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Posts tagged as:
tzedakah
- Breaking news: several Jewish social justice activists, including AJWS’s associate director of advocacy, Ian Schwab; the Religious Action Center’s Rabbi David Saperstein, and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs’ Rabbi Steve Gutow, were arrested today along with actor George Clooney, Martin Luther King III and members of Congress in front of the Sudanese embassy in Washington, D.C. The group was protesting the Sudanese government’s blockage of humanitarian aid to its citizens. To see photos as they come in, check out the RAC’s Facebook album, and read this article in the Jewish Journal for more context on the protest.
- It’s here! The voting period for the 70+ submissions received in the Where Do You Give? National Design Competition opened yesterday. You can vote once a day in each category – Tzedakah Box, Interactive, and Out of the Box – through March 30th. The submission with the most votes in each category will become one of the finalists and be a part of the national exhibit kicking off this summer, with the potential of winning the Grand Prize. You can also view all the submissions and descriptions on Where Do You Give?’s Facebook album. Read more →
Tagged as:
ethical consumption,
judaism,
nu,
Sudan,
tzedakah
- Not surprisingly, the food justice victory by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) last week—in which Trader Joe’s finally signed a Fair Food agreement after years of CIW organizing—has made big news in the Jewish social justice world. While we covered the story of the tomato rabbis who visited Immokalee just last week, you can read additional coverage of their visit and the victory in the Forward’s The Jew and the Carrot blog, the Bay Area’s J Weekly, and the Huffington Post. And what will change as a result of this victory? “This is nearly a 50 percent raise for the workers,” said Barry Estabrook, author of Tomatoland.
- There are just 12 days left to submit your brilliant new idea for reimagining the traditional tzedakah box to the Where Do You Give? design competition! For inspiration, turn to the Where Do You Give? blog: last week, professor Deborah Skolnick Einhorn wrote about the tension between philanthropic funding of social services versus social change work, which can often address the root causes that create the need for social services in the first place. Given the current small percentage of U.S. philanthropy devoted to social change, she raises a challenging question: “Are there enough resources to really cure the root causes of day-to-day problems?” Read more →
Tagged as:
food justice,
nu,
torah,
tzedakah
Turning the World Right Side Up:
Purim & the Strategy of Generosity
A Jewish Social Justice Weekend featuring Danny Siegel
March 9 – 11, 2012
The holiday of Purim is full of the upside-down, and inspires us to have the courage to do our part to set it right side up. There is a connection between Purim’s traditions of mishloach manot (sending gifts) and matanot l’evyonim (gifts to the poor), and the strategy of generosity that is a core element of Jewish tradition. In Judaism, the strategy of generosity is called by many names, including tzedakah (justice or charity), gemilut hasidim (giving kindness), and tikkun olam (fixing the world).
In our giving of gifts on Purim, we enact the strategy of generosity, and in the larger sense of pursuing social justice, we recognize the need for an inversion in society, a turning upside down of the inequalities we see. By engaging in social action on Purim, we hope to erase the hierarchy of the haves and the have-nots. Read more →
Tagged as:
events,
holidays,
service,
tzedakah
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
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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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