Looking back, I probably shouldn’t have been surprised that I was the oldest audience member in the Broadway theater last weekend, except for parents with their pre-teens. “Newsies” is, after all, a Disney musical. In our standing room only “seats,” my friend and I were able to dance along to all of the songs we had known by heart since seventh grade. As we sang along—sometimes a little too loudly — I realized a lot of the meaning of the lyrics I had missed years ago.

Open the gates and seize the day 

Don’t be afraid and don’t delay 

Nothing can break us 

No one can make us give our rights away

Arise and seize the day

…Wrongs will be righted

If we’re united 

Let us seize the day

No wonder our history teacher had let us watch this movie in class: it’s educational! A scene doesn’t go by without a reference—if not an entire plot-line—about child labor, unions, poverty or class. In a time when many teenagers’ only exposure to child labor is learning about international sweatshops, and their only knowledge of labor rights is from that day in history class when they learned about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, it’s nice to have something that sticks in your mind with a little more vigor. Even Jewish teens, with our tradition’s “strong commitment to labor rights,” have little understanding of how that relates to their lives. If you don’t know someone affected directly by these issues, if you or someone you know isn’t a member of a union for instance, a musical is a great way to feel some semblance of connection to an otherwise abstract issue. (“Rent” doesn’t have a monopoly on raising social awareness through Broadway.)

Although the plight depicted in “Newsies” happened over a century ago, the themes and problems raised in it are still just as applicable today. Just as the newsies fought an increase in prices (and thus a reduction in wages), workers and advocates today fight for a fair minimum wage. Just as the newsies had more power in a group, unions are still a major source of strength for over 14 million American employees. Just as the newsies were forced to resort to a strike to make themselves heard, millions of American workers don’t have the power to access basic labor rights in their workplace, including paid time off for illness or even paycheck fairness.

Maybe, one teenage audience member at a time, the world will know the rights that workers everywhere are entitled to… and the Journal too.

P.S. Thanks for the ticket, Mom!

Image from Twitter

Yesterday, rabbis from across America came to Washington D.C. to raise their voices in support of comprehensive immigration reform. The rabbis participating in the advocacy day spoke with key legislators about the bipartisan Senate immigration bill introduced last month, expressing their support for the legislation, offering ways to continue to strengthen it and discussing strategies for advancing this issue in their home congregations. They also highlighted key priorities for Reform Jews in the immigration reform process – a comprehensive approach to keeping families together, humane and balanced border protection, a pathway to citizenship and workplace protections for all. Rabbis in yesterday’s meetings urged their legislators to ensure the inclusion in final legislation of these policies, which uphold the humanitarian principles central to the Reform Movement.

Among those in attendance were Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR) leaders such as Rabbi Seth Limmer, Program Director for the Religious Action Center Rabbi Michael Namath, and rabbis from congregations across the country, from Raleigh, NC to South Bend, IN to Livingston, NJ. These advocates came as a part of Rabbis Organizing Rabbis, a joint initiative of Just Congregations of the Union for Reform Judaism, the Justice and Peace Committee of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, and the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism.

Our tradition commands, “tzedek tzedek tirdof” – “justice, justice you shall pursue” (Deuteronomy 16:20). Yesterday, our rabbis embodied this principle through an admirable and tireless pursuit of justice on behalf of the millions of immigrants who need and deserve reform.

Congress may be at a standstill when it comes to passing legislation that affects the environment, but that doesn’t mean nothing is happening on climate change. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is getting ready to release new regulations on Tier 3 standards.Essentially, the EPA is considering whether to reduce the amount of sulfur in gasoline, and whether to require technology in new cars that will reduce emissions of other pollutants. The proposed rules would cut specific kinds of emissions by as much as 80% and prevent as many as 2,400 premature deaths from associated air quality improvements; it would be like taking 33 million old cars off the road!

Our partners-in-crime, I mean in lawful advocacy, at the Coalition for the Environment and Jewish Life (COEJL) are hosting a webinar on the proposed Tier 3 standards and opportunities to submit public comments. The webinar will feature Kesaaraa Wijeyewickrema from the American Lung Association, Shannon Baker-Branstetter from Consumers Union, and Rachel Cohen from the Union of Concerned Scientists (formerly a RAC Eisendrath Legislative Assistant!) and take place Tuesday, May 28 at 2 PM ET.

You can register online for free.

You can also take action and tell the EPA to move ahead with the proposed rules and make our air cleaner! While you’re at it, don’t forget to tell Congress to pass comprehensive climate legislation this congress!

All eyes are on Grapevine, Texas today as the Boy Scouts of America begins the annual meeting of its National Council. Earlier this year the Boy Scouts of America announced that it would postpone a reconsideration of its policy prohibiting gay scouts and scout leaders until the meeting this week (see the letter that Rabbi Saperstein sent to the BSA in response to that decision). Today the 1,400 person National Council, including representatives from across the country, will vote on whether or not to lift this ban and make the organization a more inclusive one.

