the essence of their faith would break with our country's long-standing tradition of religious freedom and provoke widespread opposition. This legislation is not an endorsement of any particular religious viewpoint and it does not interfere with religious beliefs about gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. ENDA simply ensures that workers are judged and rewarded based on their qualifications and performance, rather than on irrelevant and prejudicial factors. At the same time, it protects the right of religious communities to make their own employment decisions in this sensitive area.

Advantages of Using the Title VII Religious Exemption:

This legislation creates a religious exemption that mirrors that found in Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. This approach holds three key advantages.

Consistency and Reliability: Since 1964, there has been a religious exemption in Title VII. Since 1972, it has contained the current language of the exemption. ENDA uses Title VII's definition of a religious organization, so that if an organization is exempt from Title VII's religious discrimination prohibitions, it will be exempt from ENDA's prohibitions. Claims by some that this exemption goes beyond Title VII are simply erroneous. Since ENDA creates no new tests for determining which religious institutions are exempt from its provisions and instead adopts the longstanding exemption of Title VII, it will greatly reduce confusion among employers, employees, policy makers, and judges.

Broad Based Support in Religious Communities: The decision to use the Title VII religious exemption in ENDA is also supported by a wide range of religious groups. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the General Conference of Seventh Day Adventists, and the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations issued a joint statement supporting the exemption the last time this exemption was voted on in 2007, although they did not take a position on ENDA itself. Yet in their endorsement of Section 6, they wrote that they "believe this language provides an indispensable protection of the free exercise rights of religious organizations and strongly support its inclusion in ENDA." Similarly, a wide range of national denominations and faith groups support ENDA itself - including this exemption. The endorsement of so many of our nation's major religious bodies across religious and ideological lines, all in agreement that ENDA's religious exemption properly protects religious institutions, should weigh heavily with this committee. Amendments, including "carve outs" or other forms of broadening the exemption, could likely break apart the broad-based consensus and should be rejected. Further, it might well lead to conflicting interpretations of the Title VII exemption itself.

Broad-Based Political Support: This carefully crafted compromise enjoys widespread support from the civil rights community, the legal community and from Congress. This exact language has been considered by this body before. In 2007, 402 members of this House - Republican and Democrat alike - voted for the religious exemption language that Chairman Miller proposed in an amendment to ENDA on the floor of the House. The current version of ENDA, H.R. 3017, contains the religious exemption that passed on the floor two years ago with the support of Minority Leader Boehner and other leadership of the Republican Party including Reps. Cantor, Blunt, Pence and the Ranking Member on this Committee, John Kline, among members of the leadership on both sides of the aisle.

Claims of Hostile Work Environment:

There are still some who argue that including the Title VII exemption in ENDA would not go far enough. Most commonly, the reason given is that reasonable expressions of faith in the workplace will result in an onslaught of lawsuits by gay and lesbian employees who will claim that since the Bible condemns sexual relations between men, other employees who display Bibles or religious verses in their own work area will create a "hostile workplace."

The argument is deeply troubling on several grounds. First, as a rabbi, I can affirm that faith is not the express domain of straight Americans. There exists in the faith community many gay and lesbian people of devout belief, who attend church or synagogue or mosque each week, and who rely on their faith for purpose and meaning in their lives. To suggest that such individuals will be offended by seeing a Bible on a co-worker's desk, for example, is absurd.

Second, as an attorney, I note that the Supreme Court has made clear that the threshold of what constitutes a hostile workplace is high - it requires the plaintiff to prove that the workplace was "permeated with discriminatory intimidation, ridicule, and insult that is sufficiently severe or pervasive to alter the conditions of the victim's employment and create an abusive working environment". Again, because this exemption's language mirrors that in existing law, discreet actions such as carrying a Bible to work or wearing a cross or another religious symbol in the workplace clearly would not meet the Court's established standard. In the nearly quarter century of state ENDAs, I know of not a single case in which a hostile work environment claim was upheld for the display of a Bible or religious symbol -- and certainly none that were upheld on appeal.

We are long past the point when our laws should permit discrimination against any individual because of their sexual orientation. Just as we do not tolerate behavior that discriminates based on race, gender, national origin or religion, so should we be clear about discrimination based on the characteristic of being gay or lesbian. For many of America's faith traditions, this is a religious value. It is a moral value. And for all of us, it is of great social and economic value, as evidenced by the nearly 90% of Fortune 500 companies that already have policies consistent with ENDA. They have concluded that we cannot send the message that gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender individuals are second-class citizens, undeserving of legal protections, benefits and equal rights.

It is time for our laws to reflect these values and allow members of the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender community to live their professional lives without fear of discrimination or the pressure to hide their true identity. Thank you.

Additional witness testimonies are available here, as submitted by: the Hon. Stuart J. Ishimaru, Acting Chairman, U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission; William Eskridge, John A. Garver Professor of Jurisprudence, Yale Law School; and Vandy Beth Glenn, who was fired from her Georgia state legislative job when she told her supervisor she was transitioning from male to female.

Responding to Hunger in Israel

2009-09-09T14:47:25Z

by Sophie Vener
2009-2010 NFTY Social Action Vice President

I arrived in Jerusalem on Monday, August 31st, to begin my year on Shnat Netzer, the World Union for Progressive Judaism's gap year program in Israel. We spent the first week in the Beit Shmuel youth hostel for orientation, learning rules and regulations as well as getting acclimated to our new home in Jerusalem.

Included in the week of orientation was participating in the Israel Religious Action Center's program Keren B'Kavod, the progressive movement's response to poverty in Israel. One of the ways that Keren B'Kavod addresses poverty is through holiday food drives, in which people donate boxes of nutritionally balanced meals to hungry Israeli families. We were sent on a mission to Machane Yehuda, the Israeli outdoor marketplace also known as The Shuk, with 100 sheckels each to find and purchase food for a nutritionally insecure Israeli family. It was a powerful image to see 26 British and American Reform Jewish teenagers enthusiastically storm the streets of Jerusalem in an effort to provide food for families in need.

Something surprising happened to me in The Shuk when I explained to the vendors, in broken Hebrew, what Keren B'Kavod was - they lowered the price for our purchases. The understanding of Tikkun Olam within Israeli society became increasingly evident to me as each vendor lowered our prices and thanked us for what we were doing.

After our adventure in The Shuk, we returned to Beit Shmuel, where we discussed our experiences and why this project was included in our orientation seminar. Social action is a cornerstone of Reform Judaism; the group concluded that leaving out a social action project in the orientation of a Jewish program would feel wrong. Speaking to people from the Reform Synagogue Youth Movement and the Liberal Jewish Youth Movement in London, as well as participants from NFTY, together we agreed that our involvement in social justice is a huge part of our Jewish identity and responsibility.

American and British Participants in the Shnat Netzer gap year program in Israel visit an Israeli market to purchase food for families in need. (Photo credit: Sophie Vener)

NFTY SAVP Sophie Vener participates in the Keren B'Kavod program, the progressive Jewish movement's response to poverty and hunger in Israel. (Photo credit: Sophie Vener)

Protesting Segregated Buses in Jerusalem

2009-09-08T15:26:03Z

by Anat Hoffman
(Originally published in IRAC's newsletter, The Pluralist)

Last Sunday, seven Israel Religious Action Center staff members and I boarded at the front of Bus No. 40, one of Jerusalem's segregated bus lines. After paying the fare, we sat down right behind the bus driver, which prompted shouts of "Women in the back, women in the back!" from the ultra-Orthodox men on board. Two men rushed to the front and complained to the driver; I couldn't make out what they were saying, but I did hear the driver say, "It's hard enough to drive a bus in Jerusalem traffic without having to deal with all this balagen [chaos]."

Our protest was part of a larger demonstration that day co-sponsored by IRAC and other organizations. Forty people, men and women, boarded several segregated buses around the city and sat together up front. None of the protestors sat next to ultra-Orthodox passengers or deliberately provoked them in any way other than our boarding and sitting in the front.

In this case, there was no altercation. The driver chose not to interfere, which allowed us to stay up front, though one ultra-Orthodox man covered his eyes and ears with his pais while others chose to bury their noses in prayer-books.

At the next stop, three Orthodox women sat next to us, since the back of the bus was now filled. We handed out leaflets to all of the women. The next day IRAC received phone calls from three ultra-Orthodox women thanking us for what we were doing and begging us to continue our struggle against state-sponsored segregated bus lines. This case is far from over; we promise to keep you up to date.

IRAC's Anat Hoffman, far right corner, joined other Israeli women in protesting segregated buses in Jerusalem. (Photo credit: Roy Elman, YNET News)

Anat Hoffman is the Executive Director of the Israel Religious Action Center in Jerusalem.

Putting "Labor" Back into Labor Day

2009-09-03T15:31:11Z

by Jacob Feinspan
(Originally posted at RACblog)

When you hear "Labor Day", what are the first things that come to mind? A recent survey of friends included responses such as: end of the summer, last weekend at the pool, last hurrah at the beach, beginning of school, and a reminder that the high holidays are just around the corner. Not one of them associated the Labor Day with the reason it was created - as a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.

But what if we actually put the Labor back into Labor Day? How could we use the opportunity to reflect on the amazing achievements of American workers and at the same time on the challenges facing working people in our country today?

At Jews United for Justice, our answer to these questions is Labor on the Bimah: an opportunity for congregations to integrate Labor Day into their services by focusing on workers' rights issues from the Bimah through a sermon, a conversation, or even through music. This year nearly 50 synagogues and minyanim in the Washington area will be joining hundreds of churches, synagogues, and mosques around the country for Labor in the Pulpits/on the Bimah/in the Minbar, a national program led by Interfaith Worker Justice and the AFL-CIO.

In fact, just yesterday the New York Times reports that in a new study, more than two thirds of low-wage workers had been victims of wage theft in the week before they were surveyed. And it wasn't just a dollar here and a dollar there. Researchers found that the typical worker had lost $51 the previous week through wage theft - out of average weekly earnings of $339. That translates into a 15 percent loss in pay for workers living on the edge of poverty!

We don't have to look far in this week's Torah portion to be reminded of our communities' biblical struggle against exploitive work conditions:

And the Egyptians treated us cruelly and afflicted us, and they imposed hard labor upon us. So we cried out to the Lord, God of our fathers, and the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. And the Lord brought us out from Egypt with a strong hand and with an outstretched arm, with great awe, and with signs and wonders. (Deuteronomy 26:6-8)

Jews United for Justice is using this Labor Day to focus attention particularly on the struggle of day laborers, who are particularly vulnerable to exploitation because they do not have formal work arrangements with employers. (For more information about our work, download our Labor on the Bimah Resource Packet, which includes information about the problem of wage theft and connections you can make to the Torah portion.)

But wage theft and the exploitation of day laborers are hardly the only struggles facing workers this year. First, check out the resources that Interfaith Worker Justice and the AFL-CIO put together on Health Care Reform, and then visit my colleague Sybil Sanchez at the Jewish Labor Committee, who makes a powerful case for the Employee Free Choice Act in this op-ed that recently appeared in the Jewish Telegraphic Agency:

While most headlines are focused on health care reform, labor law reform should stay on our agenda -- specifically, the Employee Free Choice Act. This much-needed legislation has three important principles: Workers would more easily be able to join or form a union; employers who break the law in efforts to stop union organizing would face more stringent penalties and workers who have chosen to form a union would have a clear path to an initial collective bargaining agreement with their employer.

Today, 44 percent of newly formed unions are unable to reach initial agreements, a serious problem the current law fails to address. The majority sign-up route to union recognition provided by the Employee Free Choice Act has a long history and is in widespread use today in the United States and many other countries. But there's a catch: Under current law, workers can form a union via majority sign-up only if their employer agrees to it -- which most employers refuse to do, even when worker support for the union is overwhelming.

Supporting this legislation is a no-brainer if one supports workers' right to collectively negotiate for decent wages and working conditions.

I hope that you'll join me and thousands of Jews across the Washington area in putting Labor back into Labor Day.

Jacob Feinspan is the Executive Director of the Washington, D.C.-based Jews United for Justice. He is a former Eisendrath Legislative Assistant at the Religious Action Center.

100 Days from Copenhagen, Call for Climate Justice

2009-09-02T19:32:51Z

by Rabbi David Saperstein
(Originally posted at RACblog)

In less than 100 days, diplomats, elected officials, environmental scientists, economists, and clergy from around the world will converge in Copenhagen, Denmark, for what world leaders, including UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon and world-renowned economist Nicholas Stern, are calling "the most important international gathering since the end of the Second World War."

December 7 is the opening day of the UN COP-15 conference, the stage on which world leaders will attempt to reach a deal to slash global greenhouse gas emissions and rebuild the global economy with green roots, all in an effort to mitigate catastrophic climate change. The event may seem distant - in time and place - but there is so much to be done in the next 100 days to get ready, and we hope you can help!

So over the next 100 days, what can you do? In just a few weeks, the Global Campaign for Climate Action, Oxfam, Religions for Peace and others will join together for Climate Week NYC. Take part in this grassroots mobilization around the September 22 UN General Assembly's day-long summit focused exclusively on how to forge an international deal on climate change. There are events going on throughout the city all week long, from movie premieres and concerts to forums and debates, and many ways to get involved remotely.

Even if you are far from NYC or otherwise occupied around the High Holidays, there are plenty of ways to take action to ensure our leaders "seal the deal" on climate change in December. The U.S. must play a lead role in Copenhagen to make a global deal possible, and we must bring strong domestic legislation to the table to lead the way, so start by calling on your Senators to support a climate bill as soon as they get back to work next week. Then join us in October for a Jewish community-wide "Climate Healing Shabbat," as we read the story of Noah and urge our elected officials and partners throughout the faith community to work toward a global deal that protects all of humanity from the ravages of climate change. And COEJL, the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life, will also be launching a major, community-wide campaign later this month, which we hope you'll participate in with us.

Climate change is a fundamental issue of humanity and social justice, and we as a people of faith must call our leaders to action. Last Saturday was the fourth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, perhaps the greatest example in recent American history of the injustice that environmental disaster can wreak. As the effects of climate change become increasingly evident, these injustices will only worsen. As Katrina survivors explain, "Climate change impacts everyone, but it hits the poorest first and hardest, despite having contributed the least to the crisis."

We are taught in Parashat Shoftim, which we read together just a few weeks ago, to pursue justice, and to do so in by just means. As we look to Copenhagen let us call for an international agreement to confront this crisis, and ensure that the global deal protects our planet and protects the poorest and most vulnerable around the world from the effects of climate change that they are already confronting daily. We have 100 days, let's get to work.

Losing a Giant for Justice: Remembering Sen. Kennedy

2009-08-31T21:21:42Z

by Al Vorspan
(Originally published on RACblog)

For more than 60 years, the fate of one political family has been interwoven with the history of Reform Judaism in America. That family is the Kennedys, now mourning the loss of Senator Ted Kennedy, the lion of the Senate and for nearly half a century, the most prominent champion of liberalism in American Life.

His brother John F. Kennedy was not, early on in his presidential quest, an automatic favorite of American Jewish voters. Their father, Joe, was an object of distrust, particularly because of his isolationism during much of the Nazi era, and Jack was viewed by many as an untested leader who had wimped out on Joe McCarthy. But by his 1960 campaign, his style, his optimism and his symbolizing of religious equality earned the support of many Jews, including Rabbi Maurice N. Eisendrath, President of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, who condemned the anti-Catholic attacks on him, most keenly those by the renowned Rev. Norman Vincent Peale, challenging him to a debate on television on the propriety of religious discrimination in American political life. This began a special connection between the Reform Jewish Movement and the Kennedys, which only grew over the decades.

One of President Kennedy's closest allies was Arthur Goldberg, a powerful labor leader from Chicago, who was also a member of the then recently-established Commission on Social Action of Reform Judaism. In fact, Goldberg had been one of the earliest advocates of a Religious Action Center to be established in Washington as a voice of prophetic social justice for Reform Jewry. When establishment of the Center was approved, Goldberg arranged for the occasion to be marked by the new President in a ceremony in the Rose Garden of the White House. A highlight of the occasion was the presentation by Rabbi Eisendrath to President Kennedy of an historic Torah, once owned by Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, founder of American Reform Judaism.

In 1968, high hopes were crushed by the murder of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, both of whom embodied so much of the social justice ethos of American Jewry. The political figure who picked up the banner of hope and planted it in the U.S. Senate was the young Ted Kennedy, U.S. Senator from Massachusetts.

Over the years, Ted Kennedy became the liberal conscience of the Senate but, even more, he became one of the powerful masters of the Congress, and one of its most effective bipartisan coalition-builders. A devoted supporter of Israel and Soviet Jewry, a champion of religious liberty, civil rights and education, a powerful prophetic voice for the downtrodden, the poor, the sick, the children and the elderly - time and again, Sen. Kennedy fought battles for social justice that were at the heart of the agenda of the American Jewish community.

While he was a great admirer of the Jewish community's work for social justice in general and went out of his way to work closely with a broad array of American Jewish organizations and leaders, Sen. Kennedy's special link with the Reform Movement took on a personal aspect. The Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism opened its doors in 1962, the same year he began his Senate tenure - and thus began his long friendship and cooperative work with our Movement and its leaders. (The decision to open the Center was commemorated that year in a Rose Garden Ceremony in which President John F. Kennedy was presented with a Torah once owned by Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, the founder of American Reform Judaism.) Sen. Kennedy himself developed a vital relationship with Rabbi Alex Schindler, longtime President of the Union for Reform Judaism, who became a close family friend and personal advisor - indeed, the Senator often referred to Schindler as "the family rabbi." Schindler, in an individual capacity, campaigned for the Senator's Presidential run in 1980, the only time in his long career he ever did this.

Similarly, Sen. Kennedy's 35-year friendship with the Religious Action Center's director, Rabbi David Saperstein, was likewise both personal and political, rooted in the Senator's consistent pride of his family's link with the Religious Action Center. His guidance enriched the work of the Center, and his visible support for David personally opened up doors on Capitol Hill for three decades. He often turned to David for advice on the religious liberty issues he cared about so deeply, no time more so than when David and the Center worked particularly closely with him and his frequent partner, Republican Senator Orrin Hatch, in fashioning the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, one of the most important religious freedom legislative enactments in American history. But this was typical: When the Senator engaged in the fights for his key legislative passions (including the Voting Rights Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Mental Health Parity Act, the State Children's Health Insurance Program and others), the Jewish community found itself working side-by-side with him on almost every one of them. For those who knew of the Senator's connection with our Movement, the image of Sen. Kennedy and David, standing at the center of the platform talking just prior to the start of President Obama's Inauguration, movingly captured both the past and the future of our social justice work.

As Rabbi Schindler's Vice President during his tenure as President of the Union for Reform Judaism - and as the person who hired David Saperstein to run the Center - I took special pleasure in this rich connection, precisely because of what Sen. Kennedy represented. Not surprisingly, the Senator appeared at more of the Center's biennial Consultation on Conscience than any other political figure, expressing his avid appreciation for American Jewry's central role on the varied causes for social justice, spurring us on in such work with his powerful and eloquent call to justice - each time greeting by the full-throated admiration and appreciation of our leadership that echoed through the room, reflecting our community's special attachment to this extraordinary political leader

Perhaps more than any other contemporary political figure, Sen. Ted Kennedy embodied the values for social justice that have been both the passion of Jews throughout our existence and the goals for America that American Jewry has struggled so passionately to fulfill. He will be remembered through the generations as one of American Jewry's closest friends, one of America's greatest champions for justice, equality and peace - and a true blessing to our nation.

Sen. Ted Kennedy and Rabbi David Saperstein, Director of the RAC

Rabbi David Saperstein with Sen. Ted Kennedy and Rabbi Alexander Schindler, former President of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations at the 1993 Consultation on Conscience

Rabbi Eric Yoffie, President of the Union for Reform Judaism, with Sen. Ted Kennedy

Remembering Senator Kennedy

2009-08-26T22:07:05Z

by Kate Bigam
Press Secretary, RAC
(Originally appeared at RACblog)

Today the country mourns the death of Sen. Ted Kennedy, a giant for social justice. Sen. Kennedy served 47 years in the United States Senate, where he championed bills like the Voting Rights Act, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Mental Health Parity Act, the State Children's Health Insurance Program. Known for his rare and impressive ability to work across party lines to progress much-needed legislation, Sen. Kennedy leaves behind a rich and meaningful legacy.

It's a legacy with particular significance to American Jewry, as well - especially to the Reform Movement, with whom Kennedy worked closely on a number of issues. He was close friends with the RAC's own Rabbi David Saperstein and was a longtime support of the Movement's social justice advocacy work, which Rabbi Saperstein spoke to in a statement today.

Now we want to hear your thoughts on Sen. Ted Kennedy's life and legacy. What did his work mean to you and your life? How will he be remembered? Leave your reflections on our Facebook wall at Facebook.com/TheRAC, and we'll compile them at the end of the week for a look back at the Reform Movement's remembrance of Sen. Kennedy. Zichronam livracha, may his name be for a blessing.

Godwin's Law, Halbanat Panim and Health Care

2009-08-21T16:29:37Z

by William Berkson

Godwin's Law is a rule of internet conversations, which says that the longer a discussion thread continues, the higher the probability that someone will mention Hitler or Nazis. A popular variation is that the first person to invoke Hitler or Nazis is considered to have lost the debate.

There is a lot of truth in both these variations. There is something about the conditions of the internet that unleashes the furies in many who post in forums. Fortunately, this name-calling is generally of little consequence.

However, this dreadful practice has migrated more and more to the television and face to face political events. The more personal and public the name-calling becomes, the more dangerous it is. In Pirkei Avot it is written that a person who shames another in public will "have no place in the world to come." The Hebrew phrase for public shaming is halbanat panim, which means literally "whitening the face" of the other person, causing the other person to blanche. And the sages said that as blood drains from the face of the person insulted, that halbanat panim is so grave a sin as being equivalent to bloodshed, because it often leads to bloodshed.

In fact, the extreme right wing in Israel portrayed Prime Minister Rabin in a Nazi SS uniform, and showed him in cross hairs of a gun sight, before he was in fact assassinated. Because of the gravity of these insults, I am extremely disappointed that more leaders who are critical of Obama's Health Care initiative are not vocally condemning the rampant comparing of Obama and Hitler. Such comparisons are incitement to violence and need to be condemned in the strongest terms. Republican leaders need to be telling their followers, and hot heads in the media like Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh to stop this incitement, and urge their followers to be respectful of the President, even when they disagree with the policies he advocates.

Rabbi Saperstein of the RAC did call on O'Reilly to stop his crying "Nazi", and the Anti-defamation League has condemned Limbaugh for this practice. But it really is going to take Republican leaders to stop this, as, to his credit, McCain did during his campaign. Unfortunately, too many elected leaders are silent on this. Can the RAC join with Christian organization to condemn this? Something more needs to be done to publically label this practice as shameful and outside the realm of proper democratic discourse.

The Union's Rabbi Jonah Pesner on CNN

2009-08-19T13:34:31Z

by Kate Bigam
Press Secretary, RAC
(Originally appeared at RACblog)

What were you doing last Sunday at 8:30 a.m.? That's when Rabbi Jonah Pesner, Director of the Reform Movement's Just Congregations, appeared on CNN's "Faces of Faith" segment with host TJ Holmes and guest Rev. Dr. Derrick Harkins of the 19th Street Baptist Church in DC. Together, Rabbi Pesner and Rev. Harkins presented a unified voice in support of health care reform, urging people of faith to get involved in the ongoing health care debate.

In case you weren't up that early, check out this clip of their appearance:

And don't forget to RSVP for tonight's conference call, "40 Minutes for Health Reform," when special guest speaker President Barack Obama will address people of faith spanning the religious and political spectrum. He'll address to the moral and political imperative of reforming the United States' broken health care system, and two of the Reform Movement's own rabbis will also be featured speakers on the call: Rabbi David Stern, senior rabbi of the 2,500-member Temple Emanu-El in Dallas, Texas, and Rabbi Susan Talve, founding rabbi of Central Reform Congregation in St. Louis, Missouri.

