Read an interesting article in the NY Times yesterday about the new $200 million museum opening in Athens. Apparently there is now hope in Greece that it will become the permanent home for the Parthenon Marbles – an ancient frieze from the Parthenon that was taken by the British in the early 19th century.
Toward the end of the article:
Greece retains only 36 of the 115 original panels from the Parthenon frieze, which depicts a procession in honor of the goddess Athena. Britain has long asserted that when (British Ambassador) Lord Elgin chiseled off the sculptures some 200 years ago, he was acting legally, since he had permission from Greece’s Ottoman rulers.
Ottoman law, Ottoman law…
Something about this sounded strangely familiar – then it hit me. Ottoman law has also been invoked in defense of a very different sort of theft: namely Israel’s nationalization of Palestinian land in the Occupied Territories.
The declaration of the territory as state land was grounded on a manipulative use of the Ottoman Land Law of 1858, which was absorbed in the British mandatory legislation, and later in Jordanian law. According to the 1858 law, the state may take possession of land that is not worked for three consecutive years. In accordance with the military legislation, through which the Ottoman Law was applied, the burden of proof was on the person contending that his parcel of land is not state land.
Who knew? It’s almost a hundred years since the Ottoman empire went under, but its legal genius is still appreciated more than ever…
I don’t know, call me crazy, but I don’t really care if Nazis are cleaning the highway or it it’s named after a rabbi, as long as it is well maintained and kept clean! This really seems to be exactly the reason the state should handle things like cleaning highways, instead of contracting out such a task to the private sector. But this is just kind of silly.
When a neo-Nazi group called the National Socialist Movement volunteered last year to clean a Missouri highway, and get official recognition for it in the form of an Adopt-a-Highway sign, state officials felt powerless to refuse. So they took a rather clever tack.
Several years before, the Missouri Department of Transportation had lost a long legal battle to try and prevent the Ku Klux Klan from adopting a highway on freedom-of-speech grounds. So the state decided to counter the Nazi group’s speech with more speech, in the form of another roadside sign.
Officials are renaming the stretch of highway near Springfield that the organization cleans after Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, who fled Nazi Germany and became a prominent Jewish theologian and civil rights advocate in the United States.
The renaming, which would take effect this summer, was approved by the legislature as part of a large transportation bill. The governor has not yet signed the bill but supports the concept of renaming the road, an aide said. The measure is not popular, though, with some members of the National Socialist Movement, who clean a half-mile stretch four times a year.
“I think it’s childish,” said Cynthia Keene, 38, a sergeant in the group’s Springfield unit. “If they want to have Nazis out there stomping on a Jewish-named highway, that’s their choice.” More »
Join the thinkers and doers of the New Jewish Food Movement – where contemporary food conversations meet ancient Jewish traditions. The fourth annual Hazon Food Conference is the only place in the world where farmers and rabbis, nutritionists and chefs, vegans and omnivores, come together to explore the dynamic interplay of food, Jewish tradition and contemporary life.
The Hazon Food Conference is at the forefront of a national movement that explores the intersection of Jewish life and contemporary food issues. Conference themes focused on Jewish food culture, cutting edge food law and policy, food justice, kosher meat issues, health and nutrition, cooking and gardening, and Israeli food and agriculture.
Don’t miss four days of do-it-yourself food workshops, cooking demonstrations, lectures, discussions, kids and family activities, joyful Shabbat celebrations, and of course, delicious and consciously prepared food.
An interesting article in today’s Times recalls the communist witch-hunts of the fifties in the New York City School system. One of the teachers mentioned in the article, who was forced out of the classroom because of his suspected affiliation with the Communist Party, was Sidney Harbatkin, seen in this picture obviously sharing some insidious communist knowledge with his young charges.
The interesting thing about the picture is that the students are all boys, and everybody is wearing a kippah. Anybody have any insight into what school this picture was taken at?
It’s not all bad – there have been encouraging signs that the strike is having an impact. Over the past year, strikers have led over 500 actions in Chicago, confronting top city leaders and national convention planners. In the last few months, three major conventions have jumped ship; in the past year alone, $700,000 worth of business has been moved from the Congress Hotel. Not long ago I blogged about Sam Hamer, the Northside Prep senior from my congregation who organized to have his High School’s prom moved out of the Congress.
