by Aryeh Cohen [➚] · Thursday, June 30th, 2011
guest post by: Eli Ungar-Sargon
More than anyone in recent memory, Matthew Hess is testing the old adage that there’s no such thing as bad publicity. After Nancy Appel of the Anti-Defamation League released a statement condemning his comic Foreskin Man for its “grotesque anti-Semitic imagery,” many prominent intactivists felt the need to distance themselves from him and his organization MGMBill.org. Moreover, the furor over Foreskin Man undoubtedly contributed to the pressure that ultimately shut down the ballot initiative in Santa Monica. Over the past month, many people have been asking me whether Matthew Hess is an anti-Semite. I don’t know the man, so I decided to contact him and ask him some questions. Below are his unedited responses:
More »
by Kung Fu Jew [➚] · Thursday, June 30th, 2011
This post is the first in several dedicated to an analysis of Jewish Jumpstart’s 2010 survey and report, “The Innovation Economy: An Emerging Market for Knowledge and Social Capital.” Watch the presentation of it from June 6th at the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles:
Jewish Jumpstart released the 2010 survey results for the “Jewish innovation economy,” their term for the burst of Jewish social entrepreneurship within the past few decades. Tracking the characteristics of this field and championing its needs are a passion of mine, since this is the Jewish community that I love and nurture. Certainly the part that makes me enjoy being Jewish.
More »
by Adam [➚] · Thursday, June 30th, 2011
Every once in a while, somebody accuses Jewschool contributors of ignoring or belittling anti-Semitism. For those who found Borat to be a hilarious take-down of the haters, here’s a reminder from JTA of why some of us actually found Barron-Cohen’s shtick just a bit offense:
Bones found in a medieval well in England are probably the remains of Jews murdered in the 12th century, forensic scientists say…. The scientists, who along with archaeological investigations also work on contemporary crime-scene forensics, have speculated that the individuals were thrown into the well — victims of Jewish hatred that was rampant at the time.
A whole Jewish family. Still think its funny? Funny as the murdered Fogel family, I’d say.
by Charles Lenchner [➚] · Thursday, June 30th, 2011
Tablet Magazine and Marc Tracy did well with this parody of the instant classic Go the Fuck to Sleep.
It’s Yom Kippur, and you’re far away,
The last thing I want’s to be cruel.
I’m your mother, son, you know I adore you,
But please go the fuck to shul.
…
We don’t observe the birth of Christ, son,
This isn’t some lame fucking Yule.
It’s the Day of Atonement, a big deal:
Go the fuck to shul.
Go ahead, eat something beforehand.
Gay gezunt, no reason to drool.
I’m not asking you to believe in it,
Only to go to fucking shul.
It’s a depressing observance, I know.
Could make you want to hit the barstool.
It’s the day that you say you’ve been shitty,
Which is why it’s in fucking shul.
…
Cast me as some kind of tyrant,
Your very own lord of misrule.
Jesus, is it really so fucking horrible
For you to go the fuck to shul?
And yes I’m a big stereotype,
Or worse, just a big Jewish tool.
It doesn’t matter what you think of me, though.
Go. The fuck. To shul.
…
Tons of missing verses so you have good reason to visit the original post.
h/t BoingBoing
by Adam [➚] · Monday, June 27th, 2011
Jewish Week reports on the growing phenomenon of Modern Orthodox teens keeping ‘Half Shabbos’ and texting on Shabbat both in private and also in full view of peers and event adults.
Some observers describe teens as experimenting with the limits of sanctioned and non-sanctioned actions in a Jewish version of the Rumspringa practice in which Amish 16-year-olds are free to engage in banned behavior before formally affiliating with the church and abiding by their community’s norms of behavior.
The article does note that the phase seems to end when many teens return from gap year in Israel when they frum out. I guess between episodes of getting blotto and into trouble, they wander into the wrong neighborhood on Shabbos, texting blithely away and get violently assault. Welcome to Mea Shearim… Frum satire also fisks…
by Aryeh Cohen [➚] · Sunday, June 26th, 2011
On June 16 the California legislature passed SB 104—the Fair Treatment for Farmworkers Act. The United Farm Workers have been organizing a series of actions to urge Governor Brown to sign the bill. On
Martin Sheen and the Mayor at the start of the march at City Hall
Friday there was a
march from City Hall to the Ronald Reagan State Office Building where the governor’s offices are, followed by a press conference at which Mayor Antonio Villaraigrossa, Martin Sheen, two farmworkers, Angelica Salas, the Executive Director of
CHIRLA and I and two other members of the clergy spoke. This is what I said:
Two summers ago many of us were gathered not far from here at a memorial gathering for 15 farm workers who had died in the fields because of a lack of shade or water or breaks, but mainly because of a failure to recognize that every single person is created in the image of God. It is two years later and we are finally on the verge of taking a large step forward towards rectifying all the wrongs that result from not recognizing that the workers who toil in the fields and pick our food are created in the image of God.