The call will be unlike any other town hall or public event about health care. People of faith who have experienced the consequences of our broken system will share their stories. Clergy working in their own communities to reform health care will highlight ways they are impacting the debate. The President will speak directly to the faith community. A high-level Administration official will answer questions on pressing issues for religious voters. Finally, listeners will have the opportunity to "take the pledge" to join a multifaceted grassroots effort from the faith community to ensure that Congress makes quality health care affordable and accessible for all Americans.

The call begins at 5 pm EDT today. To listen, RSVP at www.faithforhealth.org/rac or visit www.faithforhealth.org at the time of the call to stream it live over your computer.

"May That Bullet Destroy Every Closet Door"

2009-08-18T21:09:46Z

by Joanna Blotner
Religion & Faith Program Coordinator, Human Rights Campaign
Former Eisendrath Legislative Assistant at the RAC
(Originally appeared at RACblog)

Two weekends ago, a gunman attacked the Agudah LGBT community center in Tel Aviv, murdering two young, gay Israelis. When I first heard this news, I was shocked, horrified, angry, embarrassed, sad and instantaneously compelled to act. I was reacting not only to yet another hate crime perpetrated against the LGBT community but, more personally, I was reacting to a hate crime perpetrated in "my" Jewish community, as well. I was ashamed that Jewish teachings, culture and society played a role, likely a significant one (I say "likely" because the shooter has not yet been apprehended) in providing a motive for this atrocity.

In DC, a handful of young professional Jewish and LGBT community activists rallied to organize a vigil in remembrance of the victims and in solidarity with Israel to combat homophobia wherever it exists. Similar vigils also took place in the major cities across the country. Unfortunately, meaningful and well-meaning vigils alone do not affect the sustainable transformation in attitudes, beliefs, and actions that are needed in the Jewish community. The cadre of organizers I worked with to plan the DC vigil uniformly agreed that follow-up work was essential in combating homophobia, transphobia, ignorance, apathy and broad-ranging heteronormativity as they manifest themselves in our temples, community centers, camps, youth groups, political organizations, and other Jewish spaces.

But what exactly does that change look like?

One particularly important place to focus our energies is in Sunday schools. Children perceive acceptance of their LGBT identity or family based on the clues given by the congregational role models with whom they interact. For this reason, creating actively affirming educational environments for our youth must be a top priority for the Jewish community - there should be no reason LGBT and questioning youth should fear rejection or isolation from their faith community, an emotional toll that is too often physically and spiritually damaging.

Imagine: As a second grader studying the stories of Adam and Eve, you're asked to draw your family tree. What if, instead of the teacher's example of male and female parental figures, you draw a family with two moms or a divorced family that includes four parents? How do you feel when a classmate teases you or your teacher doesn't consider your drawing appropriate to share with the class?

Imagine: Your fifth grade classmate groans and calls today's lesson "so gay;" your teacher says nothing in response. As a child who identifies with the term "gay" (even if you don't know what it means yet), how exposed do you feel? As a teacher, how guilty do you feel for lacking the knowledge to respond to this offensive remark in a constructive, age-appropriate manner?

These situations are real - and more common than you might guess. Though I work in the LGBT community and have long been involved with Jewish education, I only recently realized how marginalizing it must be for kids to participate in heteronormative Jewish educational systems that cultivate prejudices or, at best, fail to address them. Though secular schools are rarely any more committed to inclusivity, we owe it to our youth to embody a community of justice where all are valued as equals, created with the stamp of the divine.

My eye-opening experience occurred while attending a Keshet Training Institute for Jewish educators this summer. Keshet, a national Jewish organization committed to achieving full inclusion for LGBT Jews, hosts workshops for Jewish professionals to provide the tools necessary to create an educational environment that honors all families and identities - a learning community that promotes the healthy emotional, physical, and spiritual development of all young people. The workshops help educators relate to the feelings of marginalization experienced by LGBT youth (in even the most welcoming Jewish communities), then supplies educators with resources necessary to unhinge the classroom's closet doors of both subtle and overt homophobia and transphobia. From wrestling with the Levitical passages to learning Jewish responses to "that's so gay," from developing LGBT-aware lesson plans to practicing conversations about inclusion with temple leaders, the Keshet workshop and accompanying educational resources offer a blueprint for building Jewish communities that consciously foster inclusion of all.

With the Sunday school year fast approaching and the world Jewish community painfully awakening to bigotry in our midst, nothing would seem a more appropriate tribute to the Agudah victims than to create a reality where no LGBT young person ever questions their unequivocal acceptance in the Jewish community.

If you saw Milk last holiday season - the award-winning movie documenting the life of San Francisco's first openly gay elected official (who also happened to be Jewish) - you'll recognize this famous quote: "If [in my work] a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door."

May the bullets fired at youth meeting in the Agudah center be the catalyst our Jewish community needs to destroy every closet door of prejudice and apathy we harbor toward our lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender brothers and sisters.

For an excellent guide to creating safe and affirming spaces for LGBT Jews in all aspects of community life, invest in the URJ's "Kulanu" congregational resource.

For a safe spaces curriculum to introduce into a secular school system, consider HRC's "Welcoming Schools" model, which empowers teachers with the cultural competence to create classrooms respectful of all aspects of family and student diversity.

The Launch of Our New Health Care Reform Site! (& a Call with the President)

2009-08-13T22:01:19Z

by Kate Bigam
Press Secretary at the Religious Action Center
(originally posted on the RACblog)

Congress is officially on recess, but it won't be an easy vacation - for them or for us. As Members of Congress gauge their constituents' views on a range of issues, from health care reform to climate change, we at the RAC are hard at work ensuring that you have the tools you need to make your voice heard.

If you've been following the news, you know that health care reform is the hot-button issue of the moment. Today, we're excited to increase the volume of our support for universal health care by launching JewsForHealthCareReform.org, a website that provides supporters of universal health care with the resources and tools necessary to add their voices to the growing chorus of people of faith speaking out for reform. The site includes fact sheets on the health care system, Jewish texts on health care mandates, and action alerts containing pre-written letters to Congress contact in support of reform. We're also announcing "40 Minutes for Health Reform," a conference call next week for faith leaders nationwide, when special guest speaker President Obama will discuss the political and moral imperatives of fixing our nation's broken health care system. The call, co-sponsored by the RAC in conjunction with other religious organizations, will take place Wednesday, August 19^th, at 5:00 p.m. EDT. To RSVP for the call, visit FaithForHealth.org/RAC.

The conference call is just one component of "40 Days for Health Reform," a national campaign spearheaded by Faith in Public Life and national religious organizations of varying denominations. Over the span of 40 days - primarily during Congress' August recess - people of faith will sign petitions, participate in prayer vigils, and conduct in-district Congressional visits expressing their support for universal health care. To get involved with "40 Days for Health Reform," visit FaithForHealth.org

More than 47 million people are without insurance, living day to day in the hopes that they won't fall ill and need to visit a doctor they cannot afford. This year, the lazy days of summer are anything but lazy. This August, tell your Members of Congress that universal health care cannot wait.

Healing the Ritual: Abuse & the Mikva

2009-08-13T20:26:51Z

by Daphne Price
Executive Assistant to Rabbi David Saperstein
(Originally posted at RACblog)

I had a very clumsy week last week, and because of that clumsiness, I found myself covered in marks and bruises. I look like I could be (Gd forbid!) a battered wife. That's why, when I went to the mikva last night, I expected to be grilled by the mikva attendant, who no doubt would raise an eyebrow and comment at or question me about the bruises and welts on my body.

To be clear, this isn't a cry for help. My husband would never raise a hand to me. Each time I got hurt last week, my husband was nowhere near me, and I had witnesses to each incident. The fist-sized bruise on my upper thigh appeared after I walked into a post in the parking lot of my local supermarket. An elderly man saw it happen, and said "Wow, that's gotta hurt." Oh, you betcha. The bruises on my toes appeared shortly after I pulled some cookie sheets out of their cabinet - despite my kids' nanny's best effort to prevent it, one fell and landed across my foot. And the burn mark on my stomach came from my falling into one of those cookie sheets just after it came out of the oven - my sister-in-law saw that one coming!

Like I said. A total klutz.

I mentally prepared an explanation for each mark. I actually spoke to my mother-in-law, an attendant at our neighborhood mikva, about the possibility that I might be asked about them. Unsurprisingly, she told me to expect to be questioned, so I soldiered myself for the inquisition, readying my - truthful! - answers. Instead, my mikva attendant checked me over and nodded me toward the water.

More than relieved, I found myself surprised and disappointed. Still, I submerged myself several times. "Kosher," she declared each time. Really, kosher? If she missed all those marks and bruises, how do I know she didn't miss a stray hair or a speck of dirt? Really, kosher? If she suspected abuse, was it really OK for her not to ask me about it? To dismiss my body as "kosher," despite apparent injuries that spoke to the contrary? As nervous as I'd been to explain away my injuries when asked, I confess to feeling disappointed at the attendant's failure to inquire. What if I were abused? And what if I really needed help but was too afraid to ask for it? Could this really be kosher?

Frankly, I think this was a missed "opportunity" for the mikva attendant to reach out to someone who could potentially be an abused woman. It is important to be vigilant when looking for and recognizing signs of abuse. Maybe this mikva attendant missed her training session on learning to recognize signs of abuse,- or worse, maybe she was embarrassed to ask. Maybe the mere discomfort of posing the question would result in a "worst case scenario" of creating an uncomfortable moment when I would have to explain how I got each bruise - when in fact, the worst case scenario is not asking and not offering a helping hand - especially because true victims of abuse victims are all too often scared to speak up.

But this is was an important first-hand lesson for me too: The potential discomfort that comes with asking someone about potential abuse should not preclude us from doing our best to help those who are truly in need of assistance. My friend and co-worker Kate pointed out that some people may nurture the old notion that abuse doesn't happen within the Jewish community. Oh, but it does. In fact, the Jewish Coalition for Domestic Abuse provides the following information:

"Domestic abuse occurs in Jewish families at about the same rate as in the general community."
"Studies show that abuse occurs in every denomination of Judaism in equal percentages, and we see abuse in all communities, including the unaffiliated. Abuse takes place at all socio-economic levels."
Jewish women tend to stay in abusive relationships 2 to 3 times longer than those in the general population. Non-Jewish women stay from 3-5 years, Jewish women from 7-13 years."

To quote Kate, "We can't let vain ideas of our own goodness keep us from admitting to the reality of abusive situations within our own community and from doing our best to help and put an end to them."

So you're probably wondering what happened next.

Not much.

I got out of the water, but I didn't have a chance to ask her why she didn't comment on my bruises. The bell had rung and she had to tend to the next woman.

But I plan to share this blog post with my mother-in-law, who in turn will share it with other mikva attendants. Maybe lessons learned from my benign clumsiness will help someone in the future who is truly in need.

Why I Chose to Fast: For Darfur, For Me

2009-08-04T20:28:32Z

by Rabbi Marla J. Feldman
Director of Development, Union for Reform Judaism
First posted on RACblog

I admit it's a bit gimmicky - a group of rabbis and cantors joining together for a 'rolling fast' to bring attention to the continuing crisis in Sudan. My day was yesterday. To be honest, I doubt that my skipping a few meals will actually make a difference in the ongoing struggle to end the campaign of terror against the people of Darfur. After five years of rallies and petitions and letters to elected officials and world leaders, countless documentaries and star-powered events, divestment campaigns and shareholder activism - one wonders if anything can really make a difference. I've done my share of speaking and demonstrating, donated to relief funds and the Save Darfur Coalition, and even went to Africa with Nothing But Nets to deliver mosquito nets to protect refugees from malaria. And yet the atrocities continue. So why bother fasting if it won't make a difference?

For me, this fast day was not about the people of Darfur. It was about me. After so many years of efforts, so many defeats, so much heartbreak, I've begun experiencing 'crisis fatigue'. I've started doubting whether anything can really make a difference. Just as the Yom Kippur fast is designed to arouse our appetite for justice, I needed this fast to revitalize my own activism, to shake off the inertia born of disappointments past and remind myself that we can't stop until the people of Darfur are able to return to their homes in safety and the perpetrators of genocide are held accountable.

If you are a rabbi or cantor, please join us in this fast - if not for the people of Darfur, do it for yourself. Or better yet, do what the Jewish community of Kansas City is doing, by organizing a communal day of fasting followed by study and activism. There is still much that we can do to help the people of Sudan, whether it's buying nets for refugees, engaging in share-holder activism or relentlessly reminding our public officials that they will be judged by whether and how quickly they put an end to this travesty.

To sign up for the fast and get other helpful tools for activism, visit www.rac.org/darfur.

Israel as a Model for Health Care

2009-07-30T21:16:33Z

by Jill Zimmerman
Eisendrath Legislative Assistant at the Religious Action Center
(Originally published on the RACBlog)

As Congress is working to reconfigure our country's health care system, many are pointing to health systems overseas as examples. Israel has one of the most advanced health care systems in the world, and rivals the United States on everything from quality to cost to coverage.

I recently listened to a podcast by the Israel Project in which Dr. Rafi Cayam (Leumit Director of Medicine for the Jerusalem District) and Professor Shlomo Mor Yosef (Director-General, Hadassah Medical Organization) explained how Israel's health care system works.

According to Dr. Cayam and Prof. Mor Yosef, Israel's health care system has four key components: (1) universal coverage; (2) cradle to grave coverage; (3) coverage of both basic services and catastrophic care; and (4) coverage of all medications. Patients pay just a small co-payment to see specialists and to purchase medication, and primary care is free.

So, Israelis seem to have it pretty good: access to all their medical needs at a nominal fee!

But they must spend a fortune, right? Not so. All this costs about 8% of Israel's GDP, while the U.S. spends a whopping 17% of its GDP on health care.

Israelis pay a health care tax of 4.8% of their incomes, and in turn they can join one of the four Israeli HMOs. Costs are contained a number of ways, including covering only procedure that make sense for you (Cayam calls this "rational medicine, not rationing medicine") and electronic medical records in 90% of physicians offices, compared to 15% in the U.S.

Well, they definitely don't have high quality of care then, right? Nope. According to the latest World Health Organization statistics, Israel has a life expectancy of 81, ranking in the top 14 in the world, and ranked higher than average in most categories compared to the U.S. and Europe.

Israel's first rate doctors attend six years of university, complete a one-year internship, spend five to six years at a residency, and many go on to fellowships in other countries. The Ministry of health issues quality-control measures to the HMOs, testing them at least twice a year.

Now, I'm not going to get into too many details of how Israel's health care system runs - for that, you can listen to the podcast. I think the most important lesson to be learned is by looking at Israel's priorities in health care. They provide universal access to care while maintaining high quality and controlling costs. Sometimes this means you have to wait a little bit to see a specialist, or purchase supplemental insurance from your HMO to cover extra physical therapy sessions or a elected surgery, but the result is an overall healthier population at a lower cost.

Unfortunately, right now the U.S. health care system looks very little like Israel's. Rising health care costs leave a growing number of people without adequate health care, including the nearly 50 million people who are uninsured. The availability of health care resources is often based on ability to pay rather than need. Finding access to quality health care services is difficult for many. The costs of health care threaten the financial health of millions of individuals and families and the long-term financial stability of our nation.

Congress has the opportunity to change this in the coming months, and I hope that they will look to Israel to understand how universal coverage doesn't have to compromise quality or cost. Senators and Representatives will return to their home states and districts during the month of August, giving you the opportunity to tell them that we need comprehensive health care reform this year. Israel has figured it out, so why can't we?

Youth Are the Future: A NFTY Perspective

2009-07-30T17:36:56Z

by Molly Goldberg
Social Action Vice President of the Missouri Valley Region of the North American Federation of Temple Youth
(Originally posted on RACBlog)

You're sitting in your temple's social hall contemplating the meaning of the week's Torah portion or synagogue office proof reading the newsletter or sanctuary harmonizing in Adon Alom. You take a minute to think: who will be contemplating the Torah here, five years from now? Who will proof read the newsletter in ten? Who will lead my congregation twenty years from now? Fifty?

Your answer: the youth. Those wild kids who eat too much pizza and hand out goldfish at the Purim carnival are the future of American Reform Jewry. URJ President Rabbi Eric Yoffie stated the work that adults have to do: We must offer our teenagers inspiration and direction, learning and worship, teachers and role models who will amplify for them the heartbeat of our precious heritage so that it can be heard above the noisy rhythms of modern life.

Those noisy rhythms life for a teenager (such as rap, cell phone calls, constant instruction) can be overwhelming. Therefore, it is crucial that you, adult leadership, meet the youth on our level. Similarly, we, as the youth, have a responsibility to you.

In NFTY, we base our projects on the 5 A's of social action: Awareness, Assessment, Action, Alliance, and Advocacy. The Alliance encourages youth to better social action by sharing our commitment with like-minded people. While partnerships between youth groups and our parent organizations may be difficult logistically, the reward is an amplified voice to positively impact change. We ought to foster these alliances. Many URJ congregations have social action committees, which are separate entities from the social justice work of the teenage NFTYites. If and when the two efforts consolidate, we, as a movement, will be closer to repairing the world and instilling global justice. Both the adult and youth leadership in our congregations must take part to make this partnership happen.

The RAC's Lirdof Tzedek: A Guide to Synagogue Social Action, published in 2001, suggests, "If your youth group is not involved in your greater synagogue social action program, we urge you to contact your Social Action Vice President (SAVP) and to begin to coordinate activities together. Your youth group will bring a wealth of both programmatic and human social action resources. Working together will not only produce more successful and larger social action projects, but also foster intergenerational relationships with your synagogue."

POTUS Makes an Ohio Pit Stop

2009-07-28T19:52:43Z

by Amy R. Kaplan
Director of Government Relations for the Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland
and Vice Chair of the URJ's Board of Trustees
(Originally posted on the RACBlog)

The normally relaxing nature of summer came to a brief, if temporary, end for me last week when President Barack Obama paid a visit to my town of Shaker Heights, Ohio. As some of you may know, on July 23, 2009, the President held a town hall rally focused on health care reform, an issue that has become his highest domestic priority. Held at Shaker Heights High School, the event galvanized our community for the 72 hours we had to prepare for it. It turns out that the White House doesn't provide much notice between selecting the site (Monday) and hosting the event (Thursday)!

As part of my job as the Director of Government Relations of the Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland, I travel often to Washington D.C. and Columbus, Ohio, to meet with federal and state elected officials, including members of Congress, their staff and occasionally with high-level officials of the Executive Branch. I also frequently get to attend events where superstar politicians speak. And though the thrill of face-to-face meetings with well-known politicians never disappears, the excitement I felt on my early trips to Washington has calmed over time. This was different, however. This time Obama wasn't just a candidate. This time he IS the President. And this time, he was coming to my town, speaking at the same high school from which my husband and I, and each of our three children, graduated.

Now, I should probably write about how inspired I was by the President's words, and I should stress how important health care reform is for our nation - for all of that is true. But what I took away most strongly from the experience was a sense of awe and admiration for the near-manic preparation by a not-so-small army of professionals. I have read about advance teams, Secret Service, White House security and press pools for years, but until I was surrounded by them (and taking orders from them!), I had no idea how much work was involved in getting the President in the door of a suburban high school for a 50-minute talk. From renting everything - stage, risers, enormous flag to use as a back-drop, lights, curtains and more - to the dogs and equipment that were used to sweep the building and all nearby vehicles, to the dozens of local police who diverted traffic from a near half-mile radius around the school, to the television trucks topped with enormous transmission towers, to the caterers bringing in food for the national press (local press were on their own), this was a mind-boggling logistical display.

And that was all before the President arrived! As we waited for President Obama to conclude his private meetings with elected officials and health care professionals on the second floor of the school, we encountered his personal staff who travel with him: professionals from the White House travel office, a photographer, members of his policy staff. Having the opportunity to greet Valerie Jarrett, the President's senior advisor, was a thrill. And every staff member we encountered was outgoing and engaging. I heard about the trip to Ghana that the White House travel staff took with the President. Another member of the staff stationed near the front lawn of my friend who lives across the street from the school, but had no way in to the rally, offered him a last minute ticket.

The other thrilling aspect of this event for me was more personal in nature. On the day before the rally, the White House phoned my congregation, The Temple-Tifereth Israel, asking for a rabbi to deliver the invocation, so not only did I get to see and hear the President, I was there to see and hear my own rabbi and dear friend, Rabbi Rosie Haim, recite the shehechyanu and invoke the blessings of the avot v'imahot before 1,600 of my neighbors.

And then, as quickly as it began, it was over. But for me and for Shaker Heights - my hometown and a community known widely for its beautiful homes, excellent schools and, most important, its 50-year commitment to racial diversity - the memories will linger. It's not often that you can say that on your summer vacation, you helped to welcome the President of the United States.

"I am equal and deserve equal protection"

2009-07-24T04:50:00Z

by Eliza Scheffler
Participant in the RAC's Machon Kaplan summer program for college students.
(Originally posted on the RACBlog)

Equal Rights Amendment: "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex."

Well, duh. Right?

Well... not duh. Technically, the equal protection of all people, regardless of sex, is not written into the United States Constitution.

The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), authored by Alice Paul, was first introduced in Congress in 1923. After it was passed in 1972, it was sent to the states for ratification. Only 35 states ratified the ERA by the deadline, 3 short of the needed 38 to adopt an amendment. Since 1982, the ERA has been reintroduced in every session of Congress. Yesterday, it was reintroduced by Representative Carolyn Maloney.

In America, women have risen to the highest levels of leadership. They educate our children, they serve in presidential cabinets, and they die for our nation on the front lines. The contributions that women make to society are invaluable. So how does one possibly argue that women should not be protected from sex discrimination with the ERA?

Those who oppose the amendment say we don't need it. Women have come so far without it. So, as long as we can speak freely, I guess we may as well scrap the First Amendment? I think not.

Women have come a long way. But there is still a long way to go. According to the AFL-CIO, "In 2007, women in the United States were paid 77 cents for every dollar men received for comparable work."

I don't think that the ERA alone will change society. Achieving equality for women is going to take a lot more than an amendment. At a Jewish Women International breakfast for interns on Financial Literacy, I learned that women are much less likely to negotiate their salaries and benefits, often leading to a significant gap in the starting salaries of men and women in comparable entry level positions. If we really want to be treated equally, women will have to confront our own behaviors that contribute to the inequalities.

Though it isn't a panacea, the ERA helps in significant ways. It creates a higher legal and judicial standard for rulings on sex discrimination, raising it to the level of discrimination based on race. It demonstrates to other countries that the United States is committed to equal protection under the law, thereby strengthening our argument when we advocate for subjects of discrimination anywhere. Additionally, the ERA will change attitudes by making it clear that a person's sex is not a factor in determining his or her rights.

If ever faced with a situation of sex discrimination, I'd like to be able to say, "I am equal and deserve equal protection. It says so right there in the Constitution." But right now, that's just not the case.

Want to show your support for the Equal Rights Amendment? Click here to send a message to Obama, Biden, your U.S. Senator or U.S. House Representative.

A National Treasure

2009-07-14T19:33:29Z

by dcc

In the days after we returned from our honeymoon the questions turned from "how was your trip" to "when should we expect kids?" With the whiplash of the wedding weekend only partly wearing off, neither of us was ready to strap ourselves in for these neck cracking questions. While not in the near future (10 years mom), kids are definitely part of our plan. We both want them and we both want to be as ready as possible for the huge responsibility that comes with that bundle of joy.

Kids, I have been told, are our most treasured resource. So it is somewhat surprising that it took a Supreme Court ruling to tell us that a strip search of a child in school is against the law.

But that is the tip of hypocritical iceberg: There is no universal law regulating the binding and physical restraint of children in schools. We could get bogged down in the minutia of Federal over-stepping or the lack luster funding of public education in this country but that would take away from the fact that in 38% of this country there are no laws against tying up a child when he or she is at school.