If you don’t know about the longest currently running labor strike in the US, I urge you to click the links on this post. And here’s two more while I’m at it: Chicago Public Radio aired an interview yesterday with journalist Nathaniel Popper, who wrote an important article for the Jewish Forward earlier this month that explored the complicated Jewish role in the Congress Hotel crisis. (As I wrote last year, the word “Shande” comes to mind…)
Here’s hoping I’m not blogging about this one year from now.
In many cities and towns across North America (and the world), June is Pride month, honouring and commemorating the Stonewall Riots of June, 1969 and the start of the gay rights movement. Keeping with the Pride/LGBTQ theme, I have five things of interest to queer and transgender Jews (and their allies). In this post you will find: 1 – Trembling online; 2 – resources for transgender Jews; 3 – dlevy; 4 – ridiculous anti-Jew and anti-gay protesters; 5 – a review of the new CBST siddur.
1 - For those who haven’t yet seen it, Trembling Before G-d, a documentary about the lives of Orthodox and Hasidic gay or lesbian Jews is now online, streaming at Hulu.
2 – Jewish Mosaic let us know about Kol Tzedek, “an alliance of Jewish organizations working together in unprecedented ways to include transgender people in all aspects of Bay Area Jewish life.” (Additionally, they have a second focus: marriage equality and fighting prop 8.)
Over the past year, we met with a plethora of community members and rabbinic leaders to informally explore how transgender and gender variant people currently interact, or not interact, with the organized Jewish community. We compiled a report based on our anecdotal evidence and shared experiences of the perceived organizational, social and ritual needs of transgender and gender variant persons, and our wish to understand and serve this community’s needs better.
Our objective was to collect enough initial information to compile a brief report to present to the new CEO of the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco, the Peninsula, Marin and Sonoma Counties (SFJCF), Daniel Sokatch. We had a very successful meeting in which we presented the report and had an enthusiastic and receptive conversation.
The report is available in PDF here. I share it with you guys in light of their hopes for the report: “Finally, with both confidence and humility, we offer this report to inspire similar initiatives elsewhere in the United States, within and outside the Jewish community.”
3 – dlevy says “Hi.” He’s too busy to post right now, so asked me to mention him in this post about the gays. (Seriously.)
4 – Mostly for some laughs, because does anyone actually take the Westboro Baptist Church seriously?!, check out this Slog video. At a protest outside the Stroum Jewish Community Center in North Seattle this weekend, they held signs including “Bitch Burger” (watch the video for an explanation on that one; it had me and my friends scratching our heads), “God Hates Israel,” “God is Your Enemy,” and “Antichrist Obama” – in addition to their boringly trite “God Hates Fags.” The Slog reports:
I know a lot of people may still be wondering, what exactly *is* a bitch burger? And/or is a CRAPuccino a drink that was invented in Seattle? Well, I tried to get some answers for you. Also stay tuned for Part II, where I try to find out why God suddenly hates President Obama… and, in Part III, a real live Israeli Jew asks “The Hot One” what he really thinks of anal sex.
We try to create the most meaningful experience of prayer we can. Jewish prayer is not a spectator sport. Each week will be different from the week before. Not every week’s service will “work” for every person. Not every service will give you what you came searching to find. But if you hang in there, if you come back regularly, the fixed portions of our liturgy and the weekly variations will most likely begin to speak to you and address those needs you felt keenly and those you didn’t even know you had. [p.14]
I use this excerpt by way of showing what CBST is trying to do with this siddur.
