Here I Am
Progressive Jewish Alliance’s new video.
Give them money!! They do good work. They need it.
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The fire in Carmel — and should the Diaspora donate to help?
The 5,000-hectare blaze near Haifa in Israel through the Carmel national forest sparked controversy inside and outside Israel this past week. Emergency funds were set up by New Israel Fund (with J Street offering a $10K matching gift), the Joint Distribution Committee, UJA-Federation of NY and the Jewish National Fund.
But nothing is simple when it comes to Israel. Correspondent for The Atlantic Jeffrey Goldberg, not known for being a stringent critic of Israel, dropped a surprising post titled “Don’t give to the Jewish National Fund.” Israel’s failure to contain the blaze shouldn’t be enabled by coddling Diaspora donors who treat Israel as a “charity case,” he says:
Israel’s per capita GDP is nearly $30,000. Israel is a rich country. The fact that it doesn’t possess adequate firefighting equipment is its own fault. [...]
My sympathy is with the people who lost their lives, their families, and those still in danger. It is not with a government that appears to be negligent. And I’m not going to contribute funds that might serve to paper-over the government’s inadequacies.
Goldberg shares the predictable outrage he receives in response alongside a JNF fundraising letter detailing all the fire trucks that donations would buy. Ouch. (Note that he donated to the UJA’s resettlement fund.)
To this, I only partly agree. (And I’m not known to agree with Goldberg often either.) I agree that most of American Jewry views Israel at a charity case. And this should stop. Diaspora dollars fund, according to professional estimates, 90% of Israel’s nonprofit sector. The country nearly lacks a philanthropic culture, instead looking to the (albeit wealthy) easily-guilted foreign relatives. The federation system provides $1 billion a year, often to quasi-governmental agencies like the JNF, to provide services governments should independently. These enable an Israeli government that already neglects social needs in favor of defense. (Or at least uses security threats to dodge pressing civil strife over internal divisions on such services.) More »
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A Hanukkah Justice Spin
Cross-posted from Pursue’s blog with permission.
Putting the spin on justice!
While you’re eating those potato latkes and thinking about who inspires you, take a moment to put the spin on justice! Challenge yourself to bring light into darkness and wager on your commitment to social justice.
This weekend, join Pursue at Inside the Activists’ Studio in New York and Guilt-Free Gelt in San Francisco to spin in person! The spin is below for playing at home.
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Traditional dreidel rules:
Nun — Player gets nothing
Gimel — Player takes everything that’s in the pot
Hay — Player takes half of everything that’s in the pot
Shin — Player puts an additional token into the pot
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The Justice Spin rules:
The Justice Spin doesn’t require actual tokens or gelt – it’s an opportunity to spin the dreidel over conversation and see where you land. May it inspire you and your friends into action for 2011!
Nun — Do nothing – but don’t skip your turn! Sometimes, doing nothing can actually be doingsomething when it means taking time to rest and be healthy and to nurture your spirit in order to sustain yourself for all the important work you’ll do before next Hannukah. Take a break!
Gimel — Jackpot- you have it all! Do something BIG and make a difference in the world! Invest your time and your resources in your local community. Find the justice issue you care about, and support it.
Hay — “Hey!” Say something. Be an advocate. Write a letter to the editor of your local paper about an issue that matters to you. Contact your elected officials to describe the change you desire in your city, state, and country. Speak truth to power.
Shin — Give your gelt! Tzedakah derives from the Hebrew word for justice, rather than charity. Judaism sees donating money as a powerful and necessary act, an act of justice.
Spin away and make a change. It’s your turn!
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Envisioning Justice: The 15th Annual New Generations Benefit
Ten artists were selected to showcase their visual art on Israeli social justice issues at this year’s New Generations Benefit on Thursday, October 21st, including Anisa Ashkar, Natan Dvir, Yael Frank, Hannah Fluk, Tanya Habjouqa, Itamar Jobani, Gil Lavi, Ahikam Seri, Ilan Spira and others soon to be announced!