The Wall Street Journal reports that many --if not most-- of those who are restrained in schools have "learning disabilities such as autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder." The Journal goes on to cite a recent GAO study and antidotal evidence that the use of these methods has gone up and has become harmful and in some cases deadly.

I have spent my fair share of time in the classroom with troubling children as a religious school teacher but I will never pretend to understand what a public school teacher with 35 to 45 kids has to deal with on a daily basis. That being said I can't respect the school or the teacher that allows child abuse to take place. The parents, teachers and administrators all have a huge responsibility to teach our children so they can be the next Alexander Bell, Marie Curie, Neil Armstrong, Indra Nooyi or Barack Obama.

This is more acute when working with kids who live with disabilities. "Leviticus 19:14 reads, 'You shall not insult the deaf, or place a stumbling block before the blind.' There can no clearer teaching that we have an obligation to ensure equal access for all and to help facilitate the full participation of individuals with disabilities in religious and public life, as supported in a June 26, 2008 statement by Rabbi Lynne Landsberg, Senior Advisor on Disability Issues for the RAC and Rabbi David Saperstein, Director of the RAC.

As a society we need to actively remove the stumbling blocks before the blind; it isn't enough to simply not place them there in the first place. School should be a safe place for children, a place where they are free to dream of tomorrow. This also should be true for children living with disabilities. Tying a kid up does the child absolutely no good; it is short-sighted, cruel and clearly removes equal access to education.

If a teacher cannot control a child, then that teacher should seek additional help to regain control of the classroom, but never should we bind kids to desks or leave them in dark rooms alone. Treating children with disabilities like criminals is not the way to address problems that stem from things these kids cannot control.

There are things we can do about this issue. We can take part in our school boards regardless of having children in the schools. We can make sure our congregations find ways to include children (and adults) with disabilities in meaningful ways. We can call our representatives on a local level and ask them about abuse in our schools. Learn about the issues so you can take effective action. We all have a responsibility and it is one that I will take seriously when Abby and I have children and it is one that we take seriously now.

Healthcare Activists Look at Pinchas

2009-07-13T04:15:09Z

by Larry Kaufman
On behalf of the Just Congregations Healthcare Team
at Beth Emet - The Free Synagogue, Evanston, IL

When I'm called upon to prepare divrei Torah, my usual procedure is to look at the parasha and try to extract a message that will establish its relevance to my hearers or readers. But for this foray into Biblical explication, the procedure had to be recalibrated. I was invited to the bimah this past Shabbat to talk about the work of my congregation's Just Congregations Healthcare Team, and had to work backwards from its message to the sedrah.

Fortunately, the parasha was Pinchas, so the quandary dissipated. Pinchas not only deals directly with healthcare, beginning as it does with the end of a plague that has killed 24,000 Israelites, but it also stands out as a manifesto for taking action and standing up for one's rights, along with other parallels to our work as a Just Congregation. Now, since other Reform congregations and other faith communities share our concern, I invite others to latch onto our cause on its merits, if not on its connection to Pinchas.

As the parasha opens, our ancestors are still wandering in the wilderness, paralleling the economic wilderness which heightens our concern about healthcare and healthcare reform. Our congregations would at any time be concerned about millions of Americans without medical insurance - and 14,000 more losing it every day as it vanishes with their jobs -- al achat kama v'kama, how much more so are we concerned when the Jew in the next pew, and others of our friends and neighbors, are jobless and thus plunged into that coverage vacuum.

Without Moses or Joshua to lead us out of the wilderness, we have turned to Jonah - not the Jonah of the whale, but Rabbi Jonah Pesner, who has one whale of a mission in heading the Reform Movement's Just Congregations initiative, guiding Reform congregations to apply the principles of community organizing to the expressed needs of their communities.Rabbi Pesner's visit to Beth Emetlast year gave impetus to our Just Congregations process -- sharing stories, listening, and responding to specific cases when we can, but also seeking cures for the underlying causes through coalition efforts -- as our siddur suggests, joining hands with others and marching together.

Our Just Congregations stalwarts interviewed over one hundred Beth Emet members with a central question:What keeps you up at night? Among the pervasive concerns, health issues were a prime driver for congregants' insomnia: access to affordable providers, to social services, to 24/7.care for an elderly parent, to solutions for replacing the health insurance that disappeared along with their lost jobs.

If dozens of our congregants tell stories like these, think of the many more we haven't reached, or who have been reticent, and if these situations prevail in such numbers in our congregation, think about the prevalence of similar problems in the greater community. The situation mandates action; to know exactly what to do, we seek guidance both from the Torah, and from congregants who share our concerns.

We come to Pinchas remembering that the previous week's episode in the Biblical narrative closed as an enraged Pinchas summarily executed Zimri and his Midianite lover Cozbi, for publicly flaunting their idolatrous liaison. Now, as the new sedrah begins, Pinchas and the community are rewarded for his zealotry in upholding God's word.

The Rabbis are troubled by Pinchas taking matters into his own hands rather than following due process, but God's verdict in this case is clear -- in extreme circumstances, you seize the moment, and stamp out a dangerous situation before it spreads.Pinchas comes down to us as a meritorious symbol of zealotry, a positive role model for taking prompt action.

God now instructs Moses to do what God often instructs Moses to do when things get slow - take a census, or to use today-speak, compile a database.The people have some challenges ahead of them, as they get ready to take possession of their promised land, and it's important to know what and who their resources are.Our team has been working to take a census of our resources, to identify the people in our congregation who need help with health-related issues, the people who can provide help or at least access to it, and the social activists who can connect us to coalitions seeking to repair a broken system. The Reform movement, through our Religious Action Center and its coalition partners, is already on record as favoring a single payer solution, but ready to support lesser remedies that include a public option.The important thing is that we put the needs of people ahead of those of insurance companies.

We have invited the congregation to an open meeting in the interest of census and consensus - the two-way sharing of information, to learn what's on the mind of our concerned participants, and to hear suggestions from a panel of experts on affordable insurance, low-cost medical care, available social services ,and political action for improving the U.S. healthcare system.This will create a platform for deciding what to do next.

That platform will be built on the lesson extracted from part three of Pinchas, the tale of the daughters of Zelophehad.Living in a society where men owned all the real estate, the five brotherless sisters come to Moses to assert their right to inherit their father's property,

Moses consults with God, and the sisters prevail, not onlysecuring their own inheritance but establishing the ongoing right of women to inherit.Tradition says the favorable verdict was a direct outcome of the Z girls' proper presentation of Talmudic arguments - but the point we derive is the importance of standing up for one's rights, even, maybe especially, when they seem counter to the status quo.

The parasha continues with Godonce again sending Moses to a mountain-top, this time to view the promised land that Moses will not enter. Weary and too-often challenged, Moses reminds God of the need for succession planning, and the orderly designation of a new leader.Clearly he is now ready to fade off into the sunset.Moses's condition reminds us that we Jews are the fastest aging segment of the American population, making health care reform a parochial and personal issue as well as an expression of our universalistic concern with social justice.

In sum, Pinchas teaches us to be zealous in doing the right thing at the right time, to end a plague that menaces our community. It reminds us to start by tallying our own resources so we can move forward effectively. The daughters of Zelophehad role-model the need to speak up, to assert the right to affordable access to care, and coverage, for every member of our community and our society.As individuals, as congregations, and as coalition partners, we have to take our case to the highest levels:making sure our representatives in government hear our views, joining with our Reform movement leadership and our partners in other faith-based communities, in traveling out of the wilderness to a promised land of health care and social justice for all Americans, struggling or secure, young or old, employed or unemployed.

We are not only a Just Congregation, but also a just congregation, and our values demand that we be rodfei tzedek, pursuers of justice.We invite you to join your hands with ours as we march out of the healthcare wilderness.

This is the Week, Let's Make it Ours

2009-06-24T21:08:15Z

by Rachel Cohen
Eisendrath Legislative Assistant at the Religious Action Center
(Originally published on the RACBlog)

Have you ever thought about taking action on climate change and wondered, "does my voice really matter?" If so, then today is your day! Congress is about to vote on the most important piece of climate and energy legislation in years, and many members of the House of Representatives (especially the "Blue Dog" Democrats) remain undecided. Despite weeks of drafts and compromises to bring the American Clean Energy and Security Act (H.R. 2454) to this point, much uncertainty about the bill and its fate remains. Many of our own partners in the faith community are unsatisfied with the aid provided to the most vulnerable developing nations to adapt to climate change, and some of the most progressive environmental groups claim that targets for emissions reductions and renewable energy are insufficient to the challenge we face. And of course, there are still those who refuse to take any action on climate and energy.

To be clear, this bill is far from perfect. Still, the American Clean Energy and Security Act is a historic piece of legislation - the first climate bill to get to the House floor at all - and we must do all we can to strengthen the bill AND move the process forward. As we struggle to rebuild our economy, we need clean energy legislation to unleash investments and jobs building wind farms, installing solar panels, and weatherizing and retrofitting homes. These clean, green jobs will help get our country back on track and protect our planet.

As the landmark climate change report released last week and carbon calculator recently unveiled in Midtown Manhattan demonstrate yet again, this is a truly urgent issue. We are already seeing the effects of climate change - not just in low-lying or drought-prone regions around the world - but all across the U.S., and if we do not move forward now, we may not be able to avoid the worst impacts. So this is the time for action; the time for each and every one of us to speak up and call on our elected officials to lead the way to strong domestic laws, and a global deal on climate change at Copenhagen later this year.

Expect a week filled with long nights and hard fights on the Hill, and follow the debate - through the RAC's blog and special climate resources, Facebook, and Twitter pages - and on the front pages of your favorite news outlets and advocacy groups. Call or write your Member of Congress and urge him or her to take action for a clean energy future TODAY, and talk about the issue that brings you to the climate and energy debate (green jobs, environmental justice, clean energy, wildlife protection, etc). And, of course, let us know how we can help you make your voice even louder. Because if there was ever a time to speak up, this is it.

Why I Am Fasting for Darfur

2009-06-16T17:24:27Z

by Rabbi David Saperstein
(Originally posted on the RACBlog)

Today I find myself once again fasting for Darfur. My first fast for Darfur, which I did only a few days after being arrested with Representative John Lewis, four other members of Congress, and leaders of Darfur advocacy groups, was undertaken to underline the urgency of the suffering in the internally displaced persons camps in Darfur after President Bashir had expelled over a dozen aid groups from the region.

Now, though, three months later, as I take up the same fast again, the situation has not materially improved. Aid groups report that while they have covered some gaps, their efforts are neither sustainable nor sufficient. Food and other supplies have been unable to be pre-positioned before the rainy season in necessary amounts. Aid groups report that hunger and water-borne diseases will spread in the rainy season, with feared results of mass migration. Children are disproportionately susceptible to the results of insufficient sanitation, food and medical supplies. Families in other parts of Sudan also suffer as aid groups were pushed out.

All this while our hopes for a lasting peace in Sudan also dwindle, as reports of clashes in South Sudan has raised death rates to levels even higher than that of Darfur.

On my last day of fasting, I am honored that rabbis from around the world will join in the fast. Fasting is a traditional part of Judaism, usually accompanying the memory of a great tragedy or deep repentance. But we cannot let this fast be a yearly activity, as our traditional fasts are. If that is the case, it will mean the world will have allowed the children of Darfur to slowly die, not the quick deaths at the hands of the Janjaweed, but slow deaths of hunger and disease, while promises and negotiations fail to return life-saving aid to these displaced people. Let us do everything possible to ensure that this will be the last fast necessary to draw attention to the urgent need for both relief and long-lasting peace for the people of Sudan.

Together, activists around the world have committed to continuously pounding the drumbeat for Darfur, and Special Envoy Gration is working hard to negotiate a restoration of the humanitarian aid and to restart a just peace process and recent reports are that he is making progress in his negotiations. Yet they have still not been able to stop the suffering that is at once urgent and slow-moving. Negotiations about returning aid groups have not yet achieved real results. So, the stomachs of one group of our nation's moral leaders will be hungering this Thursday to draw attention to people who are dying - urging the restoration of aid to the people of Sudan.

Rabbis who wish to join the last day of Rabbi Saperstein's fast on Thursday, June 18, can RSVP here.

Eulogy for Dr. Tiller

2009-06-09T17:49:42Z

by Rabbi David N.Young
(Originally posted on the RACBlog and Rabbi Young's Blog)

The poet Marcia Falk adapted a poem ascribed only to the name Zelda, called "Each of Us Has a Name," which reads in part:

Each of us has a name given by the source of life and given by our parents

Each of us has a name given by our stature and our smile and given by what we wear

Each of us has a name given by our enemies and given by our love

[On Sunday, May 31st] in Wichita, KS, a man whose name is known to many in the political, social action, and medical communities was shot and killed in his church. He was serving as an usher, handing out programs much like our Shabbat greeters do here at Temple Sinai. His wife was singing in the choir when a man walked in, shot and killed Dr. George Tiller, and ran away.

Dr. Tiller made a name for himself, given to him in many forms. He was named a friend and supporter of Kathleen Sebelius, our current Health and Human Services Secretary. He was dubbed "Tiller the Baby Killer" by Bill O'Reilly. He was labeled hero by the hundreds of cards and letters that line the walls of the Women's Health Care Center. He was named "Godless Murderer," and "Church-Going Martyr," in the same article of the Wichita daily newspaper. He was called father to four, and grandfather to 10.

I have been to Wichita only once -- April 9th to 15th, 2006. Natalie and I met Dr. Tiller, and spent time with him in his clinic for a week. We did not want to go, but to us there was no real choice. About a month before our ordination and investiture from HUC, Natalie was 34 weeks pregnant, and we discovered that the baby had microcephaly and lissencephaly. In plain English, the head was too small, and the brain was not developing. The first, second, and third opinions all told us the same thing. Our baby would not live outside the womb. So Natalie and I made the difficult decision to terminate the pregnancy.

In the United States, abortion is legal, but it is up to the states to determine limitations or restrictions on these laws. The Women's Health Care Center in Wichita is one of three locations in the US that legally performs late-term abortions, or abortions after the 21st week of pregnancy. Dr. Tiller was referred to us as the best of those three, so we quickly made plans to fly to Wichita.

Though I do not wish this experience on anyone, I can say that Dr. Tiller deserves his designation as a caring, compassionate professional in his field. My memory is weak about our time there, perhaps subconsciously as a defense mechanism. I remember fake wood paneling on the walls, worn couches in several different waiting areas, and sympathetic faces on everyone on staff.

We were there with three other couples, all going through the same thing, though for different reasons. Not one person was there because of an unwanted pregnancy. All of us were distraught that our babies could not survive outside the womb. Dr. Tiller and his staff guided us gently and honestly through this incredibly painful process.

Throughout our week there, Natalie spent a lot of time asleep or in a drug-induced haze, so I had a lot of time to sit in our hotel room and think. I kept a journal when I could handle it emotionally, and I read. I read emails and magazines, and studied a little Mishnah. I took in the words of Tractate Niddah (5:3) which says, "A day-old son who dies is to his father and mother like a full bridegroom." This phrase stuck in my mind, especially the use of the word "bridegroom." There are many words the Talmud uses to distinguish different stages of life. It could have said elderly man, full-grown son, or young man with equal gravity to describe a parent's loss. Using "bridegroom" must be intentional, and it works on two fronts.

The first is independence. A bridegroom is clearly of an age where the parents have completed raising the child until he is ready to be on his own. They know who he is, the kind of person he is, what interests he has, and what his aspirations are. Their loss equals the loss of a fully developed human being, no matter what age he is.

The second speaks to emptiness. Even before a woman gets pregnant, she is making plans for the child's life. When a couple discovers that they are going to have a child, the plans begin. If this is the birthday, then this will the Bar Mitzvah. This will be graduation, and hopefully around here is the chuppah. Who knows, maybe by this year we'll be grandparents! Describing the loss as "like a full bridegroom" reminds us that we are going to miss out on every simchah that might have been, from birth to the wedding and beyond.

Dr. Tiller had an understanding of this pain, perhaps better than anyone who has never gone through it personally. As a doctor he was upfront about everything he was about to do and everything we needed to do to make things go well. When we arrived, he sat all four couples down and told us everything that was going to happen. He showed us the instruments he was going to use. He told us how the drugs would make the women feel. He told them flat out that it was going to hurt and she needed to be ready. He was brutally honest. He told us that he had lost a patient about a year and a half prior to our visit. He asked if we had questions, and when challenged, he answered respectfully and honestly.

He also asked about us. He wanted to know who we were, what we did, and how we lived as couples and families. When it came out that Natalie and I were about to become Jewish clergy, he mentioned that his on-staff chaplain was not Jewish, but he wrote down the name and number of a local Reform rabbi who we might want to talk to. Admittedly, we did not use the number. So the next evening, that rabbi called us in our hotel room. He said Dr. Tiller had called the synagogue, let them know we were in town, and said he suspected we weren't in a place where we could make the first move. He invited us to Passover Seder at his home two nights later, and said we could decide anytime up to dessert being served that we wanted to show up, and that he would understand if we wanted to keep to ourselves. All because Dr. Tiller cared enough to make sure someone was reaching out to us.

Judaism acknowledges that life is sacred. Dr. Tiller personified the value of pikuach nefesh, saving a life, putting his own life at risk every day in order to fulfill this value. Jewish tradition dictates that before Kaddish we do not say the name of non-Jews unless they fall under the category of gerei tzedek, the righteous gentiles who live ethical and valiant lives. In that vein we will add Dr. Tiller to Temple Sinai's Kaddish list tonight, honoring him as a ger tzedek.

In the words of Dr. Cheryl Gutmann, Chair of the Commission on Social Action of Reform Judaism: "As our hearts and prayers go out to Dr. Tiller's family, we think of his personal heroism and that of the other brave and courageous providers and professionals who are part of reproductive health centers across this country."

Zelda's poem closes:

Each of us has a name given by our celebrations and given by our work

Each of us has a name given by the sea and given by our death

Zichrono livrachah: May his name be remembered for a blessing.

Saperstein Video Blogs About Obama's Cairo Speech

2009-06-08T14:25:47Z

by Kate Bigam
(Originally posted on the RACBlog)

After President Barack Obama addressed the Muslim community in a speech in Cairo, Egypt, Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the RAC, recorded a video response to the speech for Patheos.com, a newly launched religion website.

Check out Patheos' page on the Obama speech, where you can watch video responses from Rabbi Saperstein and from Eboo Patel, Director of the Interfaith Youth Core. Responses have also been posted from religious leaders across the country representing various faiths. Here's Rabbi Saperstein's take:

The Reform Movement also responded to the President's speech in an official statement. In it, Rabbi Saperstein says:

We are hopeful that today's speech, which was broad in its scope and ambition, will form a solid basis for U.S. Middle East policy. History has shown that U.S. leadership is critical to advancing the cause of peace. To that end, we look forward to working with President Obama, Prime Minister Netanyahu and others to realize a peaceful and secure future for Israel and her neighbors.

For more Jewish reactions to the Cairo speech, JTA has a nice round-up of organizations' responses. What did you think of the speech?

Ask Judge Sotomayor

2009-06-02T14:07:43Z

by Jessica Weiser
(Originally posted on the RACBlog)

So, we have a nominee in the pipeline. Now what? The confirmation of a Supreme Court Justice does not happen overnight. In fact, it takes an average of 72 days for a nominee to go from being named to being confirmed. (If your knowledge on the judicial nominations process is a bit rusty, check out the RAC's one page summary of the nominations process and the ways that you can have an impact.)

The next major landmark in the process will be the Senate Judiciary Committee's hearing on Judge Sotomayor's nomination.

The hearing is a chance for Senators, after reviewing Judge Sotomayor's record and her opinions in various cases, to ask her questions about her approach to the law and her stances on various legal issues.

And, it is a chance for the American public, via these Senators, to pose questions to Judge Sotomayor. That is why the RAC has set up a website (www.askjudgesotomayor.com) where you can submit questions that you want members of the Senate Judiciary Committee to ask Judge Sotomayor during her hearing. We will compile all of the questions that are submitted and communicate with the Committee to be sure that some of them are raised. Please submit any questions that you would like raised and forward the link to friends who are also interested in finding out more about Judge Sotomayor.

Also, check out this great article from yesterday's print edition of the Chicago Tribune (an expanded version of a blog post about the RAC on the Tribune's site earlier this week), highlighting the RAC's work on judicial nominations and enumerating the reasons why other religious organizations should get involved!

Obama at the National Archives: Political Theatre at Its Most Powerful

2009-05-22T02:21:19Z

by Mark J. Pelavin
(Originally published on the RACBlog)

Today's speech by President Obama laying out his plan for closing the detainee center at Guantanamo Bay was a masterful example of the power of political theatre, in all the best senses of that term. I was honored to be in the Rotunda of the National Archives to hear the President speak.

As at any theatre performance, even before the performers take the stage, you take note of the set. By choosing to speak at the National Archives, flanked by the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, the President's embrace of the rule of law was dramatically reciprocated; he was, in turn, embraced by our most fundamental laws.

You also take note of the audience. President Obama's exhortation to adhere to the rule of law was emphatically clear, especially to the front row of his audience which included the Attorney General; the Secretaries of State, Defense, Homeland Security; the Director of the CIA; and the National Security Advisor. Every good director knows you need to have the key characters on stage at the key moments. Their future actions will be shaped by what they hear.

What about the script? The script, the message, must be at the heart of great theatre. And this was the key to the power of today's speech. The President knew what he wanted to say, he spoke to both our loftiest values and to the gritty specifics of the situation. He grounded his approach in our most deeply-held values, but in doing so made clear that his approach was not about idealism for idealism's sake. He said:

We uphold our most cherished values not only because doing so is right, but because it strengthens our country and keeps us safe. Time and again, our values have been our best national security asset - in war and peace; in times of ease and in eras of upheaval.

All of this, of course, is not to say that there is no room for substantive disagreement. Although we are encouraged by President Obama's plan to close the Detention Center at Guantanamo Bay and reform the process through which detainees currently held there will be brought to justice, the Reform Movement continues to have concerns about the use of the Military Commissions system to try detainees and by the abuse of the State Secrets Privilege.

Finally a word about the performer. I found this to be among the President's most effective speeches (and, yes, that's saying a lot). He was clear about what he was doing and why, but never cocky. He was forceful, but not bullying. As he usually does at his most effective, he connected his life story with the policy he was expounding.

It's easy, too easy, to write off the atmospherics of speeches as mere staging. Sometimes, though, the theatricality of an event can do exactly what great theater can do - help us to better understand our world.

Mr. Netanyahu Comes to Washington

2009-05-18T20:56:25Z

by Mark J. Pelavin
(Originally posted on the RACblog)
Mark J. Pelavin is Associate Director of the Religious Action Center as well as Director of the Commission on Interreligious Affairs of Reform Judaism.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is due in Washington this week for his first meetings with President Obama. The meetings will kick off a major diplomatic campaign for the President, who will welcome the Prime Minster, President Mubarak of Egypt and President Abbas of the Palestinian Authority between now and the end of the month. According to the White House, "With each of them, the President will discuss ways the United States can strengthen and deepen our partnerships, as well as the steps all parties should take to help achieve peace between Israelis and Palestinians and between Israel and the Arab states."

There is lots of interesting advance commentary about the meeting in this weekend's papers. Here are some of the best "curtain raisers:"

Writing in The New Republic, Shmuel Rosner, who blogs at Rosner's Domain on the Jerusalem Post's website, offers this fairly optimistic analysis. Here's a key paragraph:

... the outlook of these two leaders is much more alike than commonly thought. The meeting between them will be a delicate dance of the inner realist in both: In the updated version of Netanyahu, Obama will find a leader that's looking for practical solutions for the overwhelming problems he has to deal with. In the post-election version of Obama, Netanyahu will find the leader who still carries the slogan of "change," but at least in the international arena is quite far from being the wide-eyed naïf that some people had hoped he will be. The tension surely has the potential to explode. But for the time being, it is a dance. And for every couple, as important as this first dance might be, the important question is whether this will be followed by a second dance."

