A People-First Approach to Climate Justice: Thinking Jewishly About Change

If you are among the despairing would-be climate activists of the world — overwhelmed by the scope of the problem, frustrated by lack of political will, horrified by the ever-more-dire predictions of climate scientists, and simultaneously consumed with both the urgency and the hopelessness of the situation — you are not alone. But here’s the thing. Our climate crisis isn’t just bad for frogs or whales or polar bears. It is bad — really bad — for people. Especially poor people, and people of color. When our main focus is on nature, habitat, and the suffering of creation, then we are just depressed. But if we focus instead on creating just, healthy, and sustainable local communities, then we open incredible opportunities to create tzedek-centered communities. READ MORE

Life and Action

Activist, Parent: An Organizer's Look at Change-Making, Time and Life Through the Lens of Motherhood

By Hannah Sassaman

I used to work in a church basement with community activists. We wore worn T-shirts, worked until 10 pm, and wore our spunkiness with pride. No one, at that time, was a parent. Then I joined a big healthcare labor union, where many members, staff and leaders were parents. We’d often have conference calls at 9 pm or later to accommodate bedtime. At organizing meetings, kids ran around as their parents were figuring out the best strategic ways to win their union.

News and Politics

Morning Jew: Donald Sterling and Jewish Racism

By Heather Gold and Katie Halper

News and Politics

Waking Up to Justice: Rabbi Ellen Lippmann on the Fast Food Workers’ Strike (In NYC, 150 cities, 30 countries)

By Rabbi Ellen Lippmann

May 15, 2014. 4:30 am. The alarm rings. Groggily, I rise and dress, and head into midtown Manhattan to meet a motley crew of clergy and fast food workers and organizers, coming together at the beginning of a day of strikes by fast food workers here – and across the country and the world. I join one rabbi, several ministers, lots of workers, flags, banners, an organizer who grew up in my congregation, and curious onlookers still half-asleep before 6 am. The streets are half-empty, unheard of in New York. Soon they are filled by wave after wave of workers, determined that today is the day McDonald’s will change its tune or the governor of New York will grant our city and others the right to set our own minimum wage.

Media and Tech

Why Net Neutrality Is a Social Justice Issue

By Jo Ellen Green Kaiser

We’re sharing this article from the ZEEK archive in honor of ‪#‎InternetSlowdown‬ day. Small online magazines like ZEEK need ‪#‎NetNeutrality‬.

“Imagine if you had to pay extra to get good water pressure at home. That’s what the internet would be like without net neutrality,” writes Jo Ellen Green Kaiser, ZEEK board chair & executive director of The Media Consortium.

News and Politics

Morning Jew: Reminiscing about 1st Amendment with Guest Dahlia Lithwick, Supreme WASPs, George Clooney, Monica Lewinsky

By Heather Gold and Katie Halper

This week, special guest Dahlia Lithwick, legal expert and editor at Slate and Newsweek, joins us to talk about how there used to be a separation of Church and State before this week’s Town of Greece case, how there are no more WASPs on the Supreme Court, George Clooney, Monica Lewinsky, Rob Ford and Principal Schmutz! And we do a lightning round. Watch now!

Faith and Practice

Truly Transformative: Motherhood and the Spiritual Practice of Parenting

By Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg

My mother always said that she never believed in God until she had kids. Something about my brother and I coming into being — from sex into clumpy cells, and then somehow into little creatures that emerged from within her with noses, ear canals, and personality quirks — changed everything about how she understood the world to work. She never told me, really, what had happened for her, but if I had to guess, I’d imagine words like miracle, impossibility, and soul would be involved.

Life and Action

Plight of a Mentor: Cutthroat Vs. Collaborative for NextGen Women Leaders: The Leftist Ethicist

By Mae Singerman

I am a senior staff member at a progressive Jewish nonprofit with many young(er) staff people. I am a mentor for a few women who are early in their careers. In my organization, there are many women, but men still occupy most of the top positions. I sometimes find myself encouraging cutthroat attitudes that I don’t really believe in because I know it is part of what these young women will need to advance. Is this ethical? —Mentoring Against My Values

Inequality between men and women in the Jewish communal world is a hot issue, especially around pay and leadership, two issues I’m sure you discuss with your mentees. READ MORE

News and Politics

Dear Tal: An Open Letter About American Jewish Privilege

By Eli Plenk

I read your op-ed in The Princeton Tory, Checking my Privilege: Character as the Basis of Privilege, making waves since Time reprinted it last week.

Like you, I am Jewish and my family came here fleeing anti-Semitic violence in Europe. They worked in the sweatshops of Lower Manhattan, and eventually built an upper-middle-class life for themselves. I am a living, breathing testament to the American dream, and it no coincidence that I am white and Jewish. This is not to say that all whites or Jews are well off, nor that all Jews are white or all whites Jewish. Rather I’m trying to point out that our families were able to move up in the world largely because American society gave them many of the literal and proverbial tools one needs to be upwardly mobile.

News and Politics

A Blocked Senate Vote on Minimum Wage, A Moral Call to Action Against Poverty Wages

By Rabbi Steve Gutow

I learned a lot from my experience with hunger, lessons I wish more of our Senators understood before making their frustrating decision not to vote for an increase in the minimum wage this week, blocking a vote on the Minimum Wage Fairness Act.