In 2000 the Supreme Court ruled that the Boy Scouts of America, as an ‘expressive’ organization, had the right to exclude gay scouts and scout leaders from their ranks. Believing that this policy was contrary to the values taught by Jewish tradition, shortly after this decision the Commission on Social Action of Reform Judaism advised Reform synagogues to stop hosting Boy Scout troops. Sadly, since that time the BSA leadership has repeatedly affirmed its discriminatory policy. The possibility that this policy could be about to change is an exciting and welcome development. However, the BSA announced recently that the provision being considered by the National Council this week would only lift the ban on gay scouts, leaving the ban on gay scout leaders in place.

In response to this decision, the Religious Action Center drafted a letter from Jewish clergy to the BSA leadership urging them to fully change their policy and include both gay scouts and scout leaders. More than 500 rabbis and cantors – representing at least three denominations, 46 states and 140 Boy Scouts Local Council regions – added their name to this call for justice and inclusion.

“Like the Boy Scouts, our Jewish tradition emphasizes the values of personal responsibility, service to the community and a broader commitment to justice,” the letter to the Boy Scouts read. “These values apply equally to gay and straight individuals. Indeed, how can we teach service to a community when that community excludes our friends, family members and neighbors?”

“We believe that each human being is created b’tselem elohim, in the image of God. That stamp of the divine does not change between childhood and adulthood. Indeed, LGBT adults can and do provide exemplary role models for both straight and gay youth. As Jewish clergy, we urge you to fully lift the BSA’s policy of discrimination that currently impacts both children and adults.”

Click here to read the full text of the letter sent to the BSA leadership, and don’t forget to check back here at RACblog for updates on the National Council’s decision.

Image Courtesy of CNN.com

The Agape Health Team has been offering annual temporary medical clinics on the island of La Gonave, Haiti for over 10 years, staffed by a combination of volunteers from the United States and Haiti.  Eno Mondesir, Ph.D., a public health official and Protestant minister who was born on the island, founded the team. After the devastating earthquake of January 2013, volunteers from the Reform Congregation of Temple Isaiah in Lexington, Massachusetts joined the team in a spirit of tikkun olam (“repair the world”).  Since then, a productive partnership has been developed between the Boston area Haitian-American community and congregants from Temple Isaiah. The Temple Isaiah Sisterhood and Social Action Committee have provided crucial financial support, in 2010, 2011, and 2012 the Agape Health Team planned and operated one-week clinics on La Gonave, seeing several hundred patients each year. It also does research and planning to determine how to best improve public health on La Gonave.

Dr. Robert Nierman of Temple Isaiah in Lexington, Massachusetts explains the Agape Health Team’s goal of setting up a
permanent medical clinic on La Gonave

The team decided to focus on improving the health of women and children, training, and attacking the root causes of poor public health by improving sanitation and reducing environmental destruction. It has gradually expanded the services it offers women and children. In 2011 team members vaccinated 200 women and children for Hepatitis C.  In November 2012, following a protocol from the World Health Organization and the Haitian Ministry of Health, all 30 pregnant women patients were treated for sexually transmitted diseases using oral and injected antibiotics in order to reduce birth abnormalities and complications; they were also provided with prenatal vitamins. An obstetrician-gynecologist trained nurses and midwives on proper delivery procedures to reduce death of mothers in childbirth due to bleeding.  An expert in alternative medicine trained the nurses and midwives on how to use Reiki with their work with patients, and treated many patients. A team member did training on appropriate technologies to improve sanitation such as composting toilets and biogas generation via anaerobic digestion.

The team decided to establish a permanent community health center with particular emphasis on women’s and children’s health with a small permanent staff, supported by annual visits of Agape Health Team volunteers from the United States. The center will also address the root causes of illness.  It will demonstrate a holistic model for improving community health – by serving as a training site for community health education, operating immunization programs, and serving as a education and demonstration site for appropriate technologies. A team member, a Haitian nurse who lives on La Gonave, has begun to treat a group of expectant mothers on an ongoing basis. The team has established a relationship with Partners in Health and referred several patients to its clinic in St. Marc.  It is now building its organization, setting up the permanent clinic, obtaining tax-exempt status and planning future trips.

Interested volunteers or contributors should contact Roy Crystal of the team at the3crystals@rcn.com.

On May 2, Rhode Island’s governor signed a marriage equality bill, making it the tenth state to take this important step.   Shortly afterwards, Delaware and Minnesota also passed marriage bills, making this a remarkable spring of advancement towards equality.

I composed the following reflection after the last critical step in the long process of advocacy and legislative debate, the hearing held by the Rhode Island Senate Judiciary Committee in March.