Join fellow fans of a better Israel fighting for civil, human and social rights for all citizens of Israel. To meet the artists, buy your tickets or get involved, click here.
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Music City Needs Some Help
Nashville, TN has been under water for a while now. While we all have read about what happened, like with so many disasters, we most likely won’t be hearing much about what happens in the aftermath. The clean up will be long, hard and extremely sad. Lives lost. Property destroyed. History forever lost.
You can help out by working with any number of organizations. Here are a couple Jewish orgs that are getting into the act:
If you know of others please feel free to link them in the comments.
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Tevel B’Tzedek: Live Blogging from Haiti
Tevel B’tzedek is on the ground supporting communities and even running a school in the Petitionville refugee camp. Below are some selections from recent blog posts from our friends over at Repair the World:
There are thousands of children in the camp, but only one school, run by volunteers from the Israeli non-profit Tevel b’Tzedek, and funded by IsraAID, an umbrella organization of Israeli groups working in the developing world. I founded Tevel b’Tzedek, which has been working with poor and marginalized communities in Nepal for the past three years through its service learning programs that combine volunteering with the study of poverty, Jewish social justice values and globalization. The nine Israeli and US Jewish volunteers of “Tevel” have been here for the past two months. As I walk through the camp with them, they seem to know everyone, from the children to the U.S. Marines providing camp security. There is an amazingly unlikely moment as we climb the steep hill towards the school—we meet a group of Nepali UN soldiers, and the Tevel Nepal graduates chat with them in Nepali—it seems like the harbinger of a new world.
…
My job is to figure out what to do next. With the rains and then typhoons coming, the camp is not safe, especially for those on the bottom of steep hills. The camp will empty out over the next few months. Should we go to work in the next phase of semi-permanent camps? Should we move to one of the villages, where we can also use Israel’s agriculture expertise to boost food production, a major priority in Haiti even before the earthquake?
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The Vort: Parashat Shmini – Search. Search.
This week, we read the heart of the Torah. The Talmud in Kiddushin states that our parasha, Shmini, contains the middle words of the entire Torah. The words describe Moshe’s quest to find an answer to a question. They are “darosh darash,” and Moses searched deeply. Thus, according to the gemara, the deepest point in the Torah is to deeply search. 
This deep searching is critical to our work as Jews pursuing tzedek. Commitment to pursuing justice in our daily lives takes introspection and searching. We must deeply search our tzedakah habits. We must deeply search our consumer behavior and which businesses and industries we frequent. We must deeply search the way we spend our time. We must deeply search the way we treat our friends. We must deeply search the way we treat strangers. We must deeply search the policies and laws of our organizations, cities, and governments. We must deeply search for new ideas and innovations that address suffering. And so much more. Deep searching is the key to the strength, growth, and renewal we need as pursuers of justice. The search helps us confront new problems in new ways and give us the endurance we need to fight the old ones.
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Give away your money part 2 – Tithing this Tax Season
A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about how we as a community can step up our tzedaka game. After following the fascinating comment thread, with highlights from Shoshana, Avigdor, David A.M. Wilensky, ML, and others, I decided to look into some of the questions about what counts for tzedaka, what doesn’t, how to calculate it, etc. This piece I wrote for Ha’aretz was the result. It focuses on the practice of ma’aser kesafim, tithing one tenth of all income to the poor. Is this a mitzvah that the progressive Jewish community could take on in serious ways?
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Does Jack know Jack?
In a rather redundant article in Commentary, Jack Wertheimer makes another set of his sweeping – and entirely annoying – statements about how the young folks, they’re just so dumb.
He starts out with a perfectly fine, if not particularly new or startling, laying out of the observation about how expensive it is to live a Jewish life. He then veers off into a bizarre, and only tangentially related, screed about how it’s organizations that encourage young Jews to do “Tikkun Olam” who are to blame for the state of affairs in which young Jews don’t contribute to the Jewish people, and somehow links that to why no one can afford to educate Jewish children adequately.
