News and Politics

A Wakeup Call: A Turning Point for Social Justice Judaism

By Abby Levine

“American Jews doing social justice work is nothing new. But the field of Jewish social justice is an emerging yet mighty one. Pew isn’t just an affirmation of social justice work. It’s a wakeup call that we can do better,” writes Abby Levine of the Jewish Social Justice Roundtable, reflecting on this week’s Network Assembly.

Life and Action

Pumpkin Latkes

By Hands of the Heathens

The Zeek archive is packed with articles that have as much relevance and urgency today as they did when they were written. Like this one – in fact, it’s even more timely than it was back in 2010, when it originally ran.

Life and Action

An Activist on Occupy, Two Years After Zuccotti Eviction

By Sarah Marian Seltzer

Two years later, writes Sarah Seltzer, Occupy reminds us that we have to think big, think together, and keep the slogan in our minds, even when it seems far from reality: another world is possible.

Life and Action

Where, When, Who? Workplace Activism & Healthcare Access --THE LEFTIST ETHICIST

By Mae Singerman

I have seen the same primary care doctor for about five years, and she gives me good care. Unfortunately, I just saw her, and she told me — not without a guilty look in her eye — that expenses and regulations were just too much, and she had decided to close up her current shop and open a concierge practice. My blood ran cold: I mean, sure, I could afford it (I make a good living), but what about all the people who can’t? Is my doctor making an unethical decision? Should I stick with her?

News and Politics

Torah, ENDA and Our Mandate to Act (Now)

By Rabbi Debra Kolodny

The US Senate could vote this week on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA). [See editor’s note for updates.]

May this bill pass in 2013, ending the 19-year struggle to ensure recourse against workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

Why is passing this federal legislation so critical? Right now, transgender people can be fired in 33 states while lesbian, gay and bisexual people can be fired in 29, merely for being ourselves. Seeking fairness and justice state by state has been a tortuously slow process that leaves millions of people at risk for joblessness and its potential ramifications: poverty, homelessness, shame, depression, illness.

Why as Jews should we attend to this travesty? Regardless of our sexual orientation and gender identity, why should we make this struggle our own?

Faith and Practice

Progress from Process

By Rabbi Menachem Creditor

“Will we pause long enough to look at the objects we possess and see that what we think of as ‘process’ is actually a chain of human beings? If not, then we participate in a criminal act of willful forgetting,” writes Rabbi Menachem Creditor. This Chanukah, let’s shine a light on modern-day slavery and ensure our choices support freedom.

News and Politics

Why We Work With Our Local CAIR Chapter in Chicago

By Asaf Bar-Tura

The question is not whether we can afford to work with CAIR, but whether we can afford not to.

News and Politics

Is the Wait Nearly Over for DC Waitstaff on Paid Sick Days?

By Sam Jewler

“At the most basic level, it seems like the Jewish question is to ask whether an employer would be satisfied with their workplace policies if they knew those policies would also be applied to their parents, children, or siblings.” — Rabbi Elizabeth Richman, rabbi-in-residence, Jews United for Justice

Life and Action

The Post-Ultra-Orthodox Death Prophecy

By Leah Vincent

On Friday, September 27, Deb Tambor, a young mother with bright eyes and deep dimples, killed herself. Deb was a member of the same circle of former ultra-Orthodox Jews that I belong to. Her death, at 33, is sending shockwaves through my community, a sharp reminder of the suffering some of us must endure. Deb went through a brutal custody battle because she rejected ultra-Orthodoxy. Her former community banded together to destroy her children’s relationships with her, using legal muscle, bullying, and religiously fueled indoctrination to reduce her contact with her three children to only one supervised visit a month.

Many have already responded eloquently to Deb’s death with an outcry against the abominably corrupt custody processes that so many former ultra-Orthodox Jews are trapped in, something I care about deeply. Today, though, I’m moved to talk about something else, something more personal for me.

My deepest reaction to this tragedy is not as an activist, but as a fellow former ultra-Orthodox Jew, reminded that so many of us, while moving forward in our lives, are pulled back by a siren call of death.