Jewish Service: Thoughts from a JOIN Alum

Posted on June 23, 2015 by Christy

Rabbi Seth Goren, an alum of JOIN’s Seminary Leadership Project, a member of the Philadelphia cohort of our new Rabbinical Fellowship and the Director of Repair the World: Philadelphia, wrote a great piece for eJewish philanthropy, “The Limitations and Possibilities of Jewish Service.” In it, Rabbi Goren writes:

“And it’s not just Mitzvah Day that’s flawed. The array of Jewish institutional options for [social justice] work, especially when it comes to economic justice, are peculiarly detached from those most directly affected by the underlying injustice. As an example, one well-intentioned synagogue sought to support a local organization whose food-insecure members were mostly Latino by preparing Ashkenazi Jewish food, including matzah stuffing. Because the food was a cultural mismatch and completely unfamiliar to the organization’s members, it went uneaten, and had to be thrown away. The synagogue’s failure to get to know those experiencing need rendered their efforts useless, and an opportunity to connect and to appreciate how differences play out in service settings was lost…”

Read Rabbi Goren’s full essay to delve into more of his thoughts on why Jewish service is frequently conceptualized as “working for” or “helping” instead of “working with” and why events are often designed to avoid getting to know underserved individuals and communities and building strong relationships.

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JOIN’s DC Rabbinic Fellowship Has Launched!

Posted on June 23, 2015 by Christy

We are thrilled to let you know that the DC area rabbinic fellowship launched on May 27 with a full day of training. We have 12 rabbinic fellows, and JOIN Senior Organizer and Trainer Jeannie Appleman will be working with them to strive to realize their huge potential.

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On our opening day, after a day of discussion, debate, and training, the rabbis heard from the campaigns they will be supporting. They will engage with one of three campaigns:

  • the Industrial Areas Foundation‘s national campaign to leverage the buying power of police departments to pressure gun manufacturers around gun safety;
  • the Washington Interfaith Network‘s campaign to bring about major reform in DC’s largest homeless shelter which is abusive, unhealthy, and dangerous — and parlay that into a fight for more affordable housing;
  • and, Jews United for Justice‘s campaign for the strongest family and medical leave act in the country, which will change thousands of people’s lives and serve as a national model.

These are all really solid campaigns which will provide Jewish communities with opportunities to really relate to and work alongside regular people and leaders from other communities and where Jewish power could make a difference.

A few of their comments from the opening rounds:

“Nothing we do is local and nothing we do really changes anything. We bake casseroles and take them elsewhere. And I’ve allowed myself to be satisfied with that.”

“I was so proud about an interfaith service for marriage equality at my synagogue — the place was packed — until I realized that there were only six people there from our synagogue.  And this issue wasn’t even controversial.  I don’t know why — maybe my people don’t feel like they have a credible outlet.”

“I have stories from when I was seven, ten, and thirteen when I did outrageous things and railed against injustice.  I don’t feel like that person any more — that’s my failure.  I need to do something about it.”

“My call to the rabbinate is around justice and I haven’t been doing a lot of it. I went to Baltimore two months ago — and have done nothing since. I don’t want to walk away — I’ve been doing too much walking away.  I want this fellowship and this group to hold me to the work.”

That’s the potential passion JOIN has tapped into and is beginning to train. Those passionate people represent 20,000 Jews from communities with power and resources. And they’re ready to begin to connect to critical, community-wide campaigns against injustice. They’ll also be recruiting congregants for the online course, building a base for this work.

This is what JOIN is building now — and we are thrilled to count you as a part of it!

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Celebrating JOIN Connections to Jewish Week’s 2015 “36 under 36”

Posted on June 23, 2015 by Christy

Two of this year’s “36 Under 36,” named each year by Jewish Week, have JOIN for Justice connections!

Rabbi Sara Luria is an alum of the Jewish Organizing Fellowship and our Cross-Seminary Class who’s working now to improve the reputation of the mikvah — and increase its observance outside the Orthodox community. Rabbi Luria founded ImmerseNYC after her 2013 ordination.