Now normally I’d just be happy to agree with another Jewschooler who commented offblog that, “Really, the only thing more consistently wrong in American Jewish life than Commentary Magazine is Jack Wertheimer.” In fact, I find his sweeping statements about how women are to blame, young people are to blame, anyone is to blame except people like him doing what he thinks they ought to do at all times so wrong that really I just ignore anything that comes from him nowadays. Normally, I think that he’s just irrelevant. Or perhaps just apoplectic to the point of being unable to do anything but bluster.
More »
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Investment that will generate a 9,100% return on your money!!!
That’s right folks. For every dollar you put in, you’ll generate $91 (no Ponzi). How? It’s easy!
Invest in advocacy and community organizing. This study of Los Angeles County nonprofits found that those engaged in advocacy and organizing generated nearly $7 billion in benefits for local residents, including higher wages, affordable transportation, healthcare, and much, much more. Article here.
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A Helping Hand for Haiti
As we have seen plastered across TV, the Internet and newspapers, Haiti was rocked by a devastating earthquake, killing upwards of 100,000 people and leaving millions more without food, water, shelter or medical supplies. Please do your part (despite what Michael Steinhardt says) and donate whatever you can to help the island nation dig itself out and begin the painful rebuilding process. Below are just a few opportunities for you donate through a Jewish organization to help the survivors of this disaster.
American Jewish Committee
American Jewish World Service
Combined Jewish Philanthropies
Joint Distribution Committee
Mazon
Union for Reform Judaism
You can also Text “HAITI” to 90999 to donate $10 to relief efforts in Haiti through the Red Cross.
Thank you for your help,
If you know of other Jewish organizations accepting donations or otherwise organizing to help the people of Haiti, please leave a comment with the necessary information.
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Locally Produced Hanukah Gift Treats
Julia Levy spends her evenings and weekends as the NYC Foodzie Scout looking for the next best flavors in NYC. Foodzie.com is San Francisco-based start up: an online marketplace for independent producers where you can buy and sell products from local farms and independent growers. Drop her a line.
As Jews around the world remember the miracle of oil lasting for eight nights, be creative with the presents you give: select treats from eight different producers, one for each night!
It is tradition to eat food fried in oil – latkes (potato pancakes) and jelly donuts are two delicious foods associated with the holiday. This year, try baking your donuts from scratch and filling them with some of Foodzie’s amazing jams or jellies. Consider Terra Verde Farms’ selection, including seedless blackberry or Frog Hollow Farm’s organic apricot-cherry conserves. To garnish your latkes, improvise a twist on the old favorite of apple sauce by substituting chutney, Mango Apple Chutney from Sunchowder’s Emporia Jams is high on our list. More »
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Give Away Your Money
This article by Rabbi Jill Jacobs in the Forward has got me thinking a lot about how I and the entire Jewish community gives away its money. Bottom line is, we’re coming up short.
I’ve read that the only taboo left in America culture isn’t sex, it’s money. Privilege and poverty make us uncomfortable. But if we as a Jewish community are serious about pursuing tzedek (justice), we need to get serious about one of the most effective ways to do it: tzedakah. We need to start talking about it, learning about it, and giving it.
I’d like to break the taboo and start a conversation here – what percent of your income are you going to give away this year to charity, and how are you going to do it?
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New Generations Benefit tomorrow night & discount txts
Click this link for half-price $18 tickets to tomorrow night’s New Generations Benefit at the Bowery Ballroom!
JDub Records’ SOULICO and AXUM mix it up to support social justice in Israel, for all members of Israeli society. (Read: migrant workers, Sudanese refugees, immigrants of all colors, all Jewish denominations, and all races.)
Doors open at 8 pm and the party will get going shortly thereafter. Located at the Bowery Ballroom, 6 Delancey Street.
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For Rabbis: social justice in Israel resources for High Holy Days
Today, New Israel Fund released rabbinical resources for the High Holy Days, from Israeli social justice activists fighting for religious pluralism, protecting Israel’s environment, empowering women, minorities and migrant workers, and safeguarding civil rights. Read it at www.nif.org/YamimNoraim, selected quotes below the fold.