The prescribed biblical reading for the beginning of Passover includes Exodus 12:42…in describing the end of the 430 years of oppression, the text describes that final night as a “leil shimurim,” a night of watching for God, a night of vigil.  The commentaries put forth the perspective that there were two vigils going on that awesome night: the people were watching for God and God watched vigilantly to uphold His promise to bring the people out of the land of Egypt.

I have been reflecting on this biblical image ever since I joined together with hundreds of my fellow Rhode Islanders in an all night vigil before the Rhode Island Senate Judiciary Committee.  On that night at the State House, there were many moments of admirable passion and eloquence.  Sadly, there were also many moments where hateful and harmful things were said…many who argued against equality and opportunity, who couldn’t accept that their personal beliefs should not be imposed on all in our state and country.  It was a night of anxious watching and waiting, wondering whether this was a step towards equality or whether this was a night when hatred and ignorance would rule the day.

In particular, I left thinking about the role of religion in determining the laws of our state.  In our country, it is a cherished and vital freedom that no one religion can determine the law for the state.  No biblical teaching can become the rule for all who live in our state.

I live with a progressive view of religion.  I am anchored by the teachings of the Bible, but I live with the conviction that each generation must breathe new life into those teachings.  The transcendent principles are love, equality, and justice.  Those principles determine how all the rest of the teachings are understood in each successive generation.

On that leil shimurim in the ancient land of Egypt, the people watched all night for God, just as God watched all night for the people.  They found each other and forged a covenant at Sinai.  The covenant demands that we continually work to make the world better.

We live in a time of great challenge and even greater opportunity.  I fear there will be many more anxious nights of watching, advocating, and working before discrimination is abolished.  At the same time, I believe the sun will rise one day and shine on a world where one and all find equal opportunity and are treated with equality, dignity, and respect.  I can feel the light of that sun on my face even now.  May the light of justice shine throughout our land in the days to come.

Rabbi Peter W. Stein is the rabbi of Temple Sinai in Cranston, RI and the past president of the Rhode Island Board of Rabbis.  He was a member of the first Balfour Brickner fellowship at the RAC.  He is a member of the RI Religious Coalition for Marriage Equality, state chair for the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Justice, and a founding member of the RI Interfaith Poverty Coalition.

Yesterday, Reform Jews from across the country lifted up their voices together to demand comprehensive immigration reform that does justice to our American and Reform Jewish values. Over 11 million undocumented immigrants live in the shadows of our communities. Families face up to decades long backlogs in acquiring visas, workers are left without protections, children are left behind as parents are deported, and LGBT Americans cannot sponsor the visa of a spouse. Yesterday, hundreds of Reform Jews across our nation called to tell our Senators: we can, and we must, do better.

Over 400 rabbis and congregants expressed their support for the bipartisan bill currently making its way through the legislative process. They also highlighted key priorities for Reform Jews in the reform process – an inclusive approach to keeping families together, humane and balanced border protection, a pathway to citizenship and workplace protections for all. These policies uphold the humanitarian principles central to the Reform Movement, and we urge their inclusion in any final legislation.

Our tradition teaches that “the sword comes into the world because of justice delayed and justice denied” (Pirkei Avot 5:8). Today, Reform Jews throughout American turned our creeds into deeds, and helped to ensure that justice for our country’s immigrants is imminent and everlasting – and no longer delayed or denied.

The Community First Choice option expands access to home- and community-based care in your state, leading to better health outcomes for older adults and individuals with disabilities. We are taught in Pirkei Avot to not separate ourselves from our community, but too often people with disabilities are forced to do just that. Urge your governor and state legislators to implement this option, allowing increased matching funds for more services to more people.

Currently, states receiving federal Medicaid funding are only required to provide nursing home services, while home- and community-based care services are optional. Despite the fact that the vast majority of seniors and people with disabilities strongly prefer to live in their own homes, and that institutional care costs on average over three times more than home-based care, only 35 states currently provide personal care services through their Medicaid plans. Implementing the Community First Choice option would provide states with a six-percentage-point increase in their federal matching payments, allowing them to open eligibility to people with higher incomes and to offer additional services.

The Community First Choice option would provide greater opportunities for seniors and people with disabilities to live independently in their homes and communities. It would help eliminate Medicaid’s institutional bias, a form of segregation that often forces seniors and people with disabilities unnecessarily into nursing homes.

Jewish tradition teaches that providing appropriate health care is not just an obligation for the medical system, but for society as a whole. Maimonides, a medieval Jewish scholar and physician, lists health care among the ten most important communal services that a community must offer its residents (Mishneh Torah, Sefer HaMada IV:23). Judaism also stresses the obligation to ensure equal access for all people and to help facilitate the full participation of individuals with disabilities in religious and public life. We are taught, “Do not separate