Jewish Reconstructionist Federation

For Passover, the JCPA along with MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger, is once again offering a phenomenal mobilizing event through which JRF communities, congregations from every Jewish stream and local JCRCs can engage community members in meaningful anti-poverty advocacy: The Child Nutrition Seder
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AJWS Invites U.S. Jewish Communities to Observe Global Hunger Shabbat in March

JRF Hunger and Poverty Resources: http://jrf.org/hunger

New York, NY; February 9, 2010—AJWS an international development and human rights organization, has invited Jewish communities and individuals nationwide to observe a “Global Hunger Shabbat”—a day of solidarity, education, reflection and advocacy to raise awareness about global hunger on March 19-20, 2010.

Global Hunger Shabbat is part of AJWS’s campaign, Fighting Hunger from the Ground Up. AJWS launched the campaign this past fall in order to build awareness in the American Jewish community about the political roots of hunger. As AJWS has done on many other issues, the organization is engaging the American Jewish community through tzedakah (charity), political advocacy, education and service, while simultaneously supporting 80 grassroots organizations that are working to reduce hunger in developing countries.

Scheduled to coincide with the Shabbat just prior to Passover, Global Hunger Shabbat will evoke the Passover message of “all who are hungry, let them come and eat,” on behalf of the more than a billion people suffering from hunger worldwide.

“Global Hunger Shabbat will be an opportunity for congregations of all denominations to join together for this common cause and to raise our collective voices against the injustice that is claiming lives around the world,” said AJWS vice president of programs, Aaron Dorfman. “As Jews, issues of social justice have always been in our prayers and our actions, and this day of solidarity is designed to bring about our deepest impulse for effecting change.”

To help individuals, congregations and communities organize and host their own Global Hunger Shabbat events on March 19th, AJWS has created an online toolkit (available at www.ajws.org/hungershabbat), which includes:

• Talking points about hunger and the food insecurity crisis
• An original prayer and sermon prompts designed for the synagogue or community setting
• A Jewish text study and family activity
• “Solidarity Plates” to designate an empty seat at the Shabbat table meant to represent the 1.1 billion people facing hunger worldwide
• Readings for use around the Shabbat table featuring stories about hunger and the solutions communities in Africa, Asia and Latin America are developing to fight it
• Suggestions for ways that American Jews and their communities can take action
• A poster and a community newsletter ad to help publicize Global Hunger Shabbat

AJWS and its grantess in Africa, Asia and the Americas believe that a local approach to realizing the human right to food will most effectively halt food insecurity worldwide. AJWS implements this approach by supporting grassroots change by and for local people in myriad ways—teaching farmers to grow food using sustainable farming methods; endowing communities with seed banks and harvest storage facilities; founding agricultural cooperatives and jumpstarting profitable local markets; and empowering indigenous communities to advocate for their land and water rights. Global Hunger Shabbat offers the American Jewish community an opportunity to join AJWS and its grassroots partners in supporting these critical solutions.

Global Hunger Shabbat toolkits and more information about the program are available at www.ajws.org/hungershabbat. These materials are part of an ongoing collection of educational resources that AJWS has created on global justice topics.

Join us in a training call to learn more about how to best use the materials and resources to create a meaningful Global Hunger Shabbat experience:

For Synagogues and Institutions:
Monday, March 1, 3:00-4:00 EST
Dial: 866.740.1260
Access Code: 7922901
Web Login

For “At Home” Hosts
Tuesday, March 2, 3:30-4:30 EST
Dial: 866.740.1260
Access Code: 7922901
Web Login

Fighting Poverty With Faith: Good Jobs Green JobsFor the third year in a row, JRF and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs are joining with Catholic Charities USA and now the National Council of Churches to spearhead the 2010 Fighting Poverty with Faith mobilization (see http://fightingpovertywithfaith.com/f2/).

One.org web site.

About ONE
(See JTA article http://jta.org/news/article/2008/12/03/1001338/thre)

ONE is Americans of all beliefs and every walk of life - united as ONE - to help make poverty history. We are a campaign of over 2.4 million people and growing from all 50 states and over 100 of America's most well-known and respected non-profit, advocacy and humanitarian organizations. As ONE, we are raising public awareness about the issues of global poverty, hunger, disease and efforts to fight such problems in the world's poorest countries. As ONE, we are asking our leaders to do more to fight the emergency of global AIDS and extreme poverty. ONE believes that allocating more of the U.S. budget toward providing basic needs like health, education, clean water and food would transform the futures and hopes of an entire generation in the world's poorest countries.