When the greatest of all Jewish philosophers, Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon, called Maimonides, needed to answer the question: What is the greatest perfection of all? He said it is knowing God. What, he continued, does it mean to know God? Does it mean to know that God is one? Does it mean to know that God is of a completely different nature from people? No, he said. Knowing God means understanding that God’s purpose is to create justice on this earth. The one who truly knows God, therefore, is the one who works to create a just society. Justice comes from recognizing that every other human being is created in the image of God and therefore I have an obligation to hear their cries when they are vulnerable, and to work to allow them the means to live in dignity; to support themselves from hard work; to organize to better themselves; to treat them as people created in the image of God—because that is what they are.
This is not charity. This is not a gift. This is my obligation, our obligation as people who want to do justice, who want to live in a just society, who want to hear the word of God.
The Bible tells us:
20 You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.
21 You shall not ill-treat any widow or orphan.
22 If you do mistreat them, I will heed their outcry as soon as they cry out to Me,
23 and My anger shall blaze forth and I will put you to the sword, and your own wives shall become widows and your children orphans.
In the thirteenth century Rabbi Moshe ben Nachman commented on this:
[God] says “you shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him” and think that he has no one to save him from your hands, for you know that you were strangers in the land of Egypt and I saw the manner in which the Egyptians oppressed you and I wreaked vengeance upon them, for I see “the tears of the oppressed with none to comfort them; and the power of their oppressors—with none to comfort them.” (Ecclesiastes 4:1) I, however, save all people from those stronger than them (cf. Psalms 35:10). So, too, “you shall not ill-treat any widow or orphan,” (Exodus 22:21) for I will hear their cries, for all these people do not have faith in themselves, but they can have faith in Me.
Rabbi Aryeh Cohen speaking at the end of the march.
The Pharaohs always think that their strength and power, their profits and political contributions will win in the end. We are here today to say that, in the end, righteousness will win, justice will win. If we don’t fulfill our obligations towards these workers and towards all workers, salvation might come from another quarter but we run the risk of ending up as the detritus strewn on the side of the road towards redemption.
Governor Brown, sign the FAIR TREATMENT FOR FARM WORKERS ACT.
To sign the petition asking Gov. Brown to sign the act go here.
by Adam [➚] · Friday, June 24th, 2011
Founded 1897, The Jewish Daily Forward is the only publication that I can safely say that I have read with the same regularity as my grandfather. Of course, when he read it, it was in printed on broadsheet, published daily and had a local Chicago edition. In Yiddish.
100 years after he landed on America’s shores and picked up a copy, I read at least one article from it daily, sent to me in e-mail or via rss and viewed online or via tablet. I read it in English. Suffice it to say, The Forward is still relevant, and since I read it daily, can once more safely be called a daily.
It has a new look online (Lookey lookey) and the publication has a new blog focused on news analysis called, cleverly, Forward Thinking, which I plan to check out regularly. Kudos. Oh, and if you want to read Forverts in Yiddish on your iPad, you can.
by chaneld1621 [➚] · Wednesday, June 22nd, 2011
In the lobby of the Walter Reade Theatre, where the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival is being held, waiting to see the New York premiere of “Better This World,” I’m writing in my journal and people watching. There’s a guy in dress slacks and a white shirt, with a badge around his neck and blond hair that’s cut so close it looks like there are glittering yellow seeds growing out of his head.
The guy, I learn later, is Bradley Crowder, one of the subjects of “Better This World.” He’s part of the question and answer session when the film is over, along with documentarians Katie Galloway and Kelly Duane de la Vega. Crowder and his friend, David McKay, were protestors at the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul, MN, when they were arrested for building Molotov cocktails, which according to sources in the FBI, they intended to set off with the goal of injuring police. The film is a troubling and complicated story of betrayal, identity and loyalty, as well as the role of paranoia and scapegoating in the post 9.11 United States, especially of the Muslim and activist communities.
