MediaWatch: Our Jewish World
from the Columbia Spectator:
Student-Run Fellowship Emphasizes Charity
In response to what they see as a dearth of opportunities for philanthropy on campus, two students from Columbia/Barnard Hillel have formed a faith-based fellowship devoted to giving back.
from the New Jersey Jewish News:
Day school endowment hits $20 million mark
A year after its launch, a community-wide campaign in support of Jewish day school education has reached the $20 million mark.
More than 35 donor families have made commitments of $100,000 or more, and close to 100 donors have made gifts to the MetroWest Day School Campaign, an endowment initiative that aims to boost excellence and affordability at three local Jewish day schools.
What Will You Do?
Get involved and make a difference: Jewish Social Action Month 2008
Whether you call it Tikkun Olam, social action, chesed - join thousands of Jewish organizations and individuals around the world from all backgrounds and affiliations for a month of unity through practicing social action. Volunteer with children, rally for Darfur, clean up a river, feed the homeless, raise money for Sderot, paint a mural – do whatever you feel passionate about:
This Cheshvan let’s make JSAM even more global and reach more people. All communities, organizations, and individuals - whether they work with the Jewish world or the general society - are invited to participate.
For more information: www.cheshvan.org or e-mail jsam@koldor.org
Jewish Social Action Month, Building Unity Through Social Action, is a global initiative to promote Tikkun Olam and Jewish Peoplehood and spearheaded by KolDor.
To LIFE!
We first wrote about LIFE back in April. LIFE, an innovative Tikun Olam program for Jewish and Israeli young adults from all walks of life, is seeking to inspire and enable; the fellows in this program hope to change the Jewish community and Israel in terms of the agenda, self-perception and way of living.
A nine month long, Israel based service-learning program for University graduates with a four-month stay in India, LIFE will enable the participants to:
- Live with, help and learn from people in India and Israel through two service-learning internships
- Develop a capacity to understand and lead social change
- Grow Jewishly and develop relationships with Israel and Israelis through learning, touring, and connecting with top social activists, intellectuals and leaders (more…)
Bookmark:
Leonard Fein on Peoplehood
from yesterday’s Forward:
We Are All Implicated in the World’s Repair
There’s considerable talk these days about Jewish peoplehood. Is the sense of it sustainable? For that matter, is it still alive? And on what foundation does it rest?
What is it that connects one Jew to another? And what connects the two largest communities of Jews, here in America and there in Israel, to one another? Is their bond merely the residue of an earlier time, a characteristic of people “of a certain age” whose lives began in a world without a Jewish state and who themselves witnessed the extraordinary transformation that the creation of Israel embodied? Is that bond significantly reciprocal, or does it come down to our dependence on them for psychic needs and theirs on us for financial and political contributions?
Shabbat Shalom from Jerusalem
image courtesy: JAFI
Connecting With People
Two University of Oregon undergraduates are the visionaries behind a new initiative launched this past week: Shomer Achi.
One of the many projects incubated this summer at the PresenTense Institute, Shomer Achi is an international organization that acts to strengthen Jewish identity and Jewish unity by fostering sustainable and community based connections between Israeli and American Jewish college students through parallel social service initiatives, dialogue, and leadership training.
In the words of co-founders Jodi Mererowitz and Jamie Zebrak:
“Shomer Achi presupposes an urgency to shift the Jewish self perception. For too long, true dialogue and understanding has been stifled by pre-existing modalities that limit the scope of the Jewish experience. America has either been the generous donor of aid to Israel or Israel has served as protector of disenfranchised Jews worldwide; a hierarchy of power that has served as the only framework within which Jews in Israel and the Diaspora have cooperated.
It is time for us to explore a world in which Jews everywhere can work together and contribute to one another. Our communities are able to cooperate as equals adding mutually to the greater goal of facilitating and enhancing the Jewish experience. Shomer Achi does not suppose that Israel now needs to ‘take care of’ America or that America needs to be the beneficiary of Israel. It is necessary to switch our understanding of how Jews worldwide can move forward and achieve greater cohesiveness as a people.”