The siddur is English-heavy, the translations of the Hebrew are more often poetic than literal, and are sometimes all together missing. And if the goal is to make their siddur, and services, “meaningful [not only] to the learned,” translations and transliteration should be consistent, and the layout should be easy to follow. The Hebrew layout is at times confusing. Parts of the Kabbalat Shabbat service, for example, have the Hebrew laid out in two columns. My instinct was to read down the right-side column, then the left-side column; in fact we’re to read across both columns, row by row. Transliteration is also provided for the Hebrew, though not fully. I haven’t been to enough services at CBST to be certain, but it looks like transliteration is only provided in full for the Hebrew when the congregation might sing that specific section together in full. Otherwise only the chasima (conclusion to the prayer) is transliterated, and at times no transliteration is provided at all. But I suppose that’s all the technical stuff. Let’s look at what else is in there. More »
I’m in agreement with the pundits who conclude that there was absolutely nothing new for consideration offered in Netanyahu’s speech. Perhaps he achieved a personal milestone by finally uttering the words “Palestinian state” but beyond this it was a tune we’ve all heard before. He offered “peace negotiations immediately without prior conditions” then proceeded to spell out the all too familiar prior conditions that everyone knows are non-starters for the Palestinians (i.e. Jerusalem remains the “united capital of Israel,” “natural growth” of the settlements will continue, there will be no right of return for the Palestinians.)
Same old, same old. For me at least, the most interesting parts of his speech were not his tired policy pronouncements, but his extended forays into historical analysis – and in particular, his repeated justifications of the Jewish people’s right to the land:
The connection of the Jewish People to the Land has been in existence for more than 3,500 years. Judea and Samaria, the places where our forefathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob walked, our forefathers David, Solomon, Isaiah and Jeremiah this is not a foreign land, this is the Land of our Forefathers.
It seemed clear that Netanyahu’s history lesson was a pointed rejoinder to Obama’s Cairo speech, in which Obama stated that the “Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history that cannot be denied.” You may have heard that following his speech, many in the Jewish community criticized Obama for connecting Israel’s right to exist to the Holocaust and failing to cite the Jewish people’s historical connection to the land. Witness this livid Jerusalem Post editorial:
Mr. President, long before Christianity and Islam appeared on the world stage, the covenant between the people of Israel and the Land of Israel was entrenched and unwavering. Every day we prayed in our ancient tongue for our return to Zion. Every day, Mr. President. For 2,000 years.
Perhaps it’s because Palestine was never sovereign under the Arabs that even moderate Palestinians cannot find it in their hearts to acknowledge the depth of the Jews’ connection to Zion. Instead, they insist we are interlopers.
When Obama implies that Jewish rights are essentially predicated on the Holocaust—not once asserting they are far, far deeper and more ancient—he is dooming the prospects for peace.
For why should the Arabs reconcile themselves to the presence of a Jewish state, organic to the region, when the US president keeps insinuating that Israel was established to atone for Europe’s crimes?
Thus Netanyahu’s pointed words yesterday:
The right of the Jewish People to a state in the Land of Israel does not arise from the series of disasters that befell the Jewish People over 2,000 years – persecutions, expulsions, pogroms, blood libels, murders, which reached its climax in the Holocaust, an unprecedented tragedy in the history of nations…The right to establish our sovereign state here, in the Land of Israel, arises from one simple fact: Eretz Israel is the birthplace of the Jewish People.
It’s facinating to me that Netanyahu et al are so threatened by the suggestion that Israel’s establishment is ultimately bound to the Holocaust. After all, didn’t Theodor Herzl himself found political Zionism as a reponse to world anti-Semitism? And whatever historical claim the Jewish people might have to the land of Israel, it’s safe to say there would never have been international support for a Jewish state had it not been for the Holocaust.
Beyond this, I’m troubled by the need to continuously and defensively remind the world of the historical Jewish connection to this particular piece of land. I’m not at all sure that this is really a road we really need or want to go down.
What does it really mean for any people to have a “right” to a land? I understand that the Jewish nation, like every nation, has its historic narrative, but let’s face it: nations don’t exist by right, they exist by fiat. Nations exist by virtue of military power and by their ability to maintain a system of governance that will ensure their survival as a polity. Beyond this, it’s pointless to argue one’s historical or moral right to a land. It seems to me that if history has proven anything, it’s that might makes right – and all the rest is commentary.
The real question here is not who has a right to this land. The central issue is how its inhabitants will see fit to exist on the land. And on this point, I don’t see that Netanyahu gave us anything fresh to consider.
OK, so in the grand scheme of my Shabos Zmiros posts, this may very well be the strangest so far. This is David Zasloff and Iliana Rose performing Congregation Kol Ami in LA. What on Earth are they performing? They call it Cuban Jewish Jazz.