Crowder and McKay, in their early twenties at the time of their arrest, met radical activist Brandon Darby in Austin in the months before the convention. Both men were frustrated and angered by the Bush administration, and wrestling with their own activist identities. (Crowder: “I just couldn’t not do anything.”) In a moment that elicited gasps from the audience (myself included), Darby is revealed to be an FBI informant, who may or may not have involved Crowder and McKay in entrapment, inciting them into building the cocktails. (There’s an episode of This American Life about the case and Darby, notorious for his post Katrina organizing with Common Ground in New Orleans. He’s now a right wing commentator.)
During the q/a, Crowder reflected on the impact of what happened to himself, McKay, and their loved ones in the aftermath of the protest and legal battles. (Crowder spent 2 years in jail and McKay 4; he’ll be released in 2012. The two are not allowed to speak directly to each other.) He’s triggered by certain sounds, the result of violence at the protests and what happened to him in prison-”There’s such dehumanization in the criminal justice system, and most people in prison don’t get to be seen as humans.”
When asked by an audience member if the system is innately flawed or if he sees what happened to him and McKay as an isolated incident, Crowder said, “Poor people have to deal with entrapment and informants all the time. If you don’t want to see (the system) as flawed, you don’t really want to see what’s going on.” His current activism is in Texas around immigration, budget cuts and police violence. He’s now critical of mass mobilization movements that aren’t also predicated on day to day community organizing and confronting issues of class, race and power. “You have to work hard, think hard, ask hard questions…you have to fight with people.”
“Better This World” will premiere on PBS’s POV in September 2011. The Human Rights Watch International Film Festival, featuring 18 films from 12 countries, runs June 16-June 30th at the Walter Reade Theatre at Lincoln Center.
by LastTrumpet [➚] · Monday, June 20th, 2011
by
Jonah Geffen, Rabbinical Student
Kelly Cohen, Jewish Educator
We are trapped in a discourse that has no logical end. It has been asserted that the knowledge and life experience of the current generation of Rabbinical students with regard to Israel is cause for great concern and fear. The deans and Presidents of Rabbinical schools have responded to the contrary, stating that though perhaps more willing to “wrestle” with Israel, these students are wise and committed. And yet, this entire conversation remains shallow and paternalistic. The debate has been devoted strictly to the students, their teachers and the methods by which they are chosen and taught. We believe this discourse to be fundamentally flawed. We note with dismay that this conversation about Diaspora Jews and our relationship to Israel has left out Israel, its choices and actions.
It is true, we do have a different relationship with Israel than our parents’ generation. How could we not? The nature of the situation in Israel today is so vastly different than it was forty years ago. The world changes, people’s perceptions change, reality changes and our generation has been raised to understand that we must work to build a better future for Israel and to appreciate but not dwell on its past. We have been raised in the American ideal, that no human being should live subject to tyranny, that every individual should be judged on her or his own merit and to seek out the personal interaction needed for true understanding. We are comfortable and confident Jews – and this reality is not a character flaw. We know what we see with our own eyes. We see injustices, religious and political, that need to end. This is true not only because we refuse to see all Palestinians as our enemies, but fundamentally because we refuse to blind ourselves to the fact that the reality that has been created is bad for the Jewish People as a whole. It hurts us as a people to exist in this reality and creating further divides amongst ourselves is not the answer. We cannot truly be am hofshi b’artzenu until everyone b’artzenu is free. As long as we are perpetuating these injustices, stoking fears and succumbing to anger – we will not achieve this deep collective wish, articulated so beautifully in Israel’s national anthem.
More »
by Dan Ab [➚] · Sunday, June 19th, 2011
A recent article in the Forward, by Jerome A. Chanes, discusses the perennial issue of why we must focus our Jewish education efforts on day schools and how to make them affordable. “The system, at least with respect to the most prominent prescription for the [Jewish] future — education — is broken. Jewish parents find themselves increasingly caught between rising day school tuitions and declining real-dollar income. Teachers’ salaries in many Jewish day schools are disgraceful. And because in tough economic times, schools cannot afford to alienate anyone, day schools are increasingly parent-driven — not necessarily a good thing. Add to these a rather flaccid commitment on the part of federations to Jewish education. The system is collapsing.” He worries that, “The Hebrew-based charter school represents a further erosion of the classic text-based Jewish curriculum… The charter schools take this erosion to a new, dangerous, level by separating Hebrew learning from Judaism completely.” He concludes that charter schools are a distraction and only reallocation of more Federation funds towards day schools will fix the broken system.