JRF’s resources (including the JRF Omer Initiative on Hunger and Poverty, and One Sabbath Torah Guide contributions from Larry Bush, Jeffery Dekor, Rabbi Lewis Eron, Abby Weinberg Rabbi Ezra Weinberg, Carol Towarnicky) are now part of the toolkit available through ONE to organize a ONE Sabbath event at your house of worship.

http://www.one.org/faith/jewishgroups.html and http://www.one.org/onesabbath/jewish.html

Also watch the new international multi-faith video ONE has produced with religious leaders speaking on this issue, including the Reconstructionist movement:
http://www.one.org/joinonesabbath/ and
http://www.one.org/documents/faith/multifaith/index.html  read more »

For your information, here are the resolutions that came out of the recent JCPA plenum. In the two years since JRF became a member religious organization and fourth Jewish movement in the JCPA, we have participated in many coalitions and sign-on initiatives. This Plenum marked the first time we were a national religious organization co-sponsoring three of the resolutions below. Thanks to Carl Sheingold (JRF Executive Vice-President), Bob Barkin (JRF President) and Val Kaplan (JRF Chair of External Affiliations) for representing us and voting on our behalf at the Plenum,

Full list of 2009 JCPA Resolutions

Full listing of partner organizations and sign-ons,

L'Shalom,

Shawn

Rabbi Shawn Zevit
Director of Outreach and Tikkun Olam
Congregational Consultant
Jewish Reconstructionist Federation

JCPA
JCPA speaks to you each week, alerting you to what the community relations field is doing to safeguard the rights of Jews here, in Israel, and around the world and to protect, preserve and promote a just, democratic and pluralistic American society. For three generations, we have brought together diverse voices in the Jewish community to unite a strong Jewish public policy force.

Date: March 11, 2009
From: Max Mulcahy, Program Director, JCPA  read more »

There are many JRF initiatives or letters of support in which we are continually asked to participate. In all of these cases, JRF is invited to join other interfaith or Jewish denominational coalitions in national and international social justice areas or letters/programs about forthcoming legislation or policy in keeping with our already existing resolutions.

Sign-ons through 2009:  read more »

The Tikkun Olam committee of Congregation Bet Haverim in Atlanta, Georgia, asks the question "How little could you live on?" At the Kabbalat Shabbat service on Friday, December 5 will be a special program on the Living Wage Campaign. This interfaith alliance, of which Bet Haverim is a member, hopes to raise the salaries of the lowest-paid workers in Georgia, many of whom are not covered by the federal minimum wage law. To help understand the significance of the choices workers must make, congregants have been invited to jot down ahead of time their own “subsistence” budget for a month, including just the necessities they must pay for and to bring it to the December 5 service. How little could YOU live on? Read more!

People of diverse faiths in almost 100 communities in 36 states are challenging candidates and elected officials to address the issue of poverty in America during "Week of Action” September 9 – 16, 2008. This call to action is to bring attention to the needs of the nation’s poor and urge candidates for elected office to outline what they would do in their first 100 days in office to develop comprehensive plans for reducing poverty and creating economic opportunity in the United States.  read more »

Visit www.jrf.org/fight-poverty-with-faith for full details of this initiative.

Protesters at the July 27 rally at Agriprocessors' Postville, IA plant (photo from Shalom Rav, the blog of Rabbi Brant Rosen)JRF calls on the members of its affiliated communities to join together in dialogue and action in response to human rights and social justice infringements at Agriprocessors, Inc, the nation’s largest kosher slaughterhouse.

To these ends, the JRF Update on Agriprocessors: Background and Action Steps, attached to this story, was compiled to assist you in your local communal and personal decision making.

For more information on JRF tikkun olam initiatives visit www.jrf.org/to or contact Rabbi Shawn Zevit at szevit@jrf.org.

Rabbi Brant Rosen in RwandaRabbi Brant Rosen of JRF's Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation in Evanston, IL is currently in Africa. And he's blogging from there. Here is an excerpt:

We talked about the ways the Rwandan experience is both similar and markedly different than the Jewish one. Obviously the wounds here are very fresh; and unlike the Jews of Europe, the goverment is committed to bringing all aspects of Rwandan society back together in one extremely small country.

Whether this will succeed over the long term or not is an open question. One woman who joined our conversation expressed her doubts - saying that while the political reconciliation is important, much of the underlying pain and hatred continues to simmer under the surface. How many generations does it take for this kind of pain to dissipate in a community? The Jewish people hav been learning this for some time - Rwanda is struggling with the tragic question as well.

Our final visit was a heartbreaking tour of Kigali’s Public Hospital. More on this in my next post…

Read more on Brant's blog.

Read more about JRF Service Learning Resources