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- In case you missed it, you can watch President Obama’s State of the Union address from this past Tuesday night on the White House website. But if you’re looking for Jewish justice insight into the state of the nation as Obama sees it, look no further than the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism (RAC). They put together a State of the Union resource center that includes a transcript of their live Twitter feed with RAC associate director Mark Pelavin and a series of bingo cards that you can use to track the key phrases Obama drops during his speech.
- On the heels of the two-year anniversary of Haiti’s earthquake, the Haiti Advocacy Working Group organized Haiti Advocacy Week this past week on Capitol Hill. Bringing together Haitians, organizations working on Haiti’s development, and government officials, events included policy briefings on issues such as gender-based violence, the cholera epidemic, and democracy within Haiti as well as discussions about how best to move forward in securing a strong future for the country. To see photos from the week’s events, click here. Read more →
Tagged as:
change-makers,
domestic policy,
haiti,
immigration,
nu
This post originally appeared on The Jew and the Carrot.
 It was the pile of onions that made me cry. Not in the way you might think—I wasn’t standing over a cutting board, knife in hand, sobbing my way through an extended dicing activity. The onions that made me cry were whole, bagged and stacked about 5 feet high, in a small village in Western Senegal, where I was travelling with American Jewish World Service.
I cried because of the story behind this stack of onions, a story of thwarted ambition, injustice, and our broken global food system. Working with a local Non-Governmental Organization called GREEN Senegal, farmers from this village had implemented new farming practices, such as drip irrigation that vastly improved their efficiency and productivity. With much less time and effort, they had increased the quantity and quality of their onion crop, and were ready to bring their goods to market. In addition to the economic gain the villagers hoped to see through their efforts, the new efficiencies had the side benefits of allowing children to spend more time in school, rather than in the fields helping with the harvest, and mothers to spend more time in the home caring for their families. It sounded like a success story. So why was I crying? Read more →
Tagged as:
AJWS,
campaigns,
holidays,
money,
service,
tzedakah
 Applications for the 2012 conference Siach: An Environment and Social Justice Conversation are now open! Pursue is proud to have served on the steering committee of the first conference — you can read a report-back from that gathering, held at the Isabella Freedman Retreat Center in Connecticut, here.
Read more →
Tagged as:
environmental justice,
events,
leadership
This post originally appeared on The Jew and the Carrot.
 The issue inspiring the latest Jewish political movement won’t surprise readers of this blog—but it might cause some head scratching among the rest of the Jewish community. It isn’t Israel or the 99%. Nope, it’s… the U.S. Farm Bill!
While it may seem like an unlikely target for a swell of Jewish activism, the Farm Bill—which dictates U.S. law on everything from agriculture to food stamps to biofuels—is packed with policies that go against the grain of Jewish ethics. The bill is up for debate and reauthorization this year, and six Jewish organizations are seizing the opportunity to call for reforms that they feel will go a long way toward achieving their Torah-inspired visions of food justice. Even though they’re each tackling a different aspect of the bill, they’ve recently joined forces to maximize their power and mobilize their constituents toward a common goal.
Read more →
Tagged as:
action,
campaigns,
food justice,
partners
- In honor of Martin Luther King Day this week, the Jewish Women’s Archive posted a provocative article reminding us that, for all the involvement of Jews in the Civil Rights movement that makes us proud, there were other segments of the community that were much more reluctant to take a stand. Describing the fear some Jews in northern U.S. cities felt as more blacks moved into their neighborhoods, the article emphasizes the unglamorous nature of much of the activist work around civil rights and the continuing challenge to, in King’s words, “get to the Promised Land.”
- Promising news for LGBT Jews: Jessica Youseffi reported in the Huffington Post this week about the pilot program of the Welcoming Synagogues project, which is wrapping up in the next few months. The program works with congregations across denominations to identify specific ways they can actively make LGBT Jews part of synagogue life, rather than simply affirming that the community is “inclusive.” Dr. Joel L. Kushner, the leader of the pilot, named four areas that congregations can work on—content, visibility, training and language—explaining, “For LGBT people to feel welcome in a congregation they need to be explicitly identified and affirmed.” Read more →
Tagged as:
LGBT,
news,
nu,
women
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Jewish change-makers are inspired, motivated and fiercely smart. Jewish values urge us to question injustice, act, and take collective responsibility. Pursue sparks and sustains social change by channeling the unlimited passion and potential of Jewish change-makers
in their 20s and 30s into action for a more just world. Copyright 2010
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