Dr. Chanes put forth an almost identical solution in a 2009 article for The NY Jewish Week . He hadn’t happened upon the Charter school bogeyman yet, but he did detail which priorities federations need to shift. He urges that federations spend more money subsidizing day school tuition and less money on gyms, immigrant aid, child care for those in need, and poverty programs. He rationalizes this by noting most of the poverty related federation programs spend a lot of money on non-Jews, and, “most analysts agree that Jewish poverty is, in 2009, not the pressing issue for the community.”
Dr. Chanes is not the only opinionator preaching the doom of Jewish peoplehood that can only be avoided if we massively increase donations to day schools. More »
by Kung Fu Jew [➚] · Sunday, June 19th, 2011
Brought to you by Pursue: Action for a Just World and co-sponsored by Hazon, Uri L’Tzedek, and the Brooklyn Bridge CSA, comes Chewing on Food Justice, a series of events offering a breakdown of our broken down global food system. The kick-off is tomorrow night on the topic of defining “food justice,” and followed by food sovereignty in July and food workers in August.
Details below the fold. More »
by guestpost [➚] · Sunday, June 19th, 2011
This is a guest post by David Slusky, a graduate student in Princeton’s economics department.
“We, like every administration for decades, do not accept the legitimacy of continued settlement activity. We believe their continued expansion is corrosive not only to peace efforts and a two-state solution, which we strongly support, but to Israel’s future itself.”
—White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, 2/17/2011
If the Obama administration wants to reduce settlement building in the West Bank, it should demand coordinated economic incentives, instead of blunt instruments like last year’s settlement building freeze. This would focus on the individuals instead of on the physical buildings of the settlements.
Many Israelis become settlers in the first place for economic, not ideological reasons. For example, they want to live near Jerusalem. With the current subsidies for settlers, living, say, a 30-minute commute, in the West Bank (which surrounds Jerusalem on three sides) costs the same as living a two hour-commute west of Jerusalem (within the Green Line). These Israelis are not fanatical; they simply want to live in houses large enough for their families, near observant synagogues and good public transportation to their work.
Current government subsidies create economic settlers, who then, through living with ideological settlers, become ideological settlers themselves. Reducing the number of economic settlers should therefore be a primary target for current American government policy.
Currently in Israel, settlers benefit from numerous financial subsidies (e.g. housing, transportation), all the result of government policy. I’d like to propose that, to non-coercively reduce settlement activity (as opposed to the forceful pullout from Gaza), the Israeli government should:
1) End all subsidies specific to settlers, including:
a. Financial assistance for purchasing or building
b. Education subsidies for students and teachers
c. Trade and industry grants and tax benefitsb
d. Benefits to social workers
e. Transportation subsidies1
2) Create subsidies for “long term” settlers who move back (to prevent individuals from moving and then moving back immediately)
3) Create subsidies for people who live outside of settlements
This will obviously be politically and logistically difficult for any Israeli government but a strong push from the United States government could have a significant impact on the size of the settler population, which is a necessary step toward a comprehensive peace plan.
1 For example, a single bus ride within Jerusalem is NIS 6.40, whereas from the Jerusalem Central Bus Station to the nearby settlements – including some trips over 30 minutes – is only NIS 4.10.
by Kung Fu Jew [➚] · Friday, June 17th, 2011
Allison Benedikt, film editor at the Village Voice, dropped a bomb on the Jewish online discourse yesterday when she published “Life After Zionist Summer Camp,” in which she details her upbringing loving Israel and its untimely tarnishing in adulthood. I recommend you read it in full, a single quotation does not capture the ongoing context of a nuanced life story. Among others, Jeffrey Goldberg rushed to pilliory her in a bitter response as childish as the shallowness he accuses her of. (Other commentators who actually know Allison made critical comments about her style but mostly not her substance.)
Criticism of Benedikt is unfounded — and focusing on the efficacy of summer camp confuses her message. The fault is not Zionist summer camp. It gave her a great Jewish experience. The fault is not her parents. Her mother engaged in dialogue and offered her solidarity, eventually. The fault is not a lack of awareness. Benedikt is vastly more in touch with Israel than most American Jews: she had a Zionist upbringing, she has family there, is in regular touch with them, has visited several times, and has a partner who seems to care enough to debate. Most Jews have none of that.
