JOIN for Justice

Registration is now open for “Don’t Kvetch, Organize! A Master Class.” We hope you’ll join us in our first online course this fall!

Don’t Kvetch, Organize! is aimed particularly at volunteer leaders who are inspired by their Jewish identity to have a real and meaningful impact on the issues they care most about.

Guided by master trainers and instructors, we will examine different ways that community organizing has been used to build a more just world for all and how our Jewish tradition and history inform our own commitments and approaches to acting for justice. These master teachers include, among others:

• Marshall Ganz: social movement legend, world-renowned thought leader, Harvard educator
• Heather Booth: nationally recognized and long-time civil rights organizer
• Ruth Messinger: President of the American Jewish World Service
• Rabbi Jonah Pesner: Director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism

Will you join us in this journey? Learn more and register today.

JOIN’s Online Institute will provide a virtual space where Jews across the country can learn about how we can move from feeling overwhelmed and powerless in changing how things work in our communities and society to understanding how we can strategically join with others to act effectively on our values–and do something that will really matter.

Forward profiled JOIN Seminary Leadership Project alumni Rabbi Aaron Finkelstein and his wife, Julie Sugar, in their Homelands column. See an excerpt of this get-to-know-you piece below, and read the entire interview on the Forward website. Aaron and Julie moved to Nashville recently so that Aaron could work at Congregation Sherith Israel and the Akiva School.

Forward: How did you come to live together?

Julie: We moved in together after we got married. Almost a year ago! We got married last May.

How did you find your home?

We were very lucky. After Aaron accepted the job here, we planned a weekend in June to go “house hunting” (in quotes because we knew we were probably hunting for an apartment). A lovely board member at Sherith Israel helped us line up viewings of apartments for the weekend, and we had about a day and a half. One broker that she found was particularly pleased about the idea of having “a man of the cloth” as one of his renters. He told us about an apartment that wasn’t on the market yet, and that we couldn’t look at yet, but that sounded perfect.

Our friend, the board member, was able to look at the apartment not long after we flew back to New York. She and her husband sent us photos along with the message “take it” — and we did. We signed the lease before ever stepping foot in the apartment!

Continue reading on the Forward website.

In May of 2014, JOIN’s Development Manager Ilene Weismehl wrote a great piece for RJ.org’s blog about camp memories, Shabbat, tradition, ritual and change. Enjoy an excerpt below, and read the whole article on the RJ blog.

For as long as I can remember, it was a given that my brother and I would go to Olin Sang Ruby Union Institute, commonly known as OSRUI (pronounced Os-roo-ee), and even more commonly known as Oconomowoc (the camp’s Wisconsin town name).  Although none of the above-mentioned names hint at the Debbie Friedman prayers or Hebrew immersion programs or after-meal songs, I always had a notion of what the names might hold (courtesy of my parents’ stories of their own time at Union Institute in the fifties) and I couldn’t wait to claim it.

Forty years later, many of my camp memories have grown as faded as the photo below. But the memory of Shabbat at camp remains vivid! On Shabbat, all camp activities ended early so we had time to shower off the weekday grime of lake and sweat and craft projects. We donned our nice Shabbat clothes and shoes. Then, clean and shiny, and a bit shy for our newly-scrubbed appearance, the girls and boys would meet just outside the dining hall for Kabbalat Shabbat.

Everything became different and new for Kabbalat Shabbat, our receiving of Sabbath. With our combed, damp hair we had no choice but to seeeach other, ourselves, and the world differently. We sang L’chah Dodi with a melody à la the Mamas and the Papas. We sang, clapped, and jumped to express our heartfelt welcome as we anticipated a day of rest, albeit a rest from the none-too-stressful weekdays of camp life.

Each Friday, we were called upon by Jewish tradition and ritual to change our routine, to interrupt the status quo, and to transform ourselves and our expectations of the coming day. It threw our routine off kilter and sometimes made us uneasy. But from that initial discomfort we found rest and joy and a new understanding of the everyday.

Continue reading on the RJ.org blog.