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JDub’s SOULICO and AXUM play the 14th annual New Generations Benefit
JDub’s SOULICO is playing the New Israel Fund’s New Generations Benefit at the Bowery Ballroom this September 9th, co-chaired by Jewschool’s own Dan Sieradski and friend of the blog Dana Raviv! This is the biggest event for those who give a damn about what kind of a country Israel is on the inside — supporting social justice grassroots orgs in Israel. Last year’s concert with Balkan Beat Box was undeniably hot.
Covered last week in Pitchfork, SOULICO is a four-member DJ Crew from Tel Aviv, the first DJs in the Middle East to master the trifecta of production, turntablism, and party-rocking skills. “Their music is a unique mix of hip-hop, middle eastern melodies, dancehall, electronic, Reggae, English, Hebrew, Arabic, and Spanish.” Rising from poverty and extreme hardship on the streets of Netanya, special guests AXUM have been marked as “Israel’s biggest hip hop hope.”
Buy your tickets here, or if you can’t make it, do Mobius and Dana a huge favor and tell 5 friends about it. You’ll win goodies from JDub Records for your efforts. Free Soulico mixtape here.
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Judaism and internet anonymity
I said before that I would share some biographical information about myself, so here it is. The real reason I’m writing this post is to talk about some issues that I thought of while deciding what sort of biographical information to share.
One criticism of the Internet that I hear a lot, particularly regarding bloggers, concerns anonymity. People don’t like the idea of someone being able to write whatever they want without their name or identifying information attached to it. I’ve been thinking about what this means from a Jewish perspective. What ethical responsibilities do I, as a blogger, have to those who read my writing? Do I owe them information about myself?
I don’t think I do. There’s no reason a blogger can’t write responsibly, with well-researched and well-cited information, while still maintaining anonymity. I personally have no problem with people on the Internet knowing who I am, but there are a lot of cases where that’s not true.
The key is this: there’s a difference between anonymity and cowardice. I can write under a handle without ever linking that handle to any kind of real-world information, but I still have a responsibility to provide honest content and to respond honestly to criticism. Using anonymity as a shield for ignorance or deception is not acceptable. That’s true in any field, and the blagotubes are no exception. Neither is it acceptable to use my anonymity to spread lashon hara. So from a Jewish ethical perspective, as well as one of scholarly responsibility, with great anonymity comes great responsibility.
Given the pitfalls of anonymity, are there any advantages? Well, if one provides useful content free of charge (most bloggers don’t get paid), it could be considered a form of tzedakah. I’m not trying to sound self-centered here, but ideally blogging is a useful form of information and perspective, in donation form. Maimonides said that one of the higher levels of tzedakah is giving anonymously to an unknown source. So if a blogger writes an anonymous post, they’re engaging in a high level of charitable giving. They don’t know who’s going to read their post; it could be anyone in the world. That’s the beauty of the medium. And the person reading it doesn’t know who wrote it. So there’s been an exchange of significant information between two people, neither of whom have any idea who the other is. There’s no ego involved (“look how much I know about this topic”), just learning. That, to me, exemplifies both the ideals of Jewish text study or chevrutah and those of journalism; the pure exchange of ideas.
So in this case, as in most, the Internet makes it easier to do really good work or really bad work. The question is, which one will you choose?
Cross-posted to my blog.
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Fasting and Charity on 17 Tammuz
It being 17 Tammuz, a fast day, Yeshivat Hadar was learning about fasting.
We learned the story from Ketubot 67b:
In Mar Ukba’s neighbourhood there lived a poor guy, and every day Mar Ukba used to leave a dollar in his mailbox. One day, the poor guy decided to find out who was leaving these dollars, so he kept a look out. Now, that day Mar Ukba stayed late at the beit midrash, and his wife came to find him. They went home together via the poor guy’s mailbox, and the guy spotted them and came out! Mar Ukba and Mrs Ukba ran away fast fast fast, and hid [naturally] in a conveniently-empty communal oven. But it was still hot, and Mar Ukba’s legs got burned, ouch. But his wife’s legs were fine.
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