Over at the New York Times, Jeffery Goldberg, whose blog on the Atlantic website can (and should) be read here, focus on the Prime Minister's thinking on Iran.

... Netanyahu faces the daunting task of maintaining Israel's relationship with the United States, while at the same time forestalling Iran's nuclear program. If Iran gains nuclear capacity, Israel will have judged him a failure as prime minister; if he does serious damage to his country's standing in Washington, he will have failed as well.

I was also very interested in this full page ad, addressed to President Obama, which the Israeli Policy Forum ran in the New York Times. As the New York Jewish Week's Jim Besser notes here, it is quite an usual "welcome letter" for an Israeli Prime Minster.

Finally, Jim Besser (yes, him again), in the New York Jewish Week, has this very good overview of what to expect (with a focus on the atmospherics).

What do you think we should expect? What will mark this visit as a success?

Sustainability Conference a Huge Step Forward for American Jewish Community

2009-05-18T14:51:33Z

by Rachel Cohen
(Originally posted on the RACblog)
Rachel Cohen is an Eisendrath Legislative Assistant at the Religious Action Center.

It's always an exciting moment when the four main streams of American Judaism - not to mention a dozen other national Jewish organizations from the JCC Association to the Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education - join together as part a single unified initiative. That is exactly what happened when the RAC's Rabbi David Saperstein, Jesse Paikin of the URJ Camps Department and I represented the URJ this week at a meeting of more than 40 leaders from across the broad spectrum of the organized American Jewish community for the first national Jewish Sustainability Conference.

On May 11 and 12, we gathered at the incredible Pearlstone Conference and Retreat Center outside Baltimore for two days of learning, workshops, and discussion on sustainability. This complex and often misunderstood terms has many implications but, at its core, sustainability means creating communities that meet the basic human needs of all of their members by rethinking and often limiting both what we take from the natural world and the by-products that we put into the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the public spaces we enjoy together. We came to understand how the American Jewish community can unite around the goal of building safer, healthier communities for ourselves and our children based on these fundamental principles. The Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life (COEJL), a program of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, organized and sponsored this historic gathering and is poised to lead the way toward a more sustainable Jewish community following the Conference.

We began the conversation by talking about buildings, a shared foundation for all of our organizations and the source of 30% of our operating costs and an equal percentage of our carbon emissions. The buildings owned and operated by the Union for Reform Judaism, with our 900 synagogues and 12 camps across the United States and Canada, have a massive impact on the environment. We are already taking steps forward as a Movement - through our online Greening Reform Judaism initiative and extensive programs at many of our synagogues and camps - to reducing our environmental impact and even leaving a positive footprint on our natural world.

While the topic of 'greening' has become all the rage in recent years, rarely does the conversation extend beyond how we can reduce our carbon footprint and cut our energy bills by changing a few light bulbs or turning down the thermostat. However, at the Conference we learned about how to frame all of the choices we make as individuals and communities- from transportation choices to the type of food we eat (local, organic, vegetarian, etc) to the materials and labor practices that go into the products we purchase - with an eye toward investing in systems that are healthier for everyone. This means much more than just "greening" our facilities, though that is certainly a wonderful and important place to start. When we see environmental issues within the larger framework of building sustainable futures, we come to understand that we can all take steps toward a healthier world without decreasing our standard of living or further tightening our already short budgets.

Building communities and institutions that can coexist with our surroundings is not only essential for our long-term ecological survival, but also part of a Jewish imperative to protect vulnerable communities, refrain from activities that destroy our natural resources, and ensure opportunities for present and future generations to thrive in a healthy environment. This is true sustainability, and it is an idea that all Jewish communities can agree on.

It was inspiring to join with leaders from so many Jewish organizations that are already taking steps toward sustainability in their own communities. The participants hope that by joining their efforts, the American Jewish community can become a leader in promoting sustainable communities. However, my colleagues and I understand that our meeting this week was only the first step on a long journey toward creating a more educated, aware, and active community of practice on this issue. We are committed to learning from each other and the efforts of our institutions, and working together as a unified Jewish community toward this common goal. And we hope you will join us along the way!

To get involved, please visit us and sign up for our new Greening Reform Judaism online community. And stay tuned for more ideas on what you, your synagogue, and your community can do to not just to 'go green,' but to become truly sustainable!

For more information on the Jewish Sustainability Conference, see the JCPA Press Release.

Reflections on the AIPAC Conference

2009-05-07T19:52:53Z

by Rabbi David Jay Kaufman
(Originally posted on the RACblog)
Rabbi David Jay Kaufman is the rabbi at Temple B'nai Jeshurun in Des Moines, Iowa. All views expressed are his own.

There is a false perception that somehow an organization of the political right. Anti-Israel groups have worked hard to give people that false impression. Many in the Jewish community see AIPAC also (wrongly) as an advocate for the Israeli political right. In many ways, Jewish peace groups are responsible for that falsity. One need only look at the depth and breadth of the AIPAC Policy Conference to see the dramatic error in those false conceptions of AIPAC.

AIPAC is a bi-partisan organization seeking to maintain and strengthen the bonds of friendship between the United States and Israel. It does not advocate for or against specific policies of the nation of Israel. AIPAC's lobbying agenda this year included three things, all of which were sponsored by leading Senators and Representatives from both parties.

First, efforts need to be strengthened to increase the diplomatic pressure put upon Iran to cease its development of nuclear weaponry and to allow its nuclear efforts, regardless of whether they are intended for peaceful purposes as Iran contends or for military purposes as others contend, to be monitored far more closely by the IAEA. Failing this effort, should Iran obtain a nuclear weapon, the Middle East will become a new home for nuclear proliferation as other nations will follow in their footsteps. Additionally, as a grossly destabilizing force in the Middle East, Iran's power and influence would be strengthened, something that bodes ill for the future of the region. To have the leading sponsor of terrorism in the world in possession of nuclear weaponry will enhance the threat that all terrorist organizations backed by Iran pose to Iran's enemies, which includes at the top of the list, Israel and the United States. Furthermore, to have Iran, which has threatened Israel's demise, in possession of the means to execute that plan is simply unconscionable. Thus, the Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act is being introduced in the House and Senate by leading members of both parties in the hope of achieving an end to Iran's nuclear weapons ambitions short of military action by strengthening sanctions against Iran.

Second, as there is a new administration and new Congress in Washington, there is a desire to reiterate the basic points essential to maintaining a positive working relationship between the United States and Israel regarding the peace process. To that end, a letter was written to President Obama, again with bipartisan origin, asking that the fundamental principles of the peace process be maintained, namely that the US must continue to insist that the Palestinians recognize Israel's right to exist, that they renounce terror, and that they abide by previous resolutions. This is particularly important considering efforts to form a unity government including Hamas, which does not recognize Israel's right to exist, promotes and practices terror, and refuses to abide by previous resolutions. Additionally, the administration is asked to promote a bi-lateral solution to the crisis between the Israelis and Palestinians with the understanding that imposed solutions have failed to achieve positive results. The parties must negotiate face to face with each other.

Third, maintaining the security assistance to Israel and passing the entire foreign aid bill is essential. The assistance is vital to Israel's security and since 75% of the money given in aid is spent in the US, foreign aid also provides a stimulus to our economy.

These three issues have overwhelming bipartisan support.

As I listened to Shimon Peres, the President of Israel - once vilified in Israel for his dovish attitudes by its political right and who spent almost his entire speech talking about Israel's pursuit of peace - being shouted down by American Jewish peace protestors chanting "Free Gaza," as if this Nobel Prize winning peace maker wanted something other than freedom for the people of Gaza, I felt strengthened. Peres' voice of peace, honored by AIPAC, was far more powerful than the "peace protesters" voices in support of ignorant hatred. I wanted to call out to those souls blinded by hatred of their fellow Jews, "Free them from Hamas! Free them from hatred!" But to have interrupted Shimon Peres again would have been to insult the desire for peace, because that desire was the central theme of his speech that day and that desire has been the central theme of his life. Three misguided protestors brought that point home all the stronger.

The first protestor shouted without listening as he said, "It is clear in our eyes that peace may require painful compromises, difficult concessions. Compromises require two conditions. First, peace must be real, lasting, mutually respected. We have to guarantee that our children - actually, all children - will be free from war, will breathe the fresh air of peace - all children, from all nations, from all parties. And then, secondly, peace should enable Israel to protect its people, to realize the fundamental responsibility of a free government, namely to defend its people from harm, to enable them to meet opportunities."

The second protested jeered without caring as he said, "The same is true for the future of the Palestinian people as well. I say it loudly, because I believe in it more fondly. The Palestinian people have the right to govern themselves. We don't want to be their masters. They have the right to invest their resources, to direct aid to civil high tech, not military rocket - to books, not bombs - to their people, so their people can be both free and prosperous, free from fear, free from hunger."

The third protester stood and blotted out his memory when he remembered, "I can still see with my eyes and feel with my heart when President Sadat landed from Egypt. We thought he came from the moon. If Anwar Sadat had not courageously taken the one-hour flight between Cairo and Jerusalem, I doubt peace would be achieved. We were ready. He showed his readiness."

And at the conclusion of his speech, he might as well have been speaking to those protestors when he said:

"Ladies and gentlemen, to know the future you have to remember our history. Calling history is actually remembering the past. But as you know, we are pragmatic people. So when Moses came down from Mount Sinai, he turned to his people and called them. "People, listen, Israel. Shema Yisrael." He asked them - he asked us - to listen, so we shall be able to hear the prophetic message, the mountainous music of peace and justice to this very day. But as you know, we are pragmatists. So the people replied, "We shall do and listen. Naaseh Venishma."

AIPAC is an organization that includes large numbers of Christian supporters of Israel from every ethnicity in America, of every economic level, and of walk of political life. It is an organization for all of those who support Israel's security and advocate for its peaceful future. It's membership does not by any means all agree on the ways to go about achieving those goals, but that membership understands that the friendship between the United States and Israel is essential to them and mutually beneficial. If only more of us listened, perhaps more of us would do the right things. Naaseh v'nishma!

Od yavo shalom aleinu v'al kol Yisrael v'al kol amim. Some day peace will come for us, for all of the people of Israel, and for all peoples.

Smell the Justice of Coffee! And Chocolate! And Flowers!

2009-05-06T16:33:48Z

by Micaela Hellman-Tincher
(Originally posted on the RACblog)
Micaela Hellman-Tincher is an Eisendrath Legislative Assistant at the Religious Action Center.

Special thanks to Legislative Assistant Rachel Cohen for her contributions to this post.

This weekend, you can help set a world record AND build a more equitable and environmentally sustainable global economy simply by taking a coffee break. A Fair Trade coffee break, that is. On and around May 9th, join activists and concerned global citizens to celebrate World Fair Trade Day by indulging in a cup of Fair Trade coffee, chomping on a Fair Trade chocolate bar, or giving Fair Trade flowers to a loved one. To learn more about the World's Largest Fair Trade Coffee Break, check out their website for tips on planning an event (even tips on making sure that your event- like Fair Trade coffee- is environmentally conscious) or finding one near you.

Fair Trade certified products are produced in an environmentally sustainable manner by workers earning good wages, working under safe conditions, and often participating in cooperatives that democratically decide how to invest profits into their communities. Non Fair-Trade coffee, on the other hand, is often sold through middle-men who demand that local farmers sell at very low prices to ensure their own profits despite the constant flux in world coffee prices. Farmers end up losing money when they are forced to sell at prices lower than the cost of production, creating a cycle of debt. This system also often encourages clear cutting forests and other environmentally degrading practices that cut short-term costs at the expense of sustainable growth.

Introducing Fair Trade products to your home, school, workplace, and congregation is an easy way to start a conversation about global responsibility just by switching coffee brands. While it may cost a little more, you can be sure that your coffee and other Fair Trade products are made in a way that encourages community growth and environmental protection, rather than the exploitation of workers and the planet. Equal Exchange has faith resources that can help you begin the discussion in your synagogue and community.

It is easy to find Fair Trade products. Just look for a Fair Trade certification label at the grocery store (a good guide of products can be found here), or order online.

Can't get enough fair trade? After your coffee break, buy fair trade flowers or chocolate for Mother's Day and throughout the year. As Transfair's website explains, these gifts will not only please your mom, but also moms everywhere who benefit from the higher wages, more sustainable environments and social programs that are possible through fair trade certification.

Crack the Disparity

2009-05-06T14:35:10Z

by Jason Fenster
(Originally posted on the RACblog)
Jason Fenster is an Eisendrath Legislative Assistant at the Religious Action Center.

Last week the Crack the Disparity Coalition held its second annual (and last) lobby day seeking to reform the egregious crack-powder cocaine sentencing disparity.

The lobby day was a very exciting experience. We kicked off the day with speeches from Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA), the lead sponsor one of the legislative options, Hilary Shelton of the NAACP, and Rabbi Saperstein, who delivered an inspirational and rousing speech that can be found here. There were people from across the country: community leaders, clergy, educators, and concerned citizens. They came and spoke to their Senators and Representatives about a foolish drug policy that has been a blemish on the American criminal justice system for over two decades.

For those unfamiliar with the problem, our current sentencing policy creates a 100:1 disparity between crack and powder cocaine. In practice, this means that for 5 grams (the weight of about 2 sugar packets) of crack, a person gets a mandatory minimum of 5 years in prison. The trigger for that same 5-year sentence when it comes to powder cocaine is 500 grams (the weight of about 10 Mr. Goodbars). While there are countless reasons that this policy is foolish and ineffective, the most troubling statistic I have encountered is that while 1/3 of crack users are Black, they account for 81.8% of defendants (page 4 of this Sentencing Project report). Clearly, a policy with such severe racial implications ought to be addressed.

With an ever-booming prison population, it is crucial that we start taking a serious look at the failed War on Drugs and how we can and must reform our policy. Thankfully, the tide is shifting and, more and more, people and authorities are recognizing the importance of instilling justice and fairness into our drug policy. In the last week there have been editorials urging sentencing policy reform in the Philadelphia Inquirer (4/27), Huffington Post (4/28), New York Times (4/30) and Boston Globe (5/1) as well as calls from the Justice Department and President to eliminate the crack-cocaine sentencing disparity. (Time Magazine also had an interesting article last week that received a lot of buzz. It discussed the effectiveness of decriminalization in Portugal as a model for national drug reform).

As I mentioned before, this year was the second annual and last national lobby day crack reform because this year, we are going to win. We have been waiting 23 years and, as Rabbi Saperstein said: "Together we can, we must and we will succeed."

Earth Day: Door to Door L'Dor va Dor

2009-04-22T16:08:03Z

By Barbara Lerman-Golomb
(Originally posted on the RACblog)
Barbara Lerman-Golomb is a member of the Commission on Social Action and the Northeast Camp Commission. She is the Director of Education and Outreach for Hazon and an author, environmental activist and experiential educator. All views expressed are her own.

There's no question about it, "green" is in and not just on Tu B'Shvat and Earth Day. For me, this is taking some getting used to since it's been out for so long. But while "green" may be in, according to a Pew Research Center poll taken a week before the inauguration, global warming ranks dead last on the public's list of concerns.

I first started talking publicly about global warming over 15 years ago, before it became the issue du jour - when it was still called "global warming" and not the more accurate "global climate change." Common sense and public health idrew me to it. I'm also predisposed to having a penchant for underdog causes, which to borrow a phrase from Al Vorspan, Director Emeritus of the Commission on Social Action, is what being a nudnick for social justice is all about.

In 1999, I was living in rural New Jersey when it became one of the first states to deregulate its electricity. I was a volunteer for an inter-religious group called Partners for Environmental Quality, now GreenFaith, which was instrumental in bringing a renewable energy company, Green Mountain, into the state. We were going "door to door" trying to encourage houses of worship and their congregants to purchase renewable energy. It was a hard sell considering they still had to pay for energy through their regular public utility. (It wasn't much easier when I ran a fund raiser at my synagogue in 2000 selling compact fluorescent light bulbs - CFLs - for $10.00 a pop when you could get a regular incandescent bulb for 99 cents!) My argument was always the same: Making lifestyle choices like purchasing renewable energy is simply the right thing to do. I went "door to door" for l' dor va dor.

Renewable energy has remained a hard sell even though many public utilities make it easier by allowing you to purchase it directly through your regular energy bill. The proposed national Renewable Electricity Standard (RES) would require utilities to generate at least 25% of their power by 2025 from renewables such as wind, solar and geothermal, which can be supplying a much greater proportion of America's energy needs. This would create a large and increasing market for clean, renewable sources, reduce global warming pollution, create jobs, and save consumers money. As citizens we can begin to do our part by urging our representatives to sign on as co-sponsors of this bill.

When I spoke at synagogues and churches and uttered the scientific term "global warming" those many years ago, people's eyes glazed over. The devastating statistics and disaster scenarios were too doomsday-ish. So, I started opening with a Woody Allen joke to lessen the blow before going into the urgent need to take pekuach nefesh action. It became more difficult to soften the blow when I began speaking on panels with real people living in small island states and developing nations who were already experiencing the affects of flooding or drought, already becoming climate refugees;" or after the record deadly heat waves sweeping across Europe; or after Hurricane Katrina and other extreme weather patterns.

The energy issue, in general, is confusing: trying to figure out the most economic and efficient way to deal with emissions of heat-trapping gases; trying to decipher carbon offsets, carbon trading, carbon tax, carbon caps, and cap and dividend. To add to the confusion, whenever I went out to do my talks and I touted energy that was CO2 free, invariably someone in the audience would bring up nuclear power. In the height of the No-Nukes era, when I was a 19-year-old college student, I made a public service film about the dangers of nuclear power with a Japanese physicist and Cat Stevens singing "Where Do the Children Play?" in the background. As we know, this issue hasn't gotten any easier to address.

Fortunately, there are some creative people out there who see the challenge of solving the energy issue as a chance to put on our global and American ingenuity "thinking caps." But even with the current administration on board and great minds working on the problem, we can not become complacent. We need to move global warming from the issue du jour to the main menu. For me, this has meant engaging in everyday energy actions, as well as continuing to advocate for clean air and clean water, protecting endangered species and national forests, supporting a healthy food system, increasing fuel efficiency and renewables, and moving towards a more sustainable energy policy. If I didn't, what kind of self-respecting nudnick for social justice would I be?

Housing Beyond Homelessness

2009-04-08T17:18:33Z

by Rabbi Asher Knight
Assistant Rabbi at Temple Emanuel in Dallas
(Originally published on the RACblog)

Our Jewish texts and sources say little about the Jewish responsibility to build affordable housing. We have no biblical command that mandates, "Thou shall build affordable housing for the needy in your community." Yet, we have texts that instruct us to share our bread with the hungry, to welcome the poor into our homes, and to clothe the naked (Isaiah 58:6-7). Our people and our tradition are well aware of the problems of poverty and homelessness. The challenge for us, as American and as Jews, is to broaden the scope of our thinking about housing beyond the homeless and poorest of the poor.

We must ask ourselves a few questions: How do we consider the needs of those who have housing but whose housing is insufficient? How do we advocate for those who are working one, two, or three jobs but cannot afford to live in neighborhoods that nourish their children's lives? How do we respond to the needs of the elderly - whose mobility may have decreased, whose income is fixed, and who cannot afford to sell their homes and move to corridors that have access to food, healthcare, and public transportation?

Our challenge is to think of housing more broadly than homelessness. Our challenge is to think about how our communities can be great places to live for people making all kinds of livings. The key is to understand that affordable housing doesn't just provide shelter. Affordable housing can affect our health, it can be an anchor for our children's education, it often boosts our economic position, and enhances our sense of safety and community.

In the area of affordable housing, Temple Emanu-El is engaging in both study and action.
In late March 2009 our community began building our fifth home with Habitat for Humanity. Over the next three months we will have over 200 congregants working on the house. On March 26, 2009, we also hosted an affordable housing forum titled "Chasing the American Dream-Affordable Housing and the Role of the Private Sector in the Public Good." With more than 160 people in attendance, our panel included Mary Suhm, Dallas City Manager; Brent Brown, an architect and the Founder of building community WORKSHOP; and Regina Nippert, the Executive Director of Dallas Faith Communities Coalition. These people are première experts of affordable housing issues in Dallas County. Our community is having an impact with our Habitat house and by confronting the broader, systemic, and complex issues facing housing in our city. After the forum, over 50 congregants responded and said that they were interested in working on the issue. We are now in the process of developing advocacy committees with our partners in the Dallas Faith Communities Coalition.

Our tradition tells us that for forty years our people walked from servitude to liberty. The desert experience teaches us important lessons about the inherent difficulties we can face when have no permanent homes. From our experience in the desert, we learned to have compassion for all people, to build communities that strive for excellence in education and learning, to ensure access to healthcare and doctors, to care for our elderly, and to assemble communities of faith and tradition for sacred encounter. Let us think of affordable housing in ways that will nourish the generations of our communities tomorrows. Let us actualize and realize the lessons that our people learned in the desert as we build communities that include affordable housing.

Galilee Diary - Green thoughts IV: Ponzi and Heschel

2009-04-07T15:08:54Z

by Marc Rosenstein
(Originally published in Galilee Diary and Ten Minutes of Torah)

The solution of mankind's most vexing problem will not be found in renouncing technical civilization, but in attaining some degree of independence of it. In regard to external gifts, to outward possessions, there is only one proper attitude - to have them and to be able to do without them. On the Sabbath we live, as it were, independent of technical civilization: we abstain primarily from any activity that aims at remaking or reshaping the things of space. Man's royal privilege to conquer nature is suspended on the seventh day.
- Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath (1951)

American immigrants here always used to joke about how the new developments and cultural fads of Europe and North America generally took a decade or two to find their way into our mainstream. Often we had the sense of living in a state of delayed development. We were still carrying reusable baskets and even refillable bottles to the market when America had long changed to disposables; we were still mostly riding the buses when everyone in America had a car. Now, however, the time lag has shrunk considerably, probably to zero. Indeed, I think we were even ahead of America in the use of ATMs and later, of cell phones. So now, the world-wide fad in environmentalism has arrived here pretty much simultaneously with its flowering elsewhere. We too now recycle plastic bottles (though only the 1.5 liter ones); we too now use cloth bags instead of plastic at the supermarket; the elites are even buying hybrid cars and installing solar panels.

I wonder, however, if these admirable actions are not merely band-aids on a cancer. As I suspect is the case elsewhere, it is not clear that these visible fads are associated with a deeper understanding of the fundamental problem. We may put our stuff in cloth bags, but are we buying less stuff? We may be building greener homes, but are we building fewer and smaller homes? We may be using more fuel-efficient cars, but are we driving less? My sense is that these measures, which are certainly good and useful, do not address the deeper cultural phenomenon of consumerism, of the assumption that the goal is to make, have, build, and buy more, that growth is necessary. But if in fact resources of space, and energy, and water, are ultimately limited, then, sooner or later the system has to fail. A few months ago only business historians knew what a Ponzi scheme was. Now the whole world knows. And as a number of commentators have pointed out, the category seems applicable to the entire consumerist system - we keep distributing dividends to ourselves by taking more from the next wave of investors, who in this case happen to be our children; when the oil/water/open space run out, we won't be around to suffer the consequences.

For decades, many of us - and not only the Orthodox - thought that there was something right and appropriate that Shabbat in Israel was an official day of rest, when businesses were closed. That seemed part of what a Jewish state was all about. Of course it led to hardships and inequities and made life difficult for many people, and one could always argue about how rigidly it should be enforced - and about who should have the authority to decide just what should be allowed. Ultimately, over the years, the claim of individual rights has trumped that romantic notion of a Jewish state, and the capitalists and secularists have "won" over the clericalist bureaucrats - many malls are open on Shabbat, and are packed with shoppers, for shopping is, after all, a form of family recreation (at least here we don' t yet see child-size shopping carts with the sign "consumer in training"). So we have a victory for individual freedom - and a sad failure by Israel to demonstrate the power of our tradition to stand against the tide of consumerism, a missed opportunity to find a way to integrate the powerful universal message of Shabbat (as articulated so well by Heschel) into the culture of the Jewish state.