Read more about Rabbi Luria and check out all “36 Under 36” on the Jewish Week website.

Daniel Silverstein is an alum of JOIN’s Seminary Leadership Project who will assume a position as Hillel rabbi at Stanford University this year. There he’ll be able to combine his love of spoken word, performance, art and rabbinical work.

“Silverstein is also a veteran of work that promotes better relations between Jews and Muslims, and co-founded Lines of Faith, ‘a Muslim-Jewish hip hop and poetry collective,’ to further his constant goal: shattering stereotypes…”

Read more about Daniel and check out all “36 Under 36” on the Jewish Week website.

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Fighting to Solve the Roots of Homelessness

Posted on June 4, 2015 by Sarah Resnick

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Rabbi Noah Farkas, one of the founders of JOIN’s Seminary Leadership Project and now a JOIN Board member, is a powerful leader in the fight against homelessness in Los Angeles.  Rabbi Farkas published a powerful piece about this work in the Jewish Journal.  His article is excerpted below, and you can read the full piece here.

I write this with a broken heart. I serve many roles in the community, including that of a county-appointed commissioner to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. Today I write not as a commissioner — I do not speak for the commission — but for myself, a rabbi who sees the yawning chasm between the golden dreams of what our city could be and the iron-hard realities of what our city is.

The other night I sat in the commission hearing during which we released the homelessness count for Los Angeles County. The numbers are shameful. Homelessness is up 12 percent across the county in just two years. Veteran homelessness has remained relatively flat, despite the millions of dollars poured into the region by the federal government. The number of individuals taking refuge in tents, vehicles and other makeshift shelters climbed 85 percent. Skid Row used to be the center of homelessness in America; now it, too, has replicated the ubiquitous model of urban sprawl with new subdivisions cropping up across the county. There are now as many homeless men, women and children in our area as the total capacities of Staples Center, The Forum and Pauley Pavilion combined.

Homelessness is terminal in Los Angeles. You can be robbed, raped, assaulted or even murdered. You live in constant fear of others on the street and of the authorities. Leundeu Keunang and Brendon Glenn, two homeless men, were fatally shot by officers during the last two months. Our county is in a state of crisis.

Read the rest of the article here.

Our newly launched Clergy Fellowship’s Los Angeles cohort of 11 rabbis, who together represent 25,000 congregants, will be working alongside Rabbi Farkas to bring people into a campaign fighting for affordable housing for very low-income people in Los Angeles.  We are proud of Rabbi Farkas’ leadership in bringing mainstream Jewish voices into the campaign to solve the roots of homelessness in Los Angeles.

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Founding Rabbi’s Departure to Test Kol Tzedek: JOIN Alumna in the News

Posted on May 28, 2015 by Sarah Resnick
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 JOIN alumnu Rabbi Lauren Grabelle Herrmannn (2006 Jewish Organizing Fellowship Alumna)  founded Congregation Kol Tzedek a decade ago in Philadelphia. Today she and her congregation are featured in the Jewish Exponent. Check out an excerpt below, and read the full article here.

Among a roomful of congregants at Kol Tzedek, debra kimmelman, who spells her name with a lower case “d” and “k,” was reflecting on the legacy of Rabbi Lauren Grabelle Herrmann, who will soon be leaving the Reconstructionist synagogue she founded a decade ago.

“If you had told my 20-something-year-old self that I would ever be a welcome part of a synagogue as a lesbian” and part of an interfaith family, “I never would have believed it,” said kimmelman, a 47-year-old West Philadelphia resident.

“I remember being a little skeptical because I had never been part of a synagogue,” she said, while attending the synagogue’s end-of-year religious school celebration earlier this month. She, her wife and their daughter “have been a welcome part of the community since Day 1,” she enthused.

That sort of experience is precisely what Grabelle Herrmann had in mind when she started Kol Tzedek a decade ago while still a student at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Wyncote.

We’re so proud of the amazing work our alumni are doing across the country, building vibrant and engaged Jewish communities working for justice.  Continue reading the full article on the Jewish Exponent website.
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