The point of Benedikt’s confession is clearly to express frustration and confusion, to be heard, to put her community on notice that she’s had it up to here. I’ve seen these pieces by the dozens and authored so many of them myself. (And it always interests me which ones get heard and which ignored. Kudos to Benedikt on being heard.) Indeed, what brought me to blogging was a simple need to be heard on this issue, not lectured at. More »
by chaneld1621 [➚] · Friday, June 17th, 2011
In college, I was pretty sure I was going to be a Jewish feminist academic (having dismissed previous career goals as a ballet dancer/doctor/cat farmer). I read everything possible, including Bridges, the iconic Jewish feminist journal. Recently, I spoke with Bridges editor Clare Kinberg about the past and future of the publication, and how it has shaped Jewish feminism. The piece ran at The Sisterhood blog at the Forward.
Bridges, a Jewish Feminist Journal, Says Goodbye
By Chanel Dubofsky
The Spring 2011 issue of Bridges: A Jewish Feminist Journal is expected to be the last for the publication, which has been alive and rabble-rousing for 21 years. The journal began back when Adrienne Rich, Elly Bulkin and Ruth Atkin, members of the Feminist Task Force of the New Jewish Agenda, proposed expanding the Task Force’s newsletter into a journal. The result was Bridges, whose stated mission is to imbue Judaism with the values of the feminist and LGBT movements. Since then, Bridges has become a place for readers to engage with their activist and Jewish identities.
Over the years, issues of Bridges have focused on such topics as health care, feminism and our fathers, and Jewish women of color. The 31st and final issue — the journal’s contract with the Indiana University Press is up — placed past contributors, such as professor Susannah Heschel, writer and activist Elana Dykewomon, and poet Alicia Ostriker, in conversation with one another.
Each conversation is an illustration of the personal as political: For example, Yavilah McCoy, an advocate for Jewish multiculturalism, and musician Miri Hunter Haruach,, in “African American Jewish Women—Life Beyond the Hyphen,” talk frankly about the challenges of race and gender faced in both Jewish and feminist spaces. And lesbian activist Elana Dykewomon and performance artist Jyl Lyn Felman, in “Forward and Backward: Jewish Lesbian Writers,” deliberate on the notion of being outsiders as Jewish lesbians.
Bridges’ longtime editor Claire Kinberg spoke recently with The Sisterhood about what Bridges has accomplished over the past two decades, and what might take its place.
Chanel Dubofsky: What do you have to say about this notion of creating bridges between women, which seems, with these conversations, to be the point of this issue?
Claire Kinberg: As an editor, I always felt my major contribution was putting pieces by different women together in the same volume, ordering them, and letting them speak to each other. So it was really fun to do this on another level: actually having the authors write to each other. Perhaps it reveals the things that most interest me: the ways these writers talk about their work with another writer…how Israel comes up in so many conversations that start talking about other things; the intergenerational conversations.
You mentioned in your foreword to this last issue that perhaps future incarnations of the journal might take the form of a blog or other online resource. What’s your hope for passing on the work of Bridges to younger Jewish feminists?
I’ve thought about just moving the conversations online and, of course, opening it up to people who hadn’t contributed to Bridges in the past. I really hope for increased communication between generations.
I have two daughters, ages 13 and 10. My 13-year old is studying for her bat mitzvah. Passing it on is very real to me: Since it’s a “last issue,” a retrospective, and because of other aspects, it’s kind of a “pass it on” issue.
I was struck by how much Holocaust stuff there is [in the issue], and also by how [writer and editor] Lenore Weiss says that for the poets that she edited in the “Living Waters” collection, the Holocaust is being crowded out by other issues. When we started Bridges, for many years, we published, on purpose, very little about either the Holocaust or “grandmothers.” We needed Jewish women to push themselves to write about other things.
If Bridges starts publishing again, it will definitely be in a different format. But I really think that progressive Jewish blogging is filling much of the need.
Is there anything particular you’ve noticed in terms of change in the Jewish social justice world since Bridges first began?
In “ Why Write Poetry?” poets Willa Schneberg and Frances Payne Adler talk about when they first heard the term “* tikkun olam” … in the-mid 1990s, in relation to Tikkun Magazine, I think. However, both writers were published in the first issue of Bridges [in] 1990, which had several bold references to *tikkun olam, even in our mission statement, but also in an ad for New Jewish Agenda … it also used the term * tikkun olam*. Anyway, what I realized again was how long it takes for certain ideas to sink in, or to mean something to people, to begin to take hold. Decades!