Galilee Diary: Green thoughts III: humility

2009-03-24T18:39:01Z

By Marc Rosenstein
(Originally published in Galilee Diary and Ten Minutes of Torah)

We will dress you in a dress of cement and mortar;
We will spread for you carpets of gardens;
On the soil of your redeemed fields
The grain will sing out like bells.

Through the desert we will carve a road;
The swamps - we'll dry them all up.
What more we can give you, we will,
What haven't we given that we still can give?
-Nathan Alterman, from "Morning Song" 1934

Originally written for a Keren Hayesod (European UJA) fundraising film, this song by perhaps the most popular and prolific Israeli poet and songwriter of the pre-state and early state period was sung by generations of school children until it fell out of favor in recent years. The song's disappearance from popular culture is a striking indicator of the change in consciousness that has occurred and is occurring regarding our relationship to the land of Israel. For decades we lived on the myth that Israel had once, long ago, been a fruitful, green land - in the years when we were sovereign here and cultivated and cared for the soil. But then, when we left, the land fell into disrepair and was abused - armies cut down the trees, goats ate the new growth, silt plugged up the streams - leaving the dismal and pathetic combination of swamp and desert that the Zionist pioneers found when they returned.

Our mission therefore was restoration, development, showing our love for the land by redeeming it from its misery. We set out to drain the swamps, to green the desert, to build passable roads, to replace the miserable hovels and stagnant villages of the Arabs with modern, orderly, healthy, towns and cities. Out of a backwater of the Ottoman empire we envisioned creating a European utopia. Of course, this vision implied that the status quo was unnatural, that what we were doing was rehabilitation, restoring the land to its original healthy state.

Reality, as is so often the case, turned out to be a bit more complicated than myth. As the twentieth century went by, we discovered that demonstrating our love for the land by dressing it in cement wasn't so romantic after all; especially when we had to carve up the mountains to quarry the limestone to make all that cement - leaving that carpet of gardens under a pall of haze and smog from the quarries and kilns. And the classic case study in misguided enthusiasm for reclamation was the draining of the Hula swamp in the 1950s, perceived for years as the pinnacle of the Zionist effort to renew the homeland... Until we found out that the swamp had served important ecological functions - not only as a habitat, but as a filtration system for the water entering the Kinneret, and as a stabilizer for the soil in the entire valley. Dust storms, fires, soil collapse, mouse infestations - our great achievement brought us a series of plagues until, in the 1990s we re-flooded sections of the valley (creating what is now a popular and beautiful nature reserve).

The Hula story is a cautionary tale about humility in our relationship with the land - about the temptation to think we know more than we do. The green movement has had some impact on popular culture, but we still have not gotten over our need to show our love for - or our possession of - the land by bulldozing and paving it.

When you rent for years and then move into your own home, you feel this sudden liberation - you can drive nails into the wall, paint the woodwork any crazy color you want - the house is really yours to do with as you will. Zionism was like that. But now that we've asserted our freedom of ownership, we need to sober up and consider how to keep the house solid and livable for our grandchildren.

The Epidemic in our Backyard

2009-03-19T18:32:34Z

by Jill Zimmerman
(First posted on the RACblog)
Jill Zimmerman is an Eisendrath Legislative Assistant at the Religious Action Center.
A new report released Monday by D.C. health officials says that at least 3% of residents in our nation's capital are living with HIV or AIDS, a 22% increase from the nearly 12,500 reported in 2006. And since research indicates that one-third to one-half of infected people are unaware, the real number is almost certainly higher.

That makes the D.C. AIDS epidemic worse than West Africa's.

According to the report, every mode of transmission is on the rise, and it's affecting every race and sex across the population and neighborhoods. D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty has promised to increase testing, and to introduce a marketing campaign emphasizing the use of condoms and clean needles and other forms of prevention.

Mayor Fenty seems to have the right idea. While the AIDS epidemic is particularly frightening in D.C., this is certainly not the only city facing a crisis. And the best way to stop it is through comprehensive, medically accurate education about sex and contraception.

On Tuesday, Senator Lautenberg (D-NJ) and Representative Barbara Lee (D-CA) introduced a bill called the Responsible Education about Life (REAL) Act, which would create the first ever federal funding stream for comprehensive sex education in public schools that includes information about both abstinence and contraception. Comprehensive sex education is effective not only in preventing teen pregnancy, but also in preventing sexually transmitted infections such as HIV/AIDS. Given the economic crisis and current budget constraints in many school districts, we cannot afford to continue spending over 50 million dollars a year on ineffective abstinence-only programs that discuss only the failure rates of contraceptive methods.

This weekend, the RAC--along with Advocates for Youth, the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, the Unitarian Universalist Association, and the United Church of Christ--is hosting an interfaith Sexuality Education Advocacy Training. Over 35 young adults from across the country are coming to the capital to learn how to be advocates in their communities for comprehensive sex education in their schools. Look forward to a blog next week about the training from Cara Fisher, RAC conference planner extraordinaire!

Lines, lines, lines

2009-03-17T14:18:52Z

Reflections from visit to refugee camps at Dadaab, Kenya
by Rabbi Marla J. Feldman
(This is the fourth in a series of posts from Rabbi Marla Feldman's recent trip to Kenya to deliver insecticide-treated bed nets purchased through the Reform Movement's Nothing But Nets campaign, which is underwritten by the U.N. Foundation.)

Traveling back from Kenya we were struck by the number of lines we had to go through at the airport. There was a security line to enter the terminal, another line to check in, another security line into the gate area and no less than two security lines to get into the gate itself. Lines, lines, lines.

So too, we saw many lines when we were at the refugee camps at Dadaab. Upon my return, I was asked whether the refugees ever became hostile or rebellious in the face of the abominable conditions in which they live. My response was that most seemed beaten down by the daily rigors of their existence... miles of walking from one line to the next in equatorial desert heat, hours upon hours of waiting for each service for which they depend for their sustenance, cultural norms that keep women and children silent and subservient, and the world's indifference to the plight of the most long-suffering refugees in Africa.

Upon arrival to the camp the refugees wait outside the gates, squatting on the sandy soil in family clusters, carrying whatever possessions they have. More than 500 per day arrive at the camps that already have tens of thousands more than they should hold. Those with family members already in the camps may have sought to join them, only to be redirected to a different camp that still has room for new-comers. They can't just 'squat' with family members because without formally registering they cannot receive the necessary paperwork for their food rations or other critical support.

Once ushered into the registration area, new arrivals stand in line for an initial intake - name, nationality, family members. Then they stand in another line for their children to receive vaccinations - without health records the assumption is that children have not been inoculated and are at risk for yellow fever, measles and a host of other killer diseases that the developed nations eradicated long ago. They also receive bed nets as they go through the initial health post, though without having received living quarters yet, the set-up demonstration seems lost on them. Next they wait in line for more formal intake and finger-printing, which is a new system in place to prevent refugees from registering more than once to get additional ration cards. Then they wait in more lines to be assigned a plot for their family and receive the basic necessities to build their stick/twig hovels.

Once situated, there are even more lines to wait in for basic necessities. Lines to fill jerry cans at the water taps, impossibly squeezing out enough water for drinking, cooking, laundry and hygiene, recently reduced from the optimal 20 liters per day, per person to only 10 or 13 liters, depending on the camp. Twice a month they stand in lines to receive their food quota from the World Food Programme. Periodically there are lines to receive "NFIs" - non-food items such as mattresses, blankets, pots, bowls and, again, bed nets. Then there are the lines at the health posts where they go for maternity care, child wellness and urgent care. Those with more serious medical needs wait in lines outside the single hospital in each camp and, if lucky, can see one of the volunteer doctors who visit periodically to provide surgical support to the camp's two resident doctors.

Lines, lines, lines. Patience born of resignation and depression, defeated by the blazing sun that saps every bit of energy, and submission resulting from 20 years of life in these forgotten camps.

I'll no longer complain about the lines at the air-conditioned, restaurant-laden, wifi hosting airport in which I write this message.

Delegation to Dadaab-Feb. 09

2009-03-10T13:55:01Z

By Stephanie Garry
(This is the third in a series of posts from Rabbi Marla Feldman's recent trip to Kenya to deliver insecticide-treated bed nets purchased through the Reform Movement's Nothing But Nets campaign, which is underwritten by the U.N. Foundation.)

I had no idea what to expect--traveling to Kenya to visit refugee camps in Dadaab. I had been on safari to Kenya 14 years ago with my husband and son and so loved the air of the land and the romance of the sky---and the vistas of animals on our planet.

While I knew this trip would be of a different nature--I could not have prepared myself for the overwhelming experience I was about to have.

After our 24 hour journey from New York we arrived in Nairobi for 6 hours of sleep before departing for Wilson Airport to catch our flight to Dadaab. On a 17 seater UN charter flight we met others from the UNHCR (The UN Refugee Agency), members of a film crew and a few doctors from Kenya who donate a few days every other month to "help" out in one of the three camps---Hagadera, Dagahaley and Ifo.

When we landed I was struck by the pervasive heat, the red sand of the dessert and yes the vast space that surrounds you. Africa seems endless. We arrived at our "guest quarters" at the UNHCR compound and sat down to a briefing and lunch at the dining hall.

So- our journey in Dadaab had begun. The magnitude of this experience is truly hard to describe. Over the next three days we were educated about the conditions of how 250,000 people exist in space for far less. Their homes are made from twigs or in some cases mud brick with a floor of dirt. We saw the truly heroic efforts of relief workers trying to give people a better life.............and we saw humanity. Humanity in all shapes and sizes, struggling to find a semblance of life. 20% of the population are children under the age of 5. We visited hospitals,met the doctors that provide care for the tens of thousands of patients that walk through their 'doors", we visited maternity wards where babies had just been born and I wondered if their whole life would be spent in Dadaab or if they would have the opportunity to resettle outside of the camp and experience life that would be easier and filled with the carefree giggle of a childhood or continue to live the difficult existence that is all about survival.

While giving out the nets I was reminded that sometimes we must remember that doing simple acts of kindness does make enormous difference---the problems within the refugee camps are far too large for any one person to tackle,---so giving that net meant that I WAS making a difference- in a small but most important way. Malaria is now the #5 killer in the camps---down from #1.

To bear witness was a gift I will treasure. -and now to move forward seeing how we can best deliver the message that a net does save a life-----and isn't that the message we take from this experience of being Jewish? To save a life is to truly save the world.

Support Nothing But Nets and purchase an insecticide-treated bed net today.

Calling for Cleaner Cars

2009-03-09T17:32:10Z

By Rachel Cohen
(First posted on the RACblog)
Rachel Cohen is an Eisendrath Legislative Assistant at the Religious Action Center.

Today I joined our Legislative Director, Barbara Weinstein, as she delivered testimony before the EPA on a critical set of greenhouse gas emissions regulations for cars and trucks. Though the hearing room was packed and speakers included dozens of experts from environmental, public health, consumer advocacy and auto industry groups, ours was the only faith voice in the room. And I am proud to say that we were there, speaking out for policies to protect our environment, our public health, and our national security today and in the future.

The case involves states' abilities to set stronger efficiency standards for cars to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases and other pollutants. California, backed by 13 other states and the District of Columbia, regularly requests the right to set emissions standards for cars and light trucks that exceed national minimums under the Clean Air Act. For decades, the EPA has granted this waiver and allowed California to move ahead with its aggressive and progressive clean cars program. Since 20% of our nation's greenhouse gas emissions come from the transportation sector, and since U.S. autos produce more emissions than all sectors combined for many large developed nations, granting the waiver seems like a no-brainer. However, the waiver was denied by the EPA in 2008 after two years of delay, under claims that the Clean Air Act does not cover greenhouse gas emissions, and that California and the other states lacked a 'compelling and extraordinary' interest in setting higher standards.

Luckily, in one of his first acts in office, President Obama asked the EPA to reconsider the case, and we are hopeful that EPA will soon grant the waiver and allow California to lead the way to stronger emissions standards for automobiles. The urgency of addressing unchecked emissions becomes clearer by the day, and our window to act against climate change is closing. Increasing automobile efficiency is critical to building a green economy and hitting the 80% emissions reductions targets for greenhouse gases that leading scientists say we must meet to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

The case is open for public comment until April 6, so anyone can go online to the EPA website for instructions on how to voice their opinions on the matter, and see this sample petition from the Repower America campaign for ideas. We will be following the case as it moves forward, and encourage you to do so as well!

Life in the Dadaab Hell

2009-02-25T15:49:33Z

by Rabbi Marla Feldman
Commission on Social Action of Reform Judaism
(This is the second in a series of posts from Rabbi Feldman's recent trip to Kenya to deliver insecticide-treated bed nets purchased through the Reform Movement's Nothing But Nets campaign, which is underwritten by the U.N. Foundation.)

Dadaab, the largest refugee camp in the world, is a living hell. Situated on the equator, it is demonly hot, parched and barren. The soil ranges from sand to red manure-laden dirt that turns to snake-invested mud during the rainy season. Bits of scrub provide twigs to make the refugees' small huts and sustain the goats that some of the refugees have been able to bring with them or that they have purchased with funds from relatives who have made it to the promised land of other countries. Though built nearly 20 years ago to house 90,000, there are now a quarter of a million people who dwell in this hell-hole. They have little to do - other than a small market run by their Kenyan neighbors, there is no industry permitted by the host country lest others be encouraged to come. That does not stop the 5,000 additional refugees from coming each week. Most children attend some school, but with the need for multiple shifts there is a lot of free time for them with none of the typical youthful entertainment available - no balls, games, or television. Girls have a particularly difficult life as they are obligated for household chores and the care of younger siblings, while their mothers have one child after another as long as their bodies can endure.

Daily living involves treks to the few existing water taps with jerry cans, washing by hand the few clothes they have with the little water that remains, miles of walking to the bi-weekly World Food Programme distribution or the periodic "NFI" (Non-Food Items) distribution centers to gather a mattress, a bowl, a blanket - whatever is available that month. Occasionally there is the journey to one of the health posts - each serving tens of thousands - for a maternity wellness visit, vaccinations for the children, or to collect a bed net donated by Nothing But Nets. Some of the residents of Dadaab have lived there since the camp opened; some were born there and have lived in the camp their entire lives. They know no other home; their home is hell.

Angels in Hell

Only two groups of people end up in Dadaab: refugees who have no other place else on earth to go, and the angels who care for them. Spread over miles of the harshest equatorial desert, three camps (Ifo, Hagadera, Dagahaley) arise from the dirt, impossibly sustaining hundreds of thousands of desolate souls, mostly women and children (50% are children; 20% are under 5). The camps are run by UNHCR (UN High Commission for Refugees) - an agency that is sometimes reviled by host countries and criticized by world governments, but whose staff members are nothing less than heroes. UNHCR and other NGO staff members live either in the camps themselves, or in their own camp down the road. Their camp has amenities - a ping pong table, a tennis court (though who can play tennis in 100 degree heat is beyond me!), a bar that serves beer and bottled water, and a mess hall that serves the same food every day. (OK, I'm exaggerating - at lunch sometimes they serve spaghetti noodles and sometimes they serve rigatoni noodles for variety.) For a change of scenery, there is a small Ethiopian restaurant down the road opened by an entrepreneurial refugee, although staff members are not supposed to go there without escorts since a UNHCR staff member was kidnapped in Pakistan recently. It is considered one of the most difficult assignments, yet each commits to a minimum of 6 months in the Dadaab Hell, facing the same risks as the refugees: scorpians, snakes, malaria, cholera, heat, floods.

As staff members enter the camps, they are immediately surrounded by refugees, each with a different need, desperate for someone to hear them, hoping for someone who can help them, angry by their lot in life. We are shepherded through the camp by Maeve, originally from Ireland, who is responsible for the Hagadera camp housing nearly 100,000 people, though built for 30,000. Despite an outbreak of cholera and a growing water shortage (the Kenyan government won't allow them to bore new wells as they fear that will lead to an expansion of the camps), Maeve spends her day with us, showing us the community health posts and the single hospital (with just a single doctor - a young 20-something woman from elsewhere in Kenya). Hagadera is the only one of the three camps that has a surgical unit, and that day a volunteer doctor from an organization called Bethany Children Services is doing assessments for surgery to take place in the camp or for treatment elsewhere. Leading us through the "blocks" that make up the camp housing areas, Maeve is accosted by an elderly man waving his health card insisting that she help him immediately - she reminds him that he needs to go to the health post for care. Meeting in the Sudanese block, she is confronted by angry residents, who are fearful since someone was murdered a few days previously - she assures them there is an investigation and that she has been in regular communication with David, their elected block leader, who serves as our translator. Visiting the homes of the most at-risk residents to deliver nets, Maeve gently strokes the arm of an elderly blind woman, tenderly calling her the honorific 'Mama' as she explains to the gathering neighbors how proper hygiene can avoid cholera, which has become a growing concern (14 cases and 1 infant death to date).

If not for these angels - the UNHCR staff members, workers from NGO's like Care and Save the Children, undaunted doctors and the volunteers from within the camps themselves - life in the Dadaab Hell would be impossible. With grit, compassion and dedication, these ordinary heroes save lives each and every day.

Support Nothing But Nets and purchase an insecticide-treated bed net today.

View more pictures of this trip on flickr.

HuffPo Features Saperstein Piece on Judiciary

2009-02-20T17:00:45Z

By Kate Bigam
(Originally posted on the RACblog)
Kate Bigam is the Press Secretary at the Religious Action Center.

If you're like most of the RAC staff, you've got enough blogs plugged into your Google Reader to keep you busy for hours at a time just reading through daily posts. But here's one piece of reading you should make sure you get to today - Rabbi David Saperstein, the RAC's director, has a piece up today on Huffington Post about the significance of the judiciary!

In "Our Rights in Peril: The Future of the Courts," Rabbi Saperstein discusses the importance of the judiciary in making crucial decisions that affect our everyday lives, even when we feel far removed from the court process - and details the potential dangers of a future Supreme Court that leans more conservatively than the present. For both these reasons, he encourages progressive religious organizations to follow the Reform Movement's lead in "creating formal processes for considering whether to oppose and support judicial nominees." Rabbi Saperstein writes:

It is far past time for the religious community to join the many progressive organizations that are fighting for a fair and independent judiciary. Sitting out vital debates about judicial nominees jeopardizes the crucial gains we have made and will make in the legislative arena. We need to ensure the appointment of judges who will uphold an expansive interpretation of the law as it applies to our fundamental rights and the separation of church and state.

Don't take my word for it - check out Rabbi Saperstein's Huffington Post piece for yourself, and then click on through to the RAC's page on Judicial Nominations to learn more about what we're doing and, of course, what you can do. There, you'll find resources like background information, key terminology, URJ resolutions and the RAC's latest publication on judicial nominations, titled Rights in Peril: Why the American Jewish Community and Others Cannot Afford to Sit Out the Debate Over Judicial Nominations.

Nothing But Nets: Dadaab Travel Blog

2009-02-18T17:58:16Z

by Rabbi Marla Feldman
Commission on Social Action of Reform Judaism
This past week I had the opportunity to travel to Kenya along with Nancy Solomon and Stephanie Garry, board members of the Union for Reform Judaism, and Adrianna Logalbo, Nothing But Nets coordinator for the United Nations Foundation. Our mission was to witness and take part in the delivery of insecticide-treated bed nets to help stem the tide of malaria that rages in refugee camps throughout Africa. To date, the Union for Reform Judaism and its affiliates have raised nearly $300,000 towards the effort to cover refugee camps in Africa. That's 30,000 nets for 120,000 people who can sleep peacefully at night. These efforts have been made possible by a generous grant from the UN Foundation.

Flying over Dadaab, the largest refugee camp in the world with a quarter-million people, one gets a clear picture of just how stark life is in that equatorial desert of sand, red dirt and scrub. Three camps comprise this vast expanse of humanity - Ifo, Hagadera and Dagahaley - each with 70,000-100,000 refugees and each bursting with tens of thousands over capacity. Most of the refugees are from Somalia, and some from Ethiopia, Sudan and other troubled regions. Each day hundreds more find their way to the camp, adding 5,000 per week to the already overcrowded camps.

At each camp we visited several health posts, each of which services tens of thousands of people. There is one hospital in each camp, with two doctors and a few nurses. Only one camp has surgical facilities. Bed net deliveries take place at these health posts, and serve as a draw to bring in refugees who might otherwise not seek medical attention. Once there, they receive health education and medical consults in addition to receiving their bed nets. Hospitals are comprised of a few separate shelters for maternity care, pediatrics, and those with contagious illnesses. Bed nets are widely used in the hospital facilities, and those receiving treatment are given nets to take home with them. Circumstances are grim, with a cholera outbreak just beginning and a shortage of water. Each person should receive 20 liters of water per day, but some of the camps are down to 10-13 liters/day, making health and hygiene even more precarious.

In each camp there are targeted efforts to provide nets to the most vulnerable populations - those with children under five, pregnant women and seniors. Teams of health workers and volunteers from the "blocks" go home to home to deliver nets. ("Homes" at the camps are generally tukuls, round tent-like structures made of twigs, or small mud and twig huts. The more substantial structures are made of mud brick with tin sheets as a roof. Most have mattresses on the ground for sleeping and little else inside.) There the net teams gather the neighbors around, explain the importance of using the nets and actually set up the net for the residents. This way they are sure the nets are used properly while they educate others and create excitement around the use of nets.

What we witnessed in Dadaab was abject destitution; people living in horrendous circumstances at the barest of subsistence levels, dependent on others for every morsel of food, every drop of water and whatever meager shelter they could cobble together. But we also saw heroic efforts by UNHCR staff members who set their own lives aside to care for the world's forgotten refugees. We met orphans raising other orphans and youth who have no reason for hope yet seek an education nonetheless. We watched doctors with few resources care for tens of thousands and voting, democratic communities rise from the dust of the earth. And we saw children with absolutely nothing to call their own - no toys, no balls, no books, no games - find joy in the simple possession of a bed net.

Support Nothing But Nets and purchase an insecticide-treated bed net today.

View more pictures of this trip on flickr.

Jewish, Muslim and Christian Leaders United for Middle East Peace

2009-02-13T15:29:27Z

By Jeff Oakley
(First posted on the RACblog)
Jeff Oakley is an Eisendrath Legislative Assistant at the Religious Action Center.
Last month, Rabbi Joshua Davidson of Temple Beth El of Northern Westchester in Chappaqua, NY, wrote here about his synagogue's dialogue with members of the Upper Westchester Muslim Society. Rabbi Davidson described his effort, a part of the Muslim-Jewish dialogue sponsored by the Union for Reform Judaism and Islamic Society of North America, as 'planting a seed of hope' which helps show that "the act of sitting together and listening to each other and talking of a shared vision for the future is the only way toward peace."

One of the non-legislative aspects of my work here at the Religious Action Center is to help coordinate this Muslim-Jewish dialogue, I'm thrilled to be a small part of planting these seeds of hope at the grassroots level, and helping communities build a foundation for a shared future. The cooperation between URJ and ISNA kicked off with both Rabbi Eric Yoffie's address to ISNA and Dr. Ingrid Mattson of ISNA's address to the URJ. In addition to the initiative between our movements, there are other incredible efforts at the 'grasstops' in which our leaders are involved.

One such effort, working to help fertilize these 'seeds of hope', is the National Interreligious Leadership Initiative for Peace in the Middle East (NILI). This initiative brings together the top leaders of the various denominations of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, who are committed to a shared vision of Middle East Peace. Most recently, they sent a letter to President Obama, applauding his early progress toward "active, fair and firm U.S. leadership for Arab-Israeli-Palestinian peace" and calling for "urgent U.S. diplomacy" to achieve a "truly effective and sustainable ceasefire." These religious leaders agreed that "as Jews, Christians and Muslims, we share a common religious commitment to peace with justice for all of God's children."