And replacing jazz’s prerequisite trumpet with a shofar? Genius.
This is the internal conflict that is already defining our generation of Jews. Two worldviews that are deeply Jewishly informed and yet at odds with each other: social justice vs. Israel.
Social justice is a worldview of “all helping all” and more specifically the stronger helping the disadvantaged, the weak helping the weak, the weak helping each other. It’s about fighting against entrenched power which resists giving up unfair advantage. The most concise definition of “social justice” was told to me by a Catholic youth minister: “a state of right relationships.” Rightness in conduct and healthy relations between employer/employee, government/citizen, Jew/gentile, and state-to-state.
The Israel worldview, regardless of whether you are right or left, is one defined by “Jews helping Jews,” each ethnicity looking out for themselves, and the weak nation becoming strong (and maintaining deterance). It’s about apportioning power by nationality, ethnicity or religion — and a heirachy of their comparative greivances. Israel becomes important as the national liberation project of the Jewish people. It defines success as the safety of one group among others (even if other groups happen to benefit, theirs can be secondary).
The conflict becomes:
Many people who support peace in the Middle East will not engender to spend time on Israel — and why should they? There are worse conflicts in the world, like genocide in Darfur. Even if you are left wing, paying special attention to one’s own ethnicity is still a parochial, inward-focused conversation. These people might feel more comfortable helping all people, regardless of ethnicity in ways that cut across socioeconomic status: health care for all, ending racism against all, collective bargaining rights for all, housing rights for all, international rights for all, et al.
Many people who see a relevance for Israel’s existance (of one version or another) are uncomfortable christening underdogs and painting all holders of power with the same brush. A worldview that doesn’t validate the historical travails of the Jewish people or seeks to pave away nationalisms or ethnic prides entirely is also uncomfortable. Anti-Semitism is subsumed into just another racism, where many might feel it has special, and specially personal, perils.
This conflict cuts many other directions: Some who do both social justice activism and Israel activism must compartmentalize their value systems, keeping them separated, balanced. A rare few manage to integrate them fully. And plenty — tragically a great many — do neither. More »
A convicted scam artist was able to pull off a lavish bar mitzvah for his son featuring kosher catered food and more than 60 guests at a New York City jail.
His accomplices apparently were jail employees, including a chaplain. A Correction Department spokesman confirmed that five staff members were disciplined over the Dec. 30 bash.
What to make of the news that a neo-Nazi gunman killed a security guard at the US Holocaust Museum in Washington DC? Rabbi Marvin Hier says it shows “that the cancer of hatred, bigotry and anti-Semitism is alive and well in America.” According to President Obama, it means “we must remain vigilant against anti-Semitism and prejudice in all its forms.”
I don’t know, I’m not sure that we really needed this particularly horrid act to remind us that hatred and prejudice exist in our country. But it does seem to offer an important sign that for all of our angst about international terrorism, we’d do well to recognize that it’s alive and well in our own backyard.
And it seems to be working. The New York Times reported today that the late Dr. George Tiller’s Witchita abortion clinic has now closed permanently…
I admit it. The reason I haven’t posted up until now on the amazing new book by Rabbi Jill Jacobs is only partly because I’ve been reading it slowly. Really, a big part of it is that books this good just don’t come around all that often, and I’m feeling kind of 1st grade-ish about sharing. But we all have to grow up sometime. Or at least, if we don’t someone will come along and make us share our toys. Ahem.
So, Rabbi Jill Jacobs wrote, There Shall Be No Needy: Pursuing Social Justice through Jewish Law and Tradition (Jewish Lights 2009) for all of us. Framed by a foreword from the utterly menschlikh gadol Rabbi Elliot Dorff, and prefaced by Simon Greer, Jacobs wrote the book during her tenure at Jewish Funds for Justice as rabbi-in-residence.
Grounded deeply in Jewish text, Rabbi Jacobs begins with her own journey to understanding how Jewish canonical texts are actually far more deeply invested with the everyday experience of poverty and need than most of us will (God willing) ever be, and how allowing the midrash, the talmud and other of our classical works to really enter us, not as something which we read for fun or education just because they’re important texts, but to really become doors to a perception of God and our fellow human, can cause us to be transformed through those texts, in the way that the rabbis meant us to be.