Back issues of Bridges are available on JSTOR, and on Amazon.com.
by Adam [➚] · Friday, June 17th, 2011
Zeek, the journal of Jewish culture and thought, a source of insightful articles and art from the emerging generation of Jewish thinkers, has announced that it is going through some transitions. (Read on after the jump) More »
by Kung Fu Jew [➚] · Wednesday, June 15th, 2011
Being critical of the status quo is an inherent part of social change – we identify problems in our world that we hope to solve or improve. But free expression of critical views of the Jewish state inside and outside of Jewish communities often invokes complicated rules against “airing our dirty laundry.”
Recent events, such as the near-revocation of Tony Kushner’s honorary doctorate degree, have shed light on the tense atmosphere around the discourse on Israel in the American Jewish community.
Join us for the fourth in a series of highly interactive, non-persuasive, open discussions with a diverse group of people in their 20s and 30s. Followed by a reception.
Wednesday, June 29th at 7:00 pm
The JCC in Manhattan
334 Amsterdam Ave at 76th Street
Cost $10
This event is brought to you by the New Israel Fund and Makom, co-sponsored by a growing list of organizations, including: Pursue, Rabbis for Human Rights-North America, Hazon, the Foundation for Jewish Culture, BJ Tze’irim, J Street NYC, and Zeek.
by dlevy [➚] · Tuesday, June 14th, 2011
Rabbi Daniel Lehmann, president of Hebrew College, has issued a lengthy response to Rabbi Daniel Gordis’s Commentary column that accused young rabbis of turning on Israel.
Here’s a taste:
Most disappointing are Gordis’ recommendations for responding to the challenges that beset liberal rabbinical schools with regard to Israel education. While he admits that it will not be easy, he offers little upon which we can build a compelling educational plan. For Gordis, the selection of students, the curriculum and assigned readings and the year of study in Israel hold out the most hope for confronting the challenges that so concern him. The level of vagueness and generality in his list of suggestions is surprising, especially for a founding Dean of a North American rabbinical school. More baffling is his insistence that “raising the flag of particularity and distinctive loyalties high and unabashedly” holds out the most hope for developing rabbis who will be lovers of Zion. The adults that we teach in our Rabbinical School are not so shallow and anti-intellectual that they would be swayed by flag waving. Commitment to Jewish particularity will not be engendered by flowery rhetoric or demagogic charisma. The pledge of allegiance has long been discarded as the method to generate deep loyalty. Thin processes of socialization will not work to nurture the souls and stimulate the minds of adults who seek thick, authentic experiences of Judaism.
Read the entire response at JewishBoston.com.
by guestpost [➚] · Tuesday, June 14th, 2011
Guest post by Cascadian.
Connecting Communities
JULY 17 -22, 2011
a program of Tivnu: Building Justice
in partnership with PCUN, the Oregon Farmworkers Union
Do you want to make a tangible, positive impact in the world and explore the connections between Judaism, Jewish community and current social justice issues? In this action-based learning week, we will:
- Help build the Capaces Leadership Institute (see below) at the PCUN headquarters in Woodburn, Oregon (near Portland). Tools and training will be provided. No construction experience necessary.
- Participate in field trips and learning sessions that examine social, cultural, historical, and justice issues in the Woodburn Latino immigrant community.
- Explore Jewish texts and values that address workers’ and immigrants’ rights and the mandate for social justice action.
- Optional home-stays with local Latino families (additional $125).
The program is geared toward young adults but all who are interested are welcome to participate. $195- $400 sliding scale. Some scholarships available if necessary. For more information and registration, please e-mail Steve Eisenbach-Budner at Steve@tivnu.org by June 24. Space is Limited.Tivnu: Building Justice inspires and strengthens participants’ passion for lifelong Jewish social justice work through building structures, building community, study and advocacy. Tivnu founder Steve Eisenbach-Budner began his construction career in Israel over 25 years ago and is currently a construction trainer and site supervisor with Portland YouthBuilders, a job-training program.
The Capaces Leadership Institute will serve PCUN and its eight sister organizations by providing a place in which the leadership capacity of the Willamette Valley Latino community will be developed and strengthened, enabling it to sustain and expand the farmworker movement. The Institute intends to be built nearly exclusively with volunteer labor and be the first Passive commercial building to be built in the United States. ”PassivHaus” design renders up to 90% energy savings compared to today’s standard construction techniques. For more information on the design for this unique building, read the specs or in The New York Times.
Tivnu: Building Justice is a project of the Charitable Partnership Fund.
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