To learn more about NILI, the National Interreligious Leadership Initiative for Peace in the Middle East, check out their website, which includes NILI's previous statements as well as other resources for interfaith peace advocacy.

For more information about how to get your synagogue involved with Muslim-Jewish dialogue, visit our Muslim-Jewish dialogue site and email me if you are interested in obtaining a copy of the Children of Abraham dialogue guide.

Finally, you can take action now using our action alert to send a letter to your representative to support the appointment of Special Envoy Mitchell and support American diplomacy for achieving peace.

Tu B'Shwatt: Serving up energy action at the seder

2009-02-07T03:08:52Z

As Rachel Cohen blogged recently, Tu BiSh'vat takes on a new and special meaning as concern for the environment moves to the forefront of our collective consciousness. Barbara Lerman-Golomb -- a member of the Union's Commission on Social Action and Union Temple of Brooklyn, Director of Community Relations for Hazon, and much more -- writes in her article for the JTA, "Tu B'Shwatt: Serving up energy action at the seder":

"... this year as I sample the foods traditionally eaten at the Tu B'Shevat seder to commemorate springtime in Israel -- dates, almonds and figs, to name a few -- I'll not only be thinking about the farmers who planted them but the distance the foods traveled and the amount of greenhouse gases associated with their journey.

According to the Worldwatch Institute, the average food item travels 1,500 to 2,500 miles from farm to fork. For many, the foods featured at the seder are not locally grown and therefore catapult that "food miles" figure off the charts, increasing our carbon footprint.

One way to assuage our guilt is to be more intentional in taking energy-efficient actions, or to purchase carbon offsets to make up the difference for the carbon emissions being released in the atmosphere from our seder food choices.

We can even integrate energy action into the four worlds of the kabbalistic Tu B' Shevat seder."

We urge you to read the full article on JTA.org, and to visit the Union's new website, Greening Reform Judaism, as well as our TuBiSh'vat resources page, for more information and ideas about celebrating the holiday and living an environmentally responsible life.

Strangers in a Familiar Land

2009-02-05T19:27:04Z

By Jason Fenster
(First posted on the RACblog)
Jason Fenster is an Eisendrath Legislative Assistant at the Religious Action Center.

As Jews, we are intimately familiar with feeling unwelcome and excluded. We have been strangers in Egypt, in Babylon, in Europe, and even in America, but it is this shared experience that compels us to open our doors to those who sit outside our community.

In Exodus 23:9 we read, "You shall not oppress a stranger, for you know the feelings of the stranger, having yourselves been strangers in the land of Egypt." Being a grammar dork, I looked at the Hebrew and found something interesting in the different "yous" we find in this verse. The first "you" is singular. You shall not oppress a stranger. It is your obligation to make an person-to-person connection to ensure that this ger, this stranger, is a part of the community and is not forced to remain outside the walls of our synagogue. The "you" who knows in their hearts and souls what it means to be left out is plural; the "y'all" form of the verb. We not only have an individual mandate to make inclusion a reality, but also a communal obligation stemming from our shared history.

In general, we as a community are well seasoned at looking outside the walls of our synagogues. We look for opportunities to bring in new people and to help those in need; however, we must also look inside those walls to ensure that we maintain those values for those already inside. Who do we make strangers through inaccessible buildings and materials? Who is forced to the outside circles because of non-inclusive programming? We need to recognize those in our communities whom we render strangers by not addressing their needs and desires to be part of all aspects of synagogue life, not just the parts we choose to make accessible.

As Rabbi Landsberg wrote on the RACblog last week, February is Jewish Disability Awareness Month. We should take this month as a jumping off point for a larger, comprehensive effort to make our synagogues and communities open and accessible to all people, especially those with disabilities. A number of different organizations have resource materials for Jewish Disability Awareness Month including the Partnership for Jewish Life and Learning and the Federation of Greater Washington, United Jewish Communities, Jewish Family and Children Services of Minneapolis, and the UJA Federation of New York.

Additionally, the URJ Jewish Family Concerns website has a fantastic collection of ideas, programs, advocacy, and community action tools available to help ensure that all people, with a disability or not, are able to fully be a part of our Jewish community.

Progress by Pesach

2009-02-04T16:02:30Z

By Jill Zimmerman
(First posted on the RACblog)
Jill Zimmerman is an Eisendrath Legislative Assistant at the Religious Action Center.

"When strangers sojourn with you in your land, you shall not do them wrong. The strangers who sojourn with you shall be to you as the natives among you, and you shall love them as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt." (Leviticus 19:33-34)

Thirty-five times this principle is repeated in the Torah. Thirty-five times we are reminded of our own immigrant history. Thirty-five times we are commanded not only to welcome the stranger, but to "love them as yourself."

Today, we face the enormous task of fixing our nation's broken immigration system. Over 12 million undocumented immigrants live as "strangers" in our communities. U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) raids, such as the one in Postville, Iowa at the Agriprocessers kosher meatpacking plant, have torn apart immigrant families. Detention centers across the country leave thousands in legal limbo and offend our sense of humanity. It is time to tell Congress and the Administration to enact solutions.

In this light, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) in coalition with a number of other Jewish organizations, including the Union for Reform Judaism, has launched a new campaign for comprehensive immigration reform: Progress by Pesach.

Passover is a time when we celebrate our freedom from bondage, remember when we were strangers in a strange land, and connect our history to modern-day liberation struggles. This year, consider the strangers who sojourn with you by telling President Obama and Congress to make comprehensive immigration reform a priority by Passover.

Here's how you can get involved:

Help collect petition signatures and sign the letter to President Obama and Congress
Host HIAS's interactive and educational "Welcome the Stranger" program on immigration
Participate in monthly interfaith immigration national update and coordination calls
Host an interfaith prayer vigil for immigrants on Presidents' Day weekend
Deliver a D'var at your shul
Follow and post to the blog
Be a part of coalition work with immigrant groups and immigrant allies
Help with press strategy: write editorials, write to editorial boards, etc
Attend local events to support the campaign, by checking out the event calendar link on the HIAS Web site
Host a house party to educate and mobilize your friends, family and neighbors about immigration issues: we've got plenty of materials and support to help you create a great event

Kickoff to Jewish Disability Awareness Month

2009-02-02T16:34:21Z

By Rabbi Lynne Landsberg
(First posted at RACblog)
Rabbi Lynne Landsberg is the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism's Senior Advisor on Disability Issues. She is a former Associate Director of the RAC and a former regional director of the URJ's Mid-Atlantic Council.

This month, February 2009, is the first annual Jewish Disability Awareness Month, recognized by all streams of Judaism (Reform, Conservative, Orthodox and Reconstructionist) and most, if not all, national Jewish agencies. Local synagogues, organizational chapters and federations are observing Jewish Disability Awareness Month with special programming to educate their members about people with all kinds of disabilities -- physical, intellectual, psychological and more.

We would never consciously do it, but are we putting a stumbling block before the blind? As Jews, we must understand that serving the community of individuals with disabilities means more than just constructing a ramp to the front door: We shut Jews out by not altering other physical barriers. We shut Jews out by continuing non-inclusive programming and religious education. We shut Jews out< by maintaining attitudes of discomfort and disdain.

If you or your congregation are on the lookout for programming ideas for Jewish Disability Awareness Month, you can find ideas at any of these Web sites:

URJ's Department of Jewish Family Concerns
Jewish Special Education International Consortium
Jewish Community Inclusion Program for People with Disabilities Resource Guide
Empowering Jews with Disabilities
Interfaith Disability Organization
United Jewish Communities has also created an extensive resource guide.
And please send any information about events you plan to hold or have already held to me at llandsberg@rac.org!

While we're at it, here are a few more options:

Check out the Web site for ""Praying with Lior"," about a Jewish boy with disabilities, to see if it is playing locally and/or how to arrange for it to be shown at your synagogue. A home DVD version is not due out until late March, but a newly published "Praying with Lior" Jewish study guide is available.
People with disabilities are treated as animals in many countries, as exemplified by extensive research done by Mental Disability Rights International (MDRI), which has produced three disturbing videos on the issue. As such, the URJ is advocating for the signing and ratification of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which the US has not signed or ratified. For more information, see www.un.org/disabilities and RatifyNow.org or email the RAC's Disability Legislative Assistant, Jason Fenster.

Let us use February 2009, Jewish Disability Awareness Month, as our starting point to become truly welcoming, both congregationally and individually. Together let us break down physical, communicative and attitudinal barriers wherever they are. We must come together both as Jews and as Americans to help others to recognize that people with disabilities are people first -- people with unlimited potential who are not to be defined by their disabilities.

Get more information at the Jewish Family Concerns website, and join in the discussion on their new online forum.

President Obama and the Reform Jewish Community

2009-01-29T21:36:15Z

by Albert Vorspan
President Obama embodies the impossible dreams of generations of Americans. Indeed, he represents the golden harvest which we gather today, but it is the product of all those who planted the seeds in the hard, sometimes bloody, ground under constant duress for countless decades.

Obama has said that he stands on the shoulders of that great coalition of decency which prepared that soil and nurtured the faith. Central to that coalition was the alliance of blacks and Jews who marched, organized, did the heavy political lifting, provided their votes and streamed into jails to protest segregation. This Reform Jewish Movement, I can testify, played a central role in mobilizing the conscience of the Jewish community and partnering with the black leadership to transform America.

In this effort, Jews played a disproportionate and crucial role. When a call went out for volunteers to come to Mississippi to help register blacks, a high proportion of the volunteers were rabbis, Jewish educators and young Jews from both religious and secular backgrounds. Many came from segregated communities in the North and would have scoffed at the idea that they were following in the spirit of Amos and Isaiah and other Hebrew prophets. But they put their lives on the line for justice, and two of them--Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner--died alongside their black co-worker James Chaney in the red soil of Mississippi at the hands of a lynch mob of KKK terrorists.

I spent much time in the Deep South in those years, trying to strengthen inter-religious and inter-racial coalitions of change. I will never forget my visits to Mississippi where I met with a brave rabbi, Charles Martinband, and an equally courageous white newspaper editor, P.D. East. In their homes, I met a remarkable group of black intellectuals and leaders--college presidents, doctors, teachers, preachers. Not one of those folks had ever been permitted to vote. Not one of them ever expected to vote. It staggers me to realize that not only can they vote, their vote has transformed the South and the entire country.

Like many American Jews, I was privileged to know and work with Martin Luther King, Jr. King had a special relationship with American Jews. We contributed generously to the SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Committee) because we trusted King, respected the non-violent pursuit of social justice, felt a kinship with the prophetic faith which drive King. We knew that, to King, justice was a seamless web and he cared about the plight of Soviet Jewry, the security of Israel. He denounced anti-Semitism, even from black bigots.

I marched with him throughout the South, including his last demonstration in behalf of sanitation workers in Memphis. Earlier, in 1963, I joined with sixteen Reform rabbis and rushed to St. Augustine, Florida, to challenge racially segregated public accommodations in that historic town. We all ended up in jail; my transgression was sitting down with white and black colleagues in a nice restaurant for lunch. Not only were we arrested, we were subjected to cattle prods for presuming to request non-segregated confinement. The sheriff, to whose tender mercies we were entrusted, was also known as the Grand Kleagle of the KKK.

The demonstrations in the South--and especially the widely televised brutality in Birmingham, Alabama--generated powerful momentum in Washington. The civil rights coalition organized the March on Washington. Black and Jewish agencies spearheaded the effort. Behind the public pronouncements was the extraordinary cooperation of Bayard Rustin, Will Maslow, Arnie Aronson and Rabbi Richard Hirsch, then director of the newly-formed Religious Action Center. The largest civil rights rally in American history will be remembered, justly, for the soaring I Have a Dream oration by Martin Luther King. But I am not the only person in attendance who was profoundly moved by the words of Rabbi Joachim Prinz, a rabbi who had fled Berlin to escape the Nazis:

"When I was the rabbi of the Jewish community in Berlin under the Hitler regime, I learned many things. The most important thing that I learned was that bigotry and hatred are not the most urgent problem. The most urgent, the most disgraceful, the most shameful and the most tragic problem is...Silence."

The prairie fire sweeping America inevitably penetrated the halls of Congress and the White House. The landmark civil rights laws of the U.S., especially the Voting Rights Act adroitly engineered by President Johnson, were drafted by non-governmental civil rights lawyers, working under the Leadership Council for Civil Rights, in the conference room of our organization, the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism. In both houses of Congress, unprecedented inter-faith coalitions were everywhere, putting the members' feet to the fire. Mobilizing the citizens lobbies and turning up the political heat were Clarence Mitchell, Washington representative of the NAACP, and Joe Rauh, Jr., member of our Commission on Social Action, representing much of the labor movement and much of the Jewish community, including the agencies of Reform Judaism. The giants of the Congress got used to the two lawyers, black and Jewish, so joined at the hip that they were referred to with grudging admiration as the "gold dust twins." Blacks and Jews, then and now, vote closely together, even in 2008 when the majority of white Americans voted otherwise.

The black-Jewish coalition transformed America for everybody. As one who grew up in the Twin Cities when it was known as the capital of anti-Semitism, I know what changed it into a liberal bastion of pluralism, decency and equal opportunity. It was the civil rights revolution, which Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota bravely helped ignite, which brought down the walls of discrimination and, in its sweep, leveled barriers against women, against gays and lesbians, against persons with disabilities. The conscience of America was touched and slowly roused to action, but it has transformed us forever.

The Reform Jewish community played our proud part in writing this history. Today we hail an African-American Chief of State, and our tears join those of millions, of all races throughout the world. We will have occasion to complain in the future and maybe to protest Obama policies because our Movement is not in anybody's pocket. But with our work and with our votes and with our faith in the possibilities of repairing this world, we helped America to overcome the night and witness the rising glow of a new dawn.

Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the RAC, blessed President Obama with a stirring benediction. That was a fitting tribute to the part we played in ushering in this miraculous day. But now comes the hard work, for Obama, and also for the Reform Jewish Movement, joining in an ever-widening coalition of decency, to save America, to heal the planet and to repair God's world.

Albert Vorspan is the Senior Vice-President Emeritus of the Union for Reform Judaism and founding director of the Commission on Social Action. He has authored and co-authored many books including Jewish Dimensions of Social Justice with Rabbi David Saperstein.

Tu BiSh'vat in the Age of Green

2009-01-29T20:29:32Z

By Rachel Cohen, Eisendrath Legislative Assistant
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah)
Each year, even as many of us struggle against the cold winter days of February, we engage in a celebration of nature's renewal with the ritual of Tu BiSh'vat. Just as Israeli farmers begin to see signs of spring, Jews worldwide celebrate an ancient tradition marking the age of trees. With the rise of the environmental movement, Tu BiSh'vat has been branded the "Jewish Earth Day" and transformed from a minor observance into a mainstay of the Jewish calendar. Tu BiSh'vat has taken on many meanings to many people: a celebration of natural wonders, a chance to recommit ourselves to environmental stewardship, and a day to reflect on our role in the complex ecosystem that is planet Earth. But by now, we have heard all this before. Climate change is everywhere, green is the buzzword of the new century, and we are aware of our religious obligation to "till and tend" God's earth (Genesis 2:15). This year, however, we can move beyond a one-day celebration to more long-lasting and persistent efforts throughout the entire year that truly honor our environment.

In the 16th Century, Kabbalists in Safed created the ritual of a Tu Bish'vat seder, modeled after the Passover seder and celebrating the natural resources of the land of Israel. More recently, Jewish environmentalists have adopted the Ten Plagues, a central Passover seder ritual, as a modern environmental tale by offering the litany of the "Ten Modern Plagues" waged by humankind upon our environment; these afflictions include air and water pollution, toxic waste, and deforestation.

Although the Ten Modern Plagues may be a useful tool for raising ecological awareness, we do no justice to our environmental obligations when we present Tu BiSh'vat as little more than a contemporary, greenwashed version of Passover. Experts agree that we are nearing an environmental tipping point, and that if we do not act now, we will not be able to avoid the worst impacts of climate change in the future. This year, hosting an environmental Seder on Tu BiSh'vat is simply not enough. Rather, this ritual meal is only the beginning, and the true celebration is in carrying its lessons forward throughout the year.

So what are these lessons, and how do we act on them? Tu BiSh'vat commemorates the incredible biodiversity of our natural world. During the modern seder ritual, we drink wine and say prayers over the plant species we encounter each day, from fruit-bearing trees to the cedar and olive trees that dot the Israeli landscape, and give thanks for all plant and animal life. There is no greater threat to the diversity of life on earth than climate change, which affects the habitats of millions of species. Since trees play a vital role in mitigating the greenhouse effect and keeping our ecosystem in balance, one simple way to celebrate Tu Bish'vat is to promote forestation by planting trees in our own communities or sponsoring forestation projects where they are needed throughout the world, including Israel.

Tu BiSh'vat begins Sunday, Feb. 8th at sundown. The celebration does not end, however, by planting a tree on February 9th. This April, we commemorate Birkat HaHammah, a unique blessing that is said when the sun returns to its 'original' place in the heavens at the precise time and day of its creation, once every 28 years. In honor of Birkat HaHammah, several congregations plan to install a solar-powered Ner Tamid. Other ideas for the observance of Birkat HaHammah include installing compact fluorescent light bulbs, purchasing carbon offsets, or engaging in other actions that promote energy efficiency and conservation. When we couple tree planting and other environmentally-friendly actions on Tu BiSh'vat with smart energy decisions on Birkat HaHammah, we commit ourselves to a deeper rethinking of the way we interact with our environment.

Looking beyond the Jewish calendar, we are also in the critical early days of a Congress and Presidential Administration with the greatest opportunity, and the greatest publicly-stated political will, to make the tough choices necessary to confront our energy and climate crises. At such a time, "Jewish Earth Day" can be a call to action on climate change, and the threat it poses to so many species on our earth.

It is easy to let ritual events slip away with only a passing reference. We spend an evening around a communal table, plant a tree, and pack up our Tu BiSh'vat resources for next year. Yet, we know that this is not enough, especially as we expand our knowledge about our planet and its changing climate. We cannot let this holiday, and our opportunities to take action this year, pass us by.

My favorite Talmudic commentary on environmental stewardship comes from Midrash Ecclesiastes Rabbah: "When God created the first human beings, God led them around the Garden of Eden and said: Look at my works! See how beautiful they are, how excellent! For your sake I created them all. Take care not to spoil or destroy My world, for if you do, there will be no one to repair it after you." As we celebrate Tu BiSh'vat, let us not forget our responsibility, this year more than ever, to care for God's world.

The Union for Reform Jewish has just launched its "Greening Reform Judaism" web portal. This addition to the Union website is a one-stop resource for congregations and their members seeking to live more sustainably and engage more deeply with environmental issues.

Inauguration Reflections

2009-01-26T15:24:44Z

by Shira Kleinman
Student at Muhelenberg College, Allentown, PA
1:30 am Tuesday morning I crawled out of bed and walked towards the performing arts center with five friends. We all huddled together for warmth while waiting for our buses to arrive. At about 2 am 250 students from Muhlenberg College loaded up 5 buses bound for Washington DC with the intention of witnessing history. I have spent many a rally on the Washington Mall, but never witnessed something like this. That Tuesday, the day of Barack Obama's inauguration, was the largest political gathering in history, and I was a part of it.

At 5 am we unloaded the bus and began our walk in the cold towards the Mall. Even the four layers of clothing I was wearing could not keep out the bitter early morning cold, that appeared to last all day. All the streets were closed off and just as the sun was beginning to rise, thousands upon thousands of people walked through the streets of Washington DC all to say that they witnessed the inauguration of the first African American president. As I approached the mall and tried to push through the crowd I thought about what a momentous event I was about to witness. I remember doing a report of the civil rights movement in 5th grade and calling my grandpa who marched with Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma. He relayed the story of thousands of people cramped together all just to hear this man speak and to be inspired by his hope for a more united and equal future. Now as a 19 year old I understood for the first time what he was talking about. On the 41st anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr's death more than 2 million people from all across America joined together to watch his dream come to fruition.

We stood in the cold for 6 hours meeting people from all across America who came to celebrate this event for different reasons. A couple from New Orleans came to support the man they thought could change their future. We met a family from Houston Texas who took off work and school to drive together and witness this momentous inauguration in person. Before long our bodies were numb from the cold, but we did not care as the ceremony was about to begin. As President Obama took his oath of office the crowd roared with excitement. A man who brought his young daughters and his mother was filming the event. As he panned the camera to his aging mother to see her reaction I truly understood the magnitude of this event. The old woman was not jumping or shouting or clapping, she was standing bundled in her jacket crying. It was at that moment that I understood that all the work of the 50 years before this moment had not been in vain. That woman who saw a time when she could not vote was now standing at the inauguration of the first African American president. I was so proud to be there not only to carry on the values that my grandpa had but to be part of such an integral moment in our country's history.

A Day to Remember: How the RAC Staff Spent Inauguration

2009-01-22T18:59:18Z

(First posted at RACblog)
All weekend, Washington, DC was abuzz with a wide variety of inauguration-related festivities, culminating with the Tuesday's swearing-in ceremony and parade on the National Mall. Keep reading below the jump for inauguration reflections from several members of the RAC staff!

Jill Zimmerman, Legislative Assistant:
On Sunday I had the great pleasure of attending the 2009 EMILY's List Inaugural Luncheon, featuring Secretary Janet Napolitano, Secretary Hilda Solis, Governor Bev Perdue, Senator Kay Hagan, and (just confirmed by the Senate as I'm writing) Secretary Hillary Clinton. A few weeks ago, in my blog "8 Reasons to be a Feminist," I wrote that men rule our country - after all, the vast majority of elected officials in the United States are men. Sitting in the enormous hotel ballroom surrounded by thousands of feminists celebrating the elections of so many powerful women, it became clear that the days of men being the overwhelming majority of those in charge are coming to an end.

Jason Fenster, Legislative Assistant:
The last few days have been filled with events and experiences that I will be telling and retelling to friends for years. The day after, however, what is making the biggest impact on me is what I (and we) will do next. In his inaugural speech, President Obama said "Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America." Immediately those words stuck with me and reminded me of an Alliance for Justice panel I went to on Monday called "Driving Change: The Role of Activists during the Obama Administration." The event included the requisite awesome-factor of a welcome from Josh Lyman, er, actor Bradley Whitford, and musical guest Peter Yarrow. The overall message of the panel was that while the past few days have been exciting, we are not free of responsibility. We have the obligation to push our government to enact the change and progress that We the People are calling for.

Rabbi Michael Namath, Program Director:
On Monday morning the social hall at Washington Hebrew Congregation was filled to capacity for the Martin Luther King Work Day. People had arrived and were eager to help because they saw service as a way of celebrating the inauguration. At one point the group was welcomed to the congregation and the members of the congregation were asked to raise their hands. About half of the people in the room raised their hands. Then the question was asked, "Who is here from out of town?" The other half of the room raised their hands. When they were asked where they had come from, it was amazing to hear their answers of Arizona, California, Michigan, and New Jersey to name a few. The feelings of hope, excitement, and thanksgiving floated through the air as the sea of people did their part in trying to make the world a better place.

Rachel Cohen, Legislative Assistant:
The best part of the inauguration day, for me, was the camaraderie I felt with complete strangers, simply because of our common excitement about being part of this historic event. We had friends and family crash on our couch and floor simply for the chance to walk down to the Mall in the morning with the crowds. While waiting for the ceremony to begin, I spoke to a father and son who traveled from Springfield, Illinois, to be in Washington for Inauguration. They had been in attendance when President Obama announced his candidacy, which now seems like a distant memory, and had faithfully followed his campaign ever since. In my opinion, the news reports are getting it right; yesterday felt like history in the making, and taking the time to talk to those who made the trek to Washington to be part of it was just another reminder.