Shomer Achi already has a pretty impressive list of partners, including B’Tzedek and Haifa Hillel, along with a few long-time and well known communal names on their advisory board. I have a hunch we will be hearing a great deal more from these two young women.
Not only are Jodi and Jamie Cool People, they’re people to watch!
Halacha and the Environment
Jerusalem recently played host to an international conference titled, The Environment in Jewish Thought and Law. Spearheaded by Sviva Israel, an innovative Jewish social environmental organization, the goal was to enrich and raise the level of conversation on Judaism and the Environment.
Carmi Wisemon, the initiator of the conference and presenter of a lecture on “The Conflicts and Connections between Sustainability and Judaism”, was extremely pleased with the large turnout of people who came together from all walks of life to learn about the environmental issues facing all of us and Jewish responses to them. Wisemon said, “We are delighted that we have been able to bring together in a public forum the highest levels of rabbinical leaders in Israel with environmental professionals, activists, academics, educators, religious and non-religious. In understanding Judaism’s approach to the environment, it is incumbent upon us to first learn about the environmental issues that we face today.
The conference also marked the publication of the latest volume, and first in English, of “The Environment in Jewish Thought and Law” - Jewish environmental responsa on contemporary issues of sustainability and Jewish environmental ethics. You can access this publication here: The-Environment-in-Jewish-Thought-and-Law.
about: Sviva Israel creates environmental and civic responsibility in Israeli society by giving young people the knowledge and skills which will make them leaders for the protection of our environment while simultaneously building their Jewish and Israeli identities.
Their international and web-based projects connect young Israelis with each other and with their global peers through Jewish-environmental programming that contributes to their Jewish identity and pride in Israel. They nurture connections that will ensure Israel’s future as an environmentally sustainable home for the Jewish People.
Around Our World
Stories making news in our Jewish world
from Haaretz:
Jewish Agency outsourcing aliyah marks end of ‘aliyah of no-choice’
A few minutes after 6 A.M. last Thursday, two groups of about 30 new immigrants each entered the small office of the Immigration Absorption Ministry, at the old terminal of Ben Gurion International Airport. The first was a group of British olim, who were brought to Israel by the independent aliyah organization Nefesh B’Nesfesh, and the second was of Ethiopian Falashmura, brought by the Jewish Agency.
This random encounter embodied the changing of the guard currently underway in the aliyah sector, whereby private organizations challenge the hitherto undisputed monopoly of the Jewish Agency, the semi-official body that has handled aliyah since the foundation of the state…
…But at present, a strategic cooperation agreement is being drafted. It is facilitated by unrelenting pressure applied by American patrons and the financial difficulties of the Jewish Agency that prevent it from effectively operating in the continent. Apparently it is agreed that the Agency will focus on Jewish and Zionist education in these communities, whereas Nefesh B’Nefesh will be in charge of advocating aliyah.
from The Forward:
Too Many Geniuses and Not Enough Grunt Workers
Earlier this year a contest was held for the best idea for a book that would transform the way Jews think about themselves and Judaism…
Forget the question of whether we needed to commission a book to transform how Jews think about themselves…The bigger question is this: Why do we continue to shower even more grace, fame and riches on geniuses in our community?
from Haaretz:
A month reporting on Israeli young people who are making a contribution to society has made it clear that in addition to a great deal of ad hoc initiatives by idealistic young people, many youths who do volunteer work are graduates of the socialist youth movements, members of religious Zionist groups that work in low-income areas, or students at pre-military academies. These three groups, which have formed over the past decade, are systematically motivating young people to take social action.