While she does this, Rabbi Jacobs also takes on the imprecise… well, let’s be honest, the complete meltdown of “Jewish” terms such as “Tikkun Olam,” “Tzedek” (as in the ubiquitous, and so therefore now nearly empty, verse “Tzedek, tzedek tirdof,” the favored phrase of Jewish organizations that don’t know – or at least can’t be bothered to find – any other text, no matter what the topic under discussion) and “Prophetic Judaism” into the utterly meaningless and restores them to a Jewish and more faithful context. (And can I say, thank you thank you thank you.)
This isn’t to say the book is completely without flaw. Like the tradition of leaving in tiny flaws to prove that a human creation cannot be perfect, there are some minor quibbles I have here and there. Primarily, I think that Rabbi Jacobs occasionally slides between “we can say that…” and the assumption of the supposition. Or that there doesn’t seem to be much room for the individual and national relationship/communion with the divine in any context other than social justice. But these are minor quibbles in a book so terrific, that I will be buying it for all my friends. How can I make any complaints about someone who at least implicitly supports my observance that, while everybody loves Hillel, it is Shammai who in his grumpy stringency, is actually the one who is more concerned for the disempowered and helpless (p. 32).
Rabbi Jacobs’ book also includes an excellent, concise introduction to the canonical texts, meaning that even the beginner can make sense of what she writes, and, I hope, that in reading her work will come to see that Judaism and social justice cannot be untangled from Judaism and Jewish law – that the system is a holistic one, and that Judaism does indeed give us a mission.
As Jacobs herself states in the conclusion, wrapping up her fine book with a brief codicil about Judaism in the public sphere,
“What is missing… is a real public discussion about how Jewish law and tradition might address contemporary policy questions… when Jews engage in the public discourse as Jews, we should bring Jewish law and principles into the conversation in such a way as to enrich… discourse…The commitment to living our Judaism publicly should then push us to take public action on these principles, both as individuals and as a community… We will witness the emergence of a Judaism that views ritual observance, study and engagement in the world as an integrated whole, rather than as separate and distinct practices.”
It has been over a week since an act of domestic terrorism. At the funeral of Dr. Tiller, protesters waved signs, including “God Sent the Killer!” Hate begets hate, and I would like to see talk radio hosts, Fox news personalities, and others who encouraged and incited the murder of Dr. Tiller charged under the law. If people who play “supporting roles” in other acts of terrorism can be arrested, they should be too.
While the halakhic parsing of abortion is complex, Jews do not have the same definition as Christians: life does not start at conception. For a week now, I’ve been wanting to post about the Jewish understandings of abortion. A counter to the “religious right’s” view. Each time I’ve started to write that post, I’ve become too saddened and angered by the rampant infringement of women’s rights to their bodies in the US. So instead, I will share Rabbi Young‘s personal Eulogy for Dr. George Tiller:
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.
…
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.
The settlements are subsidized by the government to the tune of millions — the average settlement resident gets more government money in roads, infrastructure, schooling, and tax breaks than citizens inside Israel. This slants growth towards the settlements in direct contravention of stated agreements. Settler growth may be 5.6%, but 1/3 is immigration, not birth rates, making “natural” growth just 3.7%.
In Nov 2008 Meretz MKs introduced legislation to direct the purse strings to reward moving back into Israel. Their research indicated at least 50% of settlers would willingly move with economic incentive. The Labor and Kadima parties viewed it favorably at the time. Presently, it’s dead in committee because that’s not the way Likud rolls. Likud’s coalition wants settlements. Period.
Additionally, if birth rate were the trump card to who gets to build where, then the Palestinians should are owed more than settlers. West Bank’s Palestinian growth rate is 2.2% (West Bank settlers adjusted to 3.7%, mainland Israel’s is 1.8%). But are their towns and villages zoned for growth? NOPE! They get bulldozed regularly, leaving a huge housing shortage. Where’s the extra land or construction allocated to Gaza for it’s naturally high 3.4% growth rate? Plus Gaza’s recent 24,000-home drop in available housing?