Arielle Gingold, Legislative Assistant:
Being on the Mall Tuesday with the huddled (and freezing!) masses as President Obama was sworn in was an experience of a lifetime. We began our eight-hour stint on the Mall as the sun rose over the Capitol, a beautiful and fitting start to a new presidency. But having spent months advocating for an end to U.S.-sponsored torture and indefinite detention, an issue about which I care deeply, the most powerful and emotional moment for me came when President Obama said: "As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our founding fathers...drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man...Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake." I could not agree more wholeheartedly.

Jessie Weiser, Program Associate on Judicial Nominations:
Being in DC for Barack Obama's inauguration was undoubtedly one of the most amazing experiences of my life. Witnessing and participating in the various ceremonies and celebrations was certainly a wonderful way mark this historic moment. But my favorite moment of inauguration weekend was walking through Dupont Circle and seeing a giant Constitution, which thousands of people were signing. It was a great reminder that our nation was built on the belief that each individual matters and that each one of us is responsible for helping to build a more perfect union. President Obama reflected this sentiment in his inauguration speech as he emphasized the need for all of us to do service and contribute to society in every way that we can. Hopefully this transfer of power will also begin a national transformation that leads each American citizen to be empowered, important, engaged, and involved.

Micaela Hellman-Tincher, Legislative Assistant:
The election of the first African-American president is special to us young folks at the RAC, but it was clear that it had even greater meaning to the generations before me. My mom and I joined the crowds to watch the inauguration together, and I not only enjoyed the view of the capital, but also of my mom reveling in the moment. Since she was little she's been committed to making America a better, more just place, and has been teaching U.S. History for decades in an effort to make help make a world where inaugurations like yesterday's are not fanciful dreams, but reality. Later in the day I spoke to my grandmother, who also had worked for civil rights and a better America for many years before I was born. She said she had not known when or if an inauguration like Tuesday's would happen.

Obama called for all of us to work together to remake our economy, our country and our world. Sometimes I feel like my work in this arena-trying to stop genocide, making a dent in global poverty-will never meet real success. But for the generations before me, I think many felt their work find success yesterday, and so I can remain inspired that our activism today will also prevail!

Barbara Weinstein, Legislative Director:
I moved to Washington over a decade ago, inspired by the ideas of public service and communal responsibility. To this day, I get a buzz when I drive past the Lincoln Memorial. I grin when I exit the highway under the sign marked "U.S. Senate." And I never look at the White House without feeling a bit of inspiration. But I have rarely been as awed as I was on Tuesday, standing in the shadow of the Washington Monument, looking at the sea of people that stretched ahead of me to the steps of the U.S. Capitol. For a period in our nation's history when circumstances could in many ways be described as "bleak," a sense of good cheer was everywhere. No doubt there were plenty of people in the crowd of 1.5 million who did not vote for the new President. But each wanted to do more than witness history; each wanted to be a part of history. And so we were.

President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle walk the parade route while Conference Planner Katie Dochen watches from the bleachers and snaps this picture, amazed by just how tall the two are in person.

Update from Haifa: To the people of America and Barack Obama, we salute you!

2009-01-21T22:04:57Z

The Union has been receiving regular updates from Rabbi Edgar Nof of Or Hadash, a progressive congregation in Haifa, Israel. Here is a recent email:

Dear Friends,

Shalom! I want to write tonight to all of our friends in America and around the world, to commemorate the inauguration of Barack Obama, the 44th president of the United States, and the first African American president, as a very special event. I hope that Obama's administration will bring about positive change, embrace peace and security, and also promote economic stability to the world. Now it is our turn to be in support of you, and we have done so by raising the American flag in our preschools to show our love and solidarity. We all at Or Hadash wish Barack Obama and the American people good luck on this very historical day and in the coming four years. Mazal Tov!

I also want to say that we in Israel are very relieved to report that the war in Gaza has come to a close after three long weeks. Despite us being afraid that Hamas will take this opportunity and time to build up their arsenal of weapons, we are glad that we can finally rest easy that our sons, friends, and relatives are longer in immediate danger, on all sides of the border. Tonight we are praying that the ceasefire will last, and that peace will prevail. Those of us who are optimistic are still hoping for a better and more hope-filled future for the state of Israel and the Jewish and Palestinian peoples.

Personally, I hope that the Palestinian leadership will realize that this can not be done by attacking Israel with rockets, but by once again by being open to taking real steps towards peace, while allowing the people of Israel to return to some degree of normalcy in our lives. Still we are very thankful to have had the support and constant outpouring of love from our Jewish friends abroad, especially in America, who have remained so loyal to Israel throughout the duration of the war.

In Friendship,

Edgar

Activism for Progressive Judaism: Can We Do Better?

2009-01-21T17:52:22Z

by Russell Cohen
(Originally published on Russell Cohen's blog Cafe Birkenreis)
During the latter half of 2008, the WUPJ lent its support to two online petitions (e-petitions) on behalf of member unions. In both cases, the response from progressive Jews worldwide was less than rousing

In the first case, the IMPJ (Israel) attempted to gather signatures in support of the effort to achieve official recognition and a state salary for Rabbi Miri Gold, of Kibbutz Gezer in Israel. This is a potentially ground-breaking case, as a positive outcome would set the precedent for official recognition of progressive rabbis across Israel, and eventually lead to improved status for progressive Judaism as a whole.

In the second, the SAUPJ (South Africa) is attempting to gain access to the King David Jewish day schools network for Netzer, the Reform youth movement. The King David schools should be a resource for the entire SA Jewish community, but have instead been hijacked by the Orthodox majority there.

Progressive Judaism claims to be numerically the largest stream within Judaism worldwide. Progressive Jews are presumably largely computer literate, and have in the past overwhelmingly supported similar initiatives on behalf of anything from Climate Change action to the genocide in Darfur. Despite these factors, however, only 3,500 signatures had been gathered by end-November 2008 for the IMPJ e-petition (against a target of at least 10,000). In the case of the SAUPJ initiative, only 538 signatures (against a target of 500) have been received to date. In order to be truly effective, the first needs to be supported by tens, if not hundreds of thousand of signatories, while the second would have carried far more weight if endorsed by thousands rather than hundreds.

These results are disappointing, to say the least; perhaps even shockingly so. What went wrong with these two initiatives, and how can we ensure that future efforts receive the support they deserve from progressive Jews worldwide? To my mind, there are two factors to be addressed:

Attitude

I think we're seeing an example of the barber's children going with hair uncut. Progressive Jews have simply adopted so many causes, that there's no drive or energy left for causes closer to home. Charity doesn't have to begin at home, but it should also not be neglected.

Not neglecting our own issues is doubly important in the case of those relating to Israel. I believe that progressive Judaism will always be taken less than seriously, will always find itself in a defensive posture, until it receives official recognition and equality in the Jewish State.

We need to take the approach that "an injury to one is an injury to all", and simply not accept second-class citizenship or a lesser status for progressive Judaism anywhere in the world, but particularly in Israel.

Approach

To ensure an effective response to issues such as the two above, the initiative still needs to begin with a union (e.g. IMPJ, SAUPJ or URJ), but should then be adopted and coordinated by the WUPJ.

The issue and call to action (e.g. an e-petition) should be communicated to all progressive Jews worldwide, either by the WUPJ, the union, the congregation, or a combination of all three. The issue (including links to the appropriate online petition, donation page, etc.) should also be communicated through the official websites, blogs and e-newsletters of all these bodies. Members should also be encouraged to forward the material to their own "e-brigades" (we all have them).

Issues relating to privacy policies, etc., should be addressed by all progressive unions worldwide before the next such initiative, to ensure that no union is unable to support an initiative due to privacy or related concerns.

Such a combined "bottom-up" and "top-down" approach should prove more effective in both reaching and motivating the widest possible audience when these initiatives are undertaken in future.

In conclusion, progressive Judaism is facing many challenges, opportunities and threats worldwide. Where armchair activist tools such as electronic or online petitions can help us to meet those challenges, the WUPJ and all its member unions and congregations should present a united front and a coordinated approach.

Russell Cohen is a progressive Jew from Johannesburg, South Africa who writes and blogs under the pen name "Maskil".

RJ.org editor's note: The Union has solicited support for the cause of Rabbi Miri Gold in its Weekly Briefing, and we encourage you to visit the IRAC website to sign the petition.

Blessings for Today: A New Day in America

2009-01-21T15:34:00Z

By JanetheWriter
We Jews have blessings for all occasions: for bread, for wine, for joyous times, for sad times, upon seeing a rainbow, for flowers and herbs, for social action... the list goes on.

Each morning we thank God for returning our souls to our bodies and for a host of other daily miracles: enabling us to distinguish day from night, opening our eyes, freeing the captive, lifting the fallen, and so on.

In our minyan this morning, we added three more blessings for the day:

Baruch atah Adonai, asher sam chelki b'medinah chofesheet v'democratit.
Praised are You, Adonai, Who has allowed me to live in a free and democratic country.

Baruch atah Adonai, asher tzivanu lirdof acharei ha'tzedek tokh milui chovoteinu ha'ezrahiyyot.
Praised are You, Adonai, Who commands us to pursue justice through the fulfillment of our civic obligations.

Baruch atah Adonai, asher tzivanu la'asok b'ma'asei tikkun ha'olam.
Praised are You, Adonai, Who commands us to engage in acts of repairing the world.

I would add a fourth:

Baruch atah Adonai eloheinu melech ha'olam shecheyanu v'kiy'manu v'higyanu lazman hazeh.
Praised are You, Adonai, Sovereign of the universe, for giving us life, for sustaining us, and for enabling us to reach this time of joy.

Amen.

Future History Classes Bring Aid to Darfur

2009-01-09T21:52:39Z

by Micaela Hellman-Tincher
Legislative assistant at the Religious Action Center
(First posted at RACblog)
Just this week, President Bush's National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley announced that President Bush had approved an airlift of equipment to help the peacekeeping mission in Darfur. He even decided to waive a 15 day Congressional notification requirement due to the urgency of sending the aid to save lives.

But hasn't sending emergency supplies to the peacekeeping mission been urgent for a while? While Darfur activists are excited about President Bush finally answering their calls for logistical support for peacekeeping forces, the New York Times reports on Jerry Fowler, executive director of Save Darfur pointing out, "There is this question, 'Why haven't they done this before?' " and adding that the airlift "might be a little bit of last-minute legacy shopping by the administration."

There are worse reasons to do things, but President-Elect Obama should not be looking to his legacy, but rather the urgent cries for help in Darfur and the unceasing voices of the anti-genocide community in the United States to direct his action. Let's urge him to make Darfur a priority for the first days of his time in office, not the last weeks of his administration. So far, Reform Movement congregations have led the way in their communities, most recently by joining the effort to collect postcards to send to President-Elect Obama calling for him to make Darfur a priority issue. Let's continue our leadership in this effort, with the hope that President-Elect Obama will create an anti-genocide legacy from day 1. Order postcards for Darfur here!

Update: What's next for action in Darfur? It is unknown but President-Elect Obama's nomination of Susan Rice for UN ambassador suggests that tougher approaches are on the horizon. The LA Times reports on some of the options previously rejected by President Bush.

A New Approach in Washington

2008-12-31T19:41:15Z

This week's U.S. News and World Report takes a look about how President-Elect Obama is consulting with religious groups across the spectrum on issues ranging from domestic poverty to bringing peace to the Middle East.

"This is the most extensive outreach and listening tour that I've ever seen a new administration take, and that is certainly true of their outreach to the faith community," said Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, who has worked with presidential transition teams going back to Jimmy Carter's.

It's a remarkable departure from the Bush administration's approach. As Tanya Clay House, director of public policy for People of the American Way said, "The old administration listened to just one side of the argument."

"Our Katrina" - A Message from Detroit

2008-12-25T00:04:12Z

By Rabbi Norman Roman
(First posted at RACblog)
Rabbi Norman Roman is the rabbi at Temple Kol Ami in West Bloomfield, MI. This post is adapted from Rabbi Roman's message in the January 2009 Kol Ami bulletin.

Early in December, I was invited by Cardinal Adam Maida to attend a small gathering of Detroit area religious leaders, an urgent interfaith response to the economic crisis and the auto industry's needs. It was good for the 14 of us to be together (14 is, of course, a 'yad' - a helping hand, in Hebrew!), the news media reported on our meeting, some ideas were shared of what our various communities were doing in Churches, Mosques, and Synagogues to assist our members, and personal connections were made for future participation in "prayer, political action, and programming."

Several insights from this crisis are very clear to me, and others have been suggested for me (and you) to consider:

First, what is happening in Southeast Michigan especially, is what I am calling "our area's Katrina". It is a monster storm that in some ways was expected, but its catastrophic consequences are yet to be fully grasped. On the horizon are winds of change: total disruption of home, professional and family life for many. Countless numbers of our friends and neighbors will need (or already are in need of) new jobs, new residences, and most importantly, hope. Other areas of the country received 'help' very quickly, some without too many conditions attached. But in our area's situation, there have been repercussions and threats, Congressional hearings, and scapegoating. Washington, and much of the U.S. do not seem to comprehend the extent of this crisis (the size of the hurricane), how many people outside the immediate area will be affected (the levies will break), nor has anyone prepared adequately for the rescue and clean-up operations that will be necessary (FEMA's failure). Is this possibly because many see this crisis as an opportunity to 'break' the labor unions? Or, as we heard in the accusations of racism towards New Orleans, is Detroit also being 'sacrificed' because the population is predominantly black?

Secondly, even though a loan package or other assistance may have been legislated by the time 2009 begins, a new government, with a new President and a new Congressional Majority, will take office in January. We must communicate with Washington about support for our area, our manufacturing industries, and the Main Street versus Wall Street divide that has become so real during this Recession. And more, we must share our pain and our stories with our relatives and friends who live in other parts of the country. For apparently, they and their representatives in the House and Senate refuse to see the human effect that this crisis has brought. They do not accept that failures and foreclosures and plant closings in Michigan will inevitably also mean failures and foreclosures and closings in the South, as well. They refuse to acknowledge the major advances that the American automotive companies have achieved in the last few years. We need their voices to be heard on our behalf, and we need their prayers, as well.

This is a very difficult time - for all of us. Again, please know that the Temple is here for you: we pledge to listen, to advocate on your behalf, to try and make connections for job placement or other types of assistance. The key phrase for our Jewish community and for our congregation recently has been, "No One is Alone." Our tradition teaches both that we should not despair and that we should always stand ready to help.

As Jews and as Americans, let us proudly welcome the New Year and the New Administration, and let us work and pray for a better tomorrow!

The RAC is blogging from New Orleans!

2008-12-22T21:39:55Z

by Kate Bigam
Press Secretary at the Religious Action Center
(First posted on RACblog)

Thirty young Jewish adults took off for New Orleans, Louisiana this morning to help rebuild the city's 9th Ward, still damaged from 2005's Hurricane Katrina. These volunteers are participating in the Union for Reform Judaism's Tzevet Mitzvot: Young Adult Mitzvah Corps program, which combines five days of social action, worship and fun in the Big Easy.

Want to follow along with their NOLA adventure? Good news - they'll be blogging about it like crazy! The trip is being led by Barb Weinstein, legislative director of the Religious Action Center, and Naomi Abelson, manager of congregational relations of the Commission on Social Action - both will be live-blogging about the group's experiences in New Orleans. You can check them out over at the RACblog, where we'll post daily updates until their trip ends on Christmas Day.

One more thing: If you want to be even more Web-savvy than standard blogging, check out the RAC on social networking Web site Twitter, where Barb will be "microblogging" more than daily with updates both large and small about what the group is up to.

And don't forget: You can let Barb, Naomi, and the rest of the group know that you're following along with their trip by commenting on their posts!

Hitting the Hill During the Holidays

2008-12-19T20:16:43Z

by Rachel Cohen
(First posted at RACblog)
Rachel Cohen is a legislative assistant
at the Religious Action Center

Over the past few weeks, I have had the pleasure of meeting over 500 high school students from across the country at the Religious Action Center's Bernard and Audre Rapoport L'Taken social justice seminars. Each four-day intensive learning program brings students from across the country to D.C. to learn about social justice and Jewish values (read what some of the participants had to say about their experience). The program culminates with a visit to Capitol Hill, where students meet with their Senators, Representatives and their staff to discuss the issues that matter most to them. As my fellow RAC staff and I led the participants past the Capitol and Supreme Court to their meetings, I got several interesting questions about my experiences on the Hill: "Oh, you must be here all the time, what's your favorite place to go eat?; Who is the most famous Senator/Member of Congress you have ever met?; Do you ever see the President??"

I answer honestly that visiting the Hill is only one of the many activities included in my job description. Even as full-time advocates, walking the halls of Congress and hobnobbing with the Hill crowd is not something I do on a daily basis. However, lately I've gotten to travel to the House and Senate more often, meeting with Hill staffers and members of the Obama transition team along with our partners at other faith groups. While these meetings are interesting and informative, it is often a challenge to translate our visits into the change we want (and need) to see on the issues that matter most to us.

During the holiday season we are often focused on spending time with friends and family, and intentionally disconnect from our 'everyday' lives. While this break is important and often necessary, we cannot forget our long-term goals and the steps we must take to achieve them. As the new administration and Congress prepare to take office in January, we have a unique opportunity to shape the agenda by making our voices heard on the climate and energy issues that matter so much to our community. We have an opportunity to act now, and must continue to raise our voices to keep the environment on the agenda, especially during these hard economic times. I encourage you to take break from your break this Chanukah and take action by urging the President-elect to make climate change a priority in the first 100 days of his administration, calling on Congress to pass a real, green stimulus, advocating for clean water, and more. It may be the best gift you can give to your loved ones this holiday season, and you don't even have to travel to the Hill to do it.

Make a Great Miracle Happen There

2008-12-10T20:55:49Z

(First posted at RACblog)
by Micaela Hellman-Tincher
Eisendrath Legislative Assistant
at the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism
Over Chanukah, we all look for thoughtful, useful and interesting gifts for our family and friends. Amid the ads for watches, sweaters and digital cameras this winter, you might notice an ad for another kind of gift. A bed net. As part of our goal to deliver 50,000 nets abroad, the Union for Reform Judaism will be advertising Nothing But Nets in Jewish media around the country this winter.

While you may not know anyone who wants their bed covered in insecticide-treated mesh, there are people abroad to whom this gift won't simply be nice and thoughtful, but life-saving. A child dies from malaria every 30 seconds, and the use of a bed net can reduce disease transmission by up to 90%. The bed nets donated through the Union for Reform Judaism's Nothing But Nets initiative will go straight to refugees of conflict in Africa-one of the populations most vulnerable to malaria. It takes only $10 to send a net.

And while your friends and family won't receive a bed net themselves, they will get the gift of leaning how small efforts at home can change lives far away. They will get a broader understanding of and connection to the world around them. They will get the chance to teach their children about issues facing children abroad. They will get an appreciation of the goodness in their lives. And most of all, they get to take part in one of the most important and amazing things in the world-saving someone else's life.

As Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, noted yesterday (on a call promoting ONE Sabbath, a great way to extend your Nothing But Nets activism,) "When you buy one net for $10, you are saving a life. That is a very rare thing to do. When you feed someone for $10 you will need to do it again. When you buy one net, it stays there."

This winter, due to the efforts of congregations, b'nei mitzvah students and others, the first shipment of bed nets will be delivered to the Nakivale refugee camp in Uganda, providing malaria protection for the entire camp.

We are halfway to our goal of delivering 50,000 bed nets. Inspire your friends and family with the gift of saving a life this Chanukah. Give them each a donation to Nothing But Nets. Ask them to give the same to you. Have a net-giving party for your whole family! Make a great miracle happen there.

Too Little, Too L8

2008-12-08T21:05:31Z

By dcc
Sound-out the title; it makes sense. But what doesn't make sense is the latest edition of movie-star outrage over California enshrining oppression in the State Constitution. A group of Hollywood illuminati got together to make Prop 8: The Musical. It is laugh out loud funny, well made and absolutely irrelevant.

You can watch it or just take my word for it:

I loved the short and think it is pretty well done. Jack Black plays a very compassionate, if type-cast Jesus. (Who knew Jesus also was the same rock-n-roll lovein', fast-talkin', not showerin' dude as every other Jack Black character?) You will notice a number of well know faces and think to yourself, "wow, this is great...but why did they put this together after Prop 8 passed?"

Prop 8 was bank-rolled by lots of people on both sides of the story, but money wasn't the problem. People didn't hit the streets effectively; the LGBT community and its allies dropped the ball. It is pretty pathetic that in the most progressive state in the Country, that this kind of ballot initiative would pass. The thing that is the most disheartening is that with organizations like the Musical Team here, they couldn't figure out how to stop it.

There are more legal battles to come for Golden State and its somewhat inconsistent stance of civil rights. This and other after-the-fact statements to the ridiculous nature of this proposition are a waste of time and energy. Perhaps next time we will plan ahead.

Because He Couldn't, Let Us Remember HM

2008-12-05T21:42:37Z

By Gardening Grandma
I sometimes suspect the urge to make the world a better place is part of the DNA of every Jew, yet I recognize that it runs in the veins of people of all persuasions, often when they're not even aware of their actions.

An obit of "H.M., an Unforgettable Amnesiac," appears on the front page of this morning's New York Times. After experimental brain surgery in 1953 to correct uncontrollable seizures, he lost the ability to form new memories. And, because he and his family were willing to be the object of intensive study, the world of modern neuroscience was born.

For 55 years, each time H.M. met a friend, each time he ate a meal, each time he walked in the woods, it was as if for the first time. God's world was created anew each day for him.

Judaism teaches us that we are God's partner in Tikkun olam--repairing the world. Because H.M. had no memory, he could not know that by the simple act of living, he was working with God and giving us and future generations a gift far beyond measure.

The article ends with a simple line. "Henry Gustav Molaison, born on Feb. 26, 1926, left no survivors. He left a legacy in science that cannot be erased."

To that I add, Amen.

Getting Serious about Preventing WMD Terrorism

2008-12-05T20:16:38Z

By Jeff Oakley
(First posted on the RACblog)
Jeff Oakley is an Eisendrath Legislative Assistant at the Religious Action Center.

The Commission on the Prevention of WMD Proliferation and Terrorism, led by former Sens. Bob Graham of Florida and Jim Talent of Missouri, announced at a press conference earlier today the findings of their bipartisan panel. In a stark warning to the United States and the world, the commission found that "unless the world community acts decisively and with great urgency, it is more likely than not that a weapon of mass destruction will be used in a terrorist attack somewhere in the world by the end of 2013."

The panel's report makes clear the urgency of nonproliferation efforts, warning that "the more proliferation that occurs, the greater the risk of additional proliferation, as nations that have to this point declined to acquire nuclear weapons will believe it necessary to counter their neighbors who have developed those capabilities." As this "increases the prospect that these weapons will be poorly secured and thus may be stolen by terrorists", the commission made a number of recommendations about addressing this threat.

The Boston Globe reports that President-elect Obama is set to heed the eighth recommendation of the commission by designating a White House principal advisor for WMD proliferation and terrorism.

President-elect Obama's administration can help prevent nuclear terrorism by taking seriously as well the recommendation to "work internationally toward strengthening the nonproliferation regime, reaffirming the vision of a world free of nuclear weapons." Only by doing so can we truly hope to turn back the tide against proliferation, prevent Iran and other dangerous regimes and terrorist groups from obtaining nuclear weapons, and ensure the instability and terrorism emanating from Pakistan do not involve even deadlier weapons.

The Reform Movement has long called for the world to work together to prevent the massive destruction wrought by the use of nuclear weapons by achieving total nuclear disarmament. While the White House must step up its efforts, we must also get involved in the effort to create a safer world free of nuclear dangers.

One way to get involved with the work to create a safer, nuclear weapons free world is to take action through our partner, the Campaign for a Nuclear Weapons Free World.