The wide variety of young people involved in social initiatives indicates that, although many think Israeli youth are interested only in advancing their own personal interests, there are actually many young people who devote their lives to contributing to society, whether as part of a community geared toward that purpose or as individuals. What is clearly different from the past is that while the state used to provide most of the social services, today the burden falls largely on the nonprofit organizations that are springing up like mushrooms after the rain.
from the London Jewish Chronicle:
JNF’s crisis deepens as head asks for new watchdog inquiry
Samuel Hayek, JNF UK’s new chairman, has this week written to the Charity Commission to inform it of his concerns over the running of the charity prior to his appointment earlier this year, the JC has learned.
image source: American Jewish World Services Presentation on the Genocide in Darfur
Good News: The New Activism
from an editorial in the New York Jewish Week (June 18, 2006):
It is common these days to bemoan the state of Jewish activism in America. Our organizations are out of touch with the Jewish rank and file, some complain; young people are drifting away from affiliation and involvement; the Jewish community has lost its focus on social justice, long seen as a pillar of Jewish security in America.
This week, in a special supplement entitled “The New Activism,” the Jewish Week looks at trends that belie these dire assumptions.
There is an outpouring of Jewish creativity around the country that is giving rise to new organizations, reinvigorating old ones and forging modern modes of activism that both benefit our own community and strengthen the Jewish commitment to the welfare of the society in which we live.
You can read more in this week’s Jewish Week.
PR Boom for the Jewish World
I first learned of the Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village two months ago at Tel Aviv University’s Workshop on Faith and International Development. The focus of the various session was to discuss ways to encourage the current generation of Jews to fulfill their personal responsibility to humanity, within the spirit of our Jewish tradition.
One of the most moving speakers was Anne Heyman, Esq, President of the Heyman-Merrin Family Foundation. In a joint project with the JDC they are spearheading the creation of a youth village for genocide orphans in Rwanda. The concept is based on Israeli Youth Aliya Villages established in the 1950’s, and more recently the home of many Ethiopian immigrants, some of whom will now return to their home continent to serve on the local Agahozo-Shalom team.
Today we hear that the ever popular Israeli-American actress Natalie Portman, is filming a special clip about the new village, to be screened shortly on the Oprah Winfrey show.
Writing in Haaretz, Anshel Pfeffer tells us: “As part of the effort to keep the Rwanda project under wraps until its launch, pictures of Portman in Africa have been declared off-limits until her film is screened on Oprah.
Aside from being a public relations boon, the project illustrates a new trend in Jewish life: engaging in tikkun olam [repairing the world] via projects in developing countries.”
You can read what the Clinton Global Initiative has to say about the project here.
about: Agahozo-Shalom…
- Planned to house 500 orphans, graduating 120 people from high school each year
- Situated on a 143 acre site overlooking Lake Mugesera in Rwanda’s Eastern Province
- Groundbreaking was held August 17, 2007
- First residents are set to move in this Fall
- The High school is set to open during January 2009
Facing Tomorrow: Background Docs
We know many of our readers have different interests and this is why we have posted below the complete set of Background Policy Documents from Facing Tomorrow.
The Table of Contents can be found on pages 5-6; for those of you particularly interested in the various areas of Jewish Identity discussed at the Conference, here are the six policy documents from that section along with the beginning page numbers:
- Jerusalem as the Civilization Capital of the Jewish People, Prof. Yehezkel Dror (page 159)
- Jewish Identity and Identification of America’s Young Jews, Prof. Chaim I. Waxman (page 173)
- Jewish Identity and Identification of Israel’s Young Generation, Dr. Shlomit Levy and Dr. Hagit Hacohen Wolf (page 179)
- Jewish Leadership in the 21st Century, Prof. Yehezkel Dror (page 195)
- Tikkun Olam: Basic Questions and Policy Directions, Dr. Yehuda Mirsky (page 213)
- Jewish Demography and Peoplehood: 2008, Prof. Serglo DellaPergola (page 231)
Facing Tomorrow_Policy-Documents