What about the 25,000-unit housing shortage in East Jerusalem, where Israel hasn’t approved a growth/zoning plan at all? Presently 60,000 East Jerusalemites are under threat of house demolition. Knee-jerk defenders of house demolitions say bulldozed houses are only those built without permits — but no permits will be authorized because that entire Arab swath of Jerusalem hasn’t been zoned! However, settlements like Pisgat Ze’ev continue to grow.
Don’t forget that while settler vs. Palestinian rates might be off by a couple of percent points, there are several million Arabs and just several hundred thousand settlers. Palestinains are objectively speaking lacking far more housing than settlers by the tens of thousands.
And why should settlements that were dubious from inception be expanded when there’s land inside Israel proper that half of the Israeli electorate doesn’t approve of dismantling?
There is no such thing as natural growth in the West Bank. The policies which fuel the growth are deliberate — and notably, reversable. Building in settlements is a deliberate middle finger to the Palestinians and a political demand from the Greater Israel crowd. It’s not in any way for real population growth.
How Jews Pray, the third in MyJewishLearning’s “How Jews…” series, checks out what Jews are talking about — from an Australian Jew in New York to an Argentinian Jew in Los Angeles, and other folks in the woods, the cities, and some places in between. What do people who don’t believe in God think about praying?
When I was young, a secular Jewish kid living down the street from Hasidim — a weird remix of The Chosen — I thought it was mysterious how all the long-black-coated, hair-covered Jews was that they seemed to have their own way of talking to God. They didn’t just go to synagogue and pray like normal people — they would pray in living rooms, or in backyards, and they muttered to themselves walking down the street. Plus, they wore those funny clothes. Was God telling them something that God wasn’t telling the rest of us?
I guess I just felt disenfranchised.
This was before I met Jewish Renewalists who meditate and pray. And musicians like Chana Rothman and Jeremiah Lockwood, who pray by singing their hearts out. And before I learned how to pray myself, wherever I was and whatever was on my mind, sometimes in a “thank you” way, and sometimes in an “I need to save myself” way.
A few weeks ago, in introducing his new prayerbook, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks said, “We have a problem with prayer” — and proceeded to detail how, in this world where we’re obsessed with talking about ourselves and eavesdropping on other people, we’ve forgotten what it’s like to speak to God. Whatever each of us think of God, and even, in one person’s case, whether or not we believe in God.
I think that’s my favorite thing about this video, above all the others we’ve done so far. It helps us remember.
The Jewish Labor Committee – JLC – a national organization that promotes labor and related social justice causes within the Jewish community and Jewish issues within organized labor – has been working both nationally and locally to support the Employees Free Choice Act (EFCA). Hundreds of people across the country have signed onto the JLC’s petition {you can add your name here}.
In Philadelphia, the traditionally secular organization has organized something distinctive: a rabbinic appeal to Senator Arlen Specter. JLC Philadelphia Director Rosalind Spigel has enlisted 25 local rabbis plus rabbinical students to sign an open letter urging Pennsylvania’s newly minted Democratic senior senator to put Jewish values to work and help safeguard the rights of employees who wish to secure union representation.{Additional signatories are of course welcome – see here.} Congress is currently considering the Employee Free Choice Act. While Sen. Specter previously supported the legislation, most recently he indicated a disinclination to support this legislation.
On Tuesday, June 9, a rabbinic delegation of the Philadelphia JLC is meeting Senator Arlen Specter to urge his support for the Employee Free Choice Act. That day also marks the official launch of the website of Rabbis for Workers’ Choice. The rabbis who wrote Specter urging him to stand with working families will hold a short ceremony to reinforce their message at his Philadelphia office. More »
Times recalls the communist witch-hunts of the fifties in the New York City School system. One of the teachers mentioned in the article, who was forced out of the classroom because of his suspected affiliation with the Communist Party, was Sidney Harbatkin, seen in this picture obviously sharing some insidious communist knowledge with his young charges.
Over the past year, we met with a plethora of community members and rabbinic leaders to informally explore how transgender and gender variant people currently interact, or not interact, with the organized Jewish community. We compiled a report based on our anecdotal evidence and shared experiences of the perceived organizational, social and ritual needs of transgender and gender variant persons, and our wish to understand and serve this community’s needs better.
So, Rabbi Jill Jacobs wrote, 
Natural growth is a lie.
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