Indeed, as the report's final recommendation states, "citizens should hold their governments accountable." Let's do so and make sure our government is doing everything possible to keep us safe by eliminating the threat of nuclear weapons from the earth.

Compassion Knows No Borders

2008-11-17T23:03:47Z

By Rabbi Eric Yoffie
(Originally published in Reform Judaism magazine)
No one can listen to CNN's Lou Dobbs without being struck by the thinly veiled contempt he expresses for the immigrants, legal and illegal, who make their way to America's shores.

Mr. Dobbs seems to think of immigrants as somehow less than human. Like Pat Buchanan, Tom Tancredo, and other anti-immigration ideologues, he speaks of them as if they were parasites who feed off the rest of us while destroying our economy and undermining our national identity.

It is true that we need a better immigration policy than the one we have--one with a more effective method of securing our borders, a system that will give illegal immigrants a way to earn citizenship, and a guest worker program that will provide the human resources our economy requires. But as important as these goals are for the next administration, it is even more important that our new president speak out against the disdain for other human beings that is at the heart of Mr. Dobbs' nativistic populism. Jews know from long experience that such attitudes usually have less to do with legitimate economic self-interest than with a petty, bigoted mindset that undermines American ideals.

More often than not, anti-immigrant hate-mongers are not talking about illegal immigration but about the Latino population as a whole, and what they fear, it appears, is the threat that Mexican and Central American immigrants supposedly pose to our national culture. While I don't object to anyone who argues that our country needs a common culture and language and a sense of history and collective destiny, I reject the baseless claim that Latinos are somehow incapable or unwilling to participate in our national narrative. Jews should remember that the same false claims were made against us in the early part of the 20th century.

As Jews, it is not only our history as an immigrant people that should make us sympathetic to the immigrant experience. Our sacred texts demonstrate an abiding concern with assuring the welfare of the stranger. As Leviticus 19:10 makes clear, the Children of Israel are commanded to show care not only to the poor but also to the foreigner.

In short, the Dobbsian contempt for the immigrant is the very antithesis of Jewish teachings. We Jews have learned that immigrants, especially in America, are almost always a blessing. We know that in welcoming others with compassion we inevitably strengthen ourselves. And we know too that people who close the borders of their country usually end up closing their minds.

When Heartland Pigs Fly

2008-11-08T01:13:43Z

By Dr. Magda Peck
(First posted on the RACblog)

Dr. Magda Peck is a member of the URJ Commission on Social Action and chairs its Task Force on Economic Justice, Women and Families. She is a member of Temple Israel in Omaha, Nebraska where she is a Professor of Pediatrics and Public Health at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. The views expressed below are, of course, her own.

When victory for Barack Obama was called just past 10 last Tuesday night, some remarkable things happened.

In the packed Omaha Hilton ballroom where usual Democrat diehards were outnumbered by fresh faces, shrieks of collective disbelief erupted. Deafening shouts of stunning joy filled room. Older Black women sunk into their seats, sobbing, palms raised high praising G-d. Gay couples openly embraced. Swarms of young folks locked arms and jumped up and down for a long, long time. My younger son David, a freshman at American in DC, called: "Ma! Barack Obama is MY President!" Sobbing and laughing, he kept shouting "I can't believe it! I can't believe it!" From Omaha to the nation's capital and so many places in between: "shock and awe," redefined.

For the last 18 years, it has not been easy being a passionately progressive, fast-talking East Coast Jew on Election Day (or any other day) in consistently conservative Nebraska. "Go Big Red" is not just about football in this massive state of 77,000 square miles, 1.8 million mostly white people, and just 6,000 Jews. But this year, prairie winds have been shifting.

We knew something was happening last winter when nearly 10,000 people flooded the Civic Center to hear Barack Obama on less than 48 hours notice. A few days later, more than 1,700 people showed up at our polling place alone for the first Democratic caucus in 40 years. The line outside to register persisted for three hours in blustery 14-degree weather. In the end, I cradled a makeshift ballot box for Obama as hundreds and hundreds of people filed by, placing their blue slips of paper in the bulk toilet paper box we had requisitioned from the middle school janitor's closet. "Keep it safe!" they pleaded. "Do you think it will really count this time?" asked an older black man with tears in his eyes.

When the Obama campaign established an office in Omaha and put paid staff on site, we scratched our heads. Then three more offices opened, with more staff and a growing army of volunteers to blanket the district. Back when it was neck and neck, the "Omaha scenario" had some national play. Like Maine, Nebraska splits its electoral votes by congressional district. If Obama took CD2 - Omaha - it could be the one-vote tiebreaker.

Going door-to-door last weekend in 75-degree weather, hope oozed. When doors opened to us in the last hours of daylight on the 4th, most folks were positively beaming: Yes, ma'am, we've voted. There was a swelling pride, a palpable sense of real possibility. And then it happened.

But it was more than just Barack Obama. Within the Black Jewish Dialogue I have convened about once a month for the last 10 years, all five folks running for offices - State Legislature, County Commission, School Board, Learning Community - were elected. All women. Four African-Americans. In all, I counted more than a dozen remarkable friends and colleagues who won their races across the state. Good people grounded in social justice, tired of being discounted, who long to serve and want to assure a reasoned, progressive voice, right here in the Heartland.

It will not be easy service. Our celebration of an American President-Elect who is African-American was deeply sobered this week by the chilling outcome of a widely approved constitutional Amendment 424: a statewide ban on affirmative action in Nebraska's public institutions. Scattered angry voices in letters to the editor and racist talk in high school corridors stoke embers of hatred, fear and retribution.

Given resounding election results elsewhere, the national media have lost interest in an Omaha scenario. But pay attention: As of this morning, that one electoral vote for President from Nebraska's second congressional district is still up for grabs. Ten thousand early and absentee votes are yet to be counted, and today's Omaha World Herald reports that it is looking very good for Barack Obama. It would be a small but significant first in American history to have a state split its Electoral College votes. And for this Nebraska mile marker to coincide with the election of Illinois Senator Barack Hussein Obama, we must ask ourselves and each other: What is now possible that was not possible before?

Who ever said that pigs can't fly in the Heartland?

Election Reflections

2008-11-06T20:14:11Z

By JanetheWriter
Yesterday during lunch, Naomi, one of my colleagues, told the following story:

Her father was a poll worker in Wisconsin on Election Day. An elderly African-American woman came in to vote. She was carrying with her a small package. The poll workers asked her what it was and she said, "I brought my ancestors with me." With that, she opened the package and took out pictures of several deceased relatives. The poll workers helped her set them up in the voting booth so they could be with her when she voted.

Naomi said that she's told the story three or four times and gets teary with each telling. She isn't the only one.

* * *

As always happens when I go to vote, I think about my grandparents. My grandfather died in March of 1986 and my grandmother in July of 1991. And, while I observe their yahrzeits at the appropriate season each year, I also think of Election Day as a pseudo-yahrzeit for each of them. In this, their adopted country, they savored the right to step up, to raise their voices, and to have them count. Never did either of them miss a trip to the polls on Election Day. Indeed, it is a most fitting tribute to their memories.

It was these thoughts that occupied my mind as I left my polling place. On the short walk home, I began to "percolate" this post in my head. That was before I found the following poem on the blog of Rabbi James Stone Goodman:

Prayer After Voting

I voted
O holy God, I voted,
I felt good voting.
I honored my predecessors -
My grandparents, my parents of blessed memory -
Knowing, for them,
Voting
Was an ascendant experience.
They had complete confidence in our country
To provide opportunity for us
Their children
- That they did not have.

That is a matter of memory
Because I have had all opportunity,
But their stories reminded me that they
Did not.

I voted with the intention to honor them.
This year I voted from frustration too.

I voted against negativist language
Stiff, formal, and unbelievable to me -
The handlers speaking through puppets
Playing off fear in our country
When I want to vote for hope.

I voted for hope.
I voted for a deeper level of discourse
For a lower timbre of speech
Don't yell at me pundits and politicians
And don't think I am so easily played.
You couldn't reach me with your strategies -
This year your strategies were transparent
And ugly -
And I turned off your voices
When they weren't honest voices.

The problem is always discernment -
This year it was easy.
I know the truth when I hear it.
I voted out of discernment.

I voted for hope
I voted with the intention of honoring
Those who voted before me
During periods of higher expectations.

O holy God, I voted for higher expectations
Authenticity
Purification of purpose
Real talk from real people.

Politicos -- don't sweet talk me.
I'll vote again.

After such eloquence, there is nothing left to say.

"You wouldn't be voting for Obama today if Andy Goodman hadn't gone to Mississippi "

2008-11-05T21:35:33Z

(First posted on the RACblog)
The following is an e-mail letter from Doug Mishkin to his daughter Arielle and their very close friend Melanie Anenberg. Doug, a lawyer with the Washington Office of Patton Boggs, is a long time activist who developed a close friendship with Carolyn Goodman, mother of slain Civil Rights worker Andrew Goodman.

Arielle and Melanie:

I woke up today thinking of the two of you. In your first election, you'll get to vote for an African-American (if I ever learn that you did otherwise, well, it's a free country and you can do what you want, but don't bother coming home).

I can't resist taking note of this. Your parents wondered whether we would EVER get to do this. How did this happen? Well, it happened for lots of reasons. But you got to touch one of those reasons personally. We sat in Carolyn's house during that vacation (you know, the best Mishkin vacation ever because Melanie was with us) and she told you the story of Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney.

Now, historians are quick to point out that we can't really prove why things happen in history; and we certainly can't prove that things would have been different if other things hadn't happened (if Lincoln hadn't been shot, would the U.S. have been different after the Civil War?).

But I can tell you this: you wouldn't be voting for Obama today if Andy Goodman hadn't gone to Mississippi to register blacks to vote. When he was killed, it pricked the conscience of our country. We are a better country than that. It took his death, and those of Schwerner and Chaney, to make the country see that. The country was never the same. So although I cannot PROVE that history would have been different without Andy Goodman, I don't need proof. I know it.

It would have been sweet had Carolyn lived to see what she and Andy and everyone else from Freedom Summer in Mississippi accomplished. As with Obama's grandmother, it wasn't meant to be. So be it. Think of her today. And Melanie, when you're with a million people tonight, give a cheer for me.

Dad/Doug

President Obama: (Community) Organizer in Chief

2008-11-05T21:00:00Z

By Rabbi Jonah Pesner
(First posted on the RACblog)
Rabbi Jonah Pesner is the Founding Director of the Union for Reform Judaism's Just Congregations.

Shortly before he began his presidential campaign, Senator Barack Obama sat down for most of an afternoon with Mark Pelavin and me. We were struck at the time by the intensity with which he listened, and by the probing nature of his questions about Just Congregations. We were happily surprised that he had read the materials on our website (not every elected official does their homework for a routine meeting!). The Senator wanted to know not just about our mission and goals, but also about me. He wasn't satisfied with what; he wanted to know why. Why did I believe in the work I was doing?

I believe that Obama's inquisitiveness is directly related to his experience as a community organizer. Among the most critical qualities of an effective organizer is an authentic curiosity about others. When Obama was only twenty-four, he learned in organizing training that to be powerful in public life, a leader needs a strong, vast network of people who will follow him or her. Consequently, he knows that people only follow a leader if he or she understands them; their values, concerns, interests and motivations. (I received my own training as a community organizer from the same group that trained Obama: the Industrial Areas Foundation, founded by the late Saul Alinsky. In fact, Obama and I were both trained by the same organizer, Arnie Graf, who now mentors me in my role as Director of Just Congregations.)

I have given considerable thought to the question: what will it mean to have a community organizer serve as the President of the United States? The answer is interesting to me as an organizer, of course, but it has significant implications about the way President Obama will govern; about our ability to have an impact in Washington over the next four years and beyond; and more broadly about what organizing can teach us about being an effective force for social justice, as the Jewish tradition calls us to be.

One can begin to understand how Obama leads in the way he ran his campaign. The pundits referred to the "ground-game" with a heavy emphasis on field offices and voter turnout efforts. What the press rarely explained was the person-to-person nature of the effort. The campaign field organizers reached out to thousands of volunteers and treated them like leaders. Rather than assign them tasks, like phone calls and leafleting, they trained them to recruit friends, family and neighbors to join an Obama team. They were given training and support, and then allowed the freedom to develop a strategy to get commitments from voters to support Obama. In this way, the campaign built a grassroots movement. They trained leaders who recruited new people, identified new leaders, and spread the campaign across the country, neighborhood by neighborhood.

Our President-Elect understands the core organizing principle that the power to make real change comes from people acting together. He knew his campaign would have to bring together a broadly and deeply engaged constituency to support his candidacy. Local efforts by an army of volunteer leaders who hosted house parties, campaign events, and various Internet-based activities were every bit as important to the Obama campaign as were television advertisements. In fact, the television ads were only possible because of effective, grassroots fundraising. Thousands and thousands of local leaders hosted fundraisers and forwarded seemingly endless emails to their friends and neighbors.

Community organizers like to distinguish between "action" and "activity." Often, they teach, we engage in activity and are busy, but nothing really changes. Action however causes a reaction - a change in the world. On the streets of Chicago, Obama was held accountable by the people he was organizing in a very straightforward way: did our lives improve? Did the city remove the asbestos from public housing? Obama ran as a "change" candidate because a community organizer believes that the purpose of bringing people together is to act effectively to make a real change that will improve people's lives.

Just as Obama ran his campaign by emphasizing local leadership and engaging a broad constituency to fight for his candidacy, he will need to govern the same way. Whether it is in passing significant legislation to reform health care, address the economic crisis, or shift course in foreign policy, Obama understands the importance of an organized, energized constituency to fight for the change. Saul Alinsky had a story he liked to tell about Franklin Roosevelt. After a White House meeting with advocates, the president said, "OK, you've convinced me. Now go on out and bring pressure on me!" All Presidents depend on organized people to apply enough pressure to overcome resistant forces - perhaps the best example was the failure of the Clinton health plan. For Obama to pass large-scale health reform, his administration will have to organize the American people to put pressure on Congress and fight back special interests and resistant forces.

Perhaps this is where we fit in. The Reform Jewish movement is an organized constituency. We are 1.5 million people clustered in more than 900 congregations in fifty-states. We have a shared set of Jewish values that bind us, and give us the capacity to influence the direction of the nation. For decades, the Religious Action Center has been the Prophetic voice of our Movement in Washington. More important, the RAC and the Commission on Social Action have had an influence on American civil and religious rights, foreign policy, and a variety of other causes.

The Obama presidency creates an enormous opportunity for Reform Jews. This administration will keenly understand the need for organized constituencies to support its agenda. This challenges us to do more than speak out on compelling issues of social and economic justice. We must organize around those issues. Just as Obama saw his volunteers as leaders who would build his base of constituents, we see our member congregations as the networks of leaders who have the ability to organize local Jewish communities to advocate for the issues of social and economic justice that reflect our most deeply held Jewish values.

The current health care reform initiative launched by Union for Reform Judaism President Rabbi Yoffie at the last Biennial is a powerful example. Across the country, our congregations are fighting for health reform on a statewide level. Though we are supporting their efforts, we are trusting them to determine the best strategy on a local level. When President-elect Obama puts forward a proposal on health reform, we won't just be another interested group in Washington - we will be an organized constituency that is willing to fight for quality, affordable health care for all.

It is worth concluding with a reflection on the spirituality of the next president. Obama became a committed religious person in his twenties while he was organizing in African American churches in Chicago. It was there he discovered the power of organized people to make real change in the world. He also discovered the power of religious traditions to inspire those people, and articulate their shared values, their most deeply held beliefs.

I believe Obama understands community organizing as redemptive, because through organizing local people take responsibility for transforming their own lives and communities. I also believe he sees it a religious pursuit. I felt this most keenly the night he spoke after his very first primary victory, in Iowa back in May. In defending his campaign theme of hope Senator Obama said:

"Hope is the bedrock of this nation. The belief that our destiny will not be written for us, but by us, by all those men and women who are not content to settle for the world as it is, who have the courage to remake the world as it should be."

I was stunned when I heard that powerful phrase, in part because its also in the mission statement of Just Congregations which reads, "Our purpose is redemption: the sacred transformation of the world as it is -- parched by oppression-- into the world as we know it should be -- overflowing with justice." The President-Elect and I both learned the language of the "transformation of the world as it is into the world as it should be" at our training as community organizers. In truth, Saul Alinsky and the Industrial Areas Foundation didn't make it up either - they learned it from the biblical language of redemption.

On the eve of this new era for the United States of America, let us look no further than ourselves to find the leadership to transform the world. That's where the power lies.

Growing the Green Economy

2008-10-29T19:41:14Z

By Rachel Cohen
(First posted on the RACblog)
With special thanks to Legislative Assistant Micaela Hellman-Tincher for her contributions to this post.

Last week, Mayor Ron Dellums and Rep. Barbara Lee unveiled the Oakland Green Jobs Corps, a program designed to train young city residents to participate in green industry, which is rapidly expanding throughout California. While the program starts small by giving 40 young adults skills in green construction and solar panel installation, advocates hope that it will become a pilot for green jobs programs around the country. At a time when both jobs and new energy solutions are in high demand, there is clearly fertile ground for such initiatives. Weatherization programs, like the Department of Energy's Weatherization Assistance Program, have already provided 8,000 jobs weatherizing homes in low-income communities. These workers not only help communities reduce their carbon footprint, but they also help to lower the cost burden of heating and cooling by an average of 15% for low-income families.

Americans are ready for green jobs, and scholars and advocates already have plans to put the green economy into action: Van Jones, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and longtime environmental activist, recently wrote The Green Collar Economy, a plan to solve the economic and environmental crises at once by focusing on creating jobs in the clean energy sector. A recent New York Times Magazine cover story on the new green economy explains how entrepreneurs with millions to invest have ideas to revolutionize our economy and our environment with everything from plug-in hybrid cars to algae-based biofuels. The message is simple: Green is good- not just for our planet, but for our national bottom line.

Building the green economy fulfills two of our most important obligations as Jews; to 'till and to tend' our Earth, and to care for the most vulnerable among us. In fact, Judaism teaches that the highest form of tzedakah is to help another person towards being self-sufficient, and new green jobs are a big step forward for those struggling though our economic and energy crises. The new green economy could cut carbon emissions drastically, putting us on the path to 80% emissions reductions by 2050, the standard recommended by the International Panel on Climate Change. If we build the green economy right, we can also ensure access to productive jobs with competitive wages to Americans currently facing unemployment, unpaid mortgages, and heaps of debt.

We need a massive undertaking to rebuild our transportation infrastructure, retrofit old buildings for greater energy efficiency and water conservation, and build a national network of solar panels and wind turbines to help power our electric grid. This transition will require massive amounts of labor, and as unemployment insurance runs out for thousands across the country, Americans are ready to step up and take these jobs. Finally, economists and environmentalists are realizing that they are allies, not opponents, and that together, we can be the innovative America we want to be.

Getting Out the (Disabled) Vote

2008-10-23T21:03:22Z

By Rabbi Lynne Landsberg
(First posted on the RACblog)
Rabbi Lynne Landsberg is the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism's Senior Advisor on Disability Issues. She is a former Associate Director of the RAC and a former regional director of the URJ's Mid-Atlantic Council.

Earlier this month, I blogged about the Americans With Disabilities (ADA) Amendments Act and the work the Jewish Disability Network engaged in to see it passed this year. With one success under our belts, the coalition is now looking ahead to the future: Among our immediate priorities is making sure that the 37 million Americans with disabilities who are eligible to vote get to the polls on Election Day.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was followed by the National Voting Rights Act of 1965, ensuring that Americans of color were not prevented from voting. Although the original ADA guaranteed voting rights to individuals with disabilities, greater effort must be devoted to enforcement of the law.

In reality, many polling places are still inaccessible in various ways. One of the most significant accessibility problems is ill-informed poll workers who do not know how to use the accessible voting machines or are unaware some people with disabilities are allowed to have an aide of their choice accompany them into the booth. I encourage you to check out the disabilities section of the RAC's "Get Out the Vote 2008 Guide," which lists practical suggestions and vital information in helping get out the vote:

One crucial step is encouraging trustworthy people to check in advance that local polling places are fully accessible to individuals with disabilities. Keep an eye out for elevators, lifts, ramps, disability-accessible parking spots, etc. Where such accessibility aids do not exist, contact your local Board of Elections to address these issues.
Last month, I encouraged rabbis to appeal for congregants to volunteer to be poll workers. To volunteer, just contact your local election board: Just about every jurisdiction is still short of poll workers for the upcoming election.
Some synagogues have developed a list of volunteers who will drive people with disabilities and/or seniors to polling places. Now is the time to create such a list; then, by means of emails, fliers and Web sites, publicize that rides are available and detail how they can be ascertained. (Note: Because synagogues are tax exempt, you'll have to refrain from actually discussing politics during the synagogue-sponsored car ride to the polls because, well, it's illegal.)

The number of Americans with disabilities is staggering; an invisible minority. If these Americans turned out to vote, they could have a significant and tremendous impact on each party's agenda for the next presidential administration, as well as on the 111th Congress as a whole.

The Marriage Equality Trifecta

2008-10-17T23:19:25Z

By Kate Bigam
(First posted on the RACBlog)
Kate Bigam is the Press Secretary at the Religious Action Center.

The fight for marriage equality is heating up in California, Florida and Arizona, states that will see November ballot initiatives to amend their state constitutions to prohibit same-sex marriage. Here's a quick update on each state's grassroots campaign to oppose these dangerous and discriminatory initiatives (including a little help from Ellen DeGeneres!) and some insight into how Reform rabbis are helping out:

Arizonans voted no on a similar measure in 2006, and now they're up against the same thing this year. Now, Vote No on Prop. 102 is seeking volunteers to help spread the word about this dangerous initiative and offering $5.00 yard signs that advertise opposition to the amendment. Reform Rabbis Helen. T Cohn (Congregation Chaverim) and Thomas A. Louchheim (Congregation Or Chadash) joined an oppositional statement with other faith leaders, saying, "This amendment is morally, religiously, and financially divisive, and would be destructive to many Arizona families."

Clergy of varied religions and denominations, including Rabbi Jack Romberg of Temple Israel in Tallahassee, came together to launch Florida Clergy for Fairness, a coalition of religious leaders opposed to Florida's Amendment 2. Sunshine State rabbis and cantors (and other clergy, if you're reading this!) are invited to join. And in other Florida news, Fairness for All Families has posted its list of the top 10 reasons Floridians should vote no on Amendment 2.

In California, synagogues like Congregation Kol Ami in West Hollywood (where Rabbi Denise Eger was one of the first clergy to officiate a California same-sex wedding in May!) are joining in by participating in phone banking and engaging in interfaith work to actively oppose the initiative. Even Ellen DeGeneres has teamed up with the No on 8 campaign, Equality for All, to encourage voters to oppose the proposed constitutional amendment that would overturn the California Supreme Judicial Court's May ruling that the state's ban on gay marriage was unconstitutional.

The Union for Reform Judaism has long been a supporter of equality for same-sex couples. If you vote in California, Florida, or Arizona, I encourage you to learn more about the ballot initiative in your state and then, come Election Day, to vote in favor of fairness and equality.

Learning from youth

2008-10-11T01:38:31Z

By Gardening Grandma
A story in this morning's New York Times about the growing army of "eco-kids" not only grabbed my attention, it made me proud: "Pint-Size Eco-Police, Making Parents Proud and Sometimes Crazy" highlights how children are teaching their parents a lesson or two about caring for this earth, sometimes to the frustration of their parents.

While Judaism was not mentioned in the story, nothing could be closer to our hearts than protecting the earth and working to repair the damage we've created. As today's emailed Ten Minutes of Torah by Rabbi Marla Feldman notes, "to neglect our role in maintaining the fragile balance of nature is to default on our very first commitment in our covenant with God - our sacred duty to be stewards of God's Creation." She goes on to note that Sukkot is a perfect time to reinforce our connection to the natural world around us.

For more ideas about what to do this Sukkot, check out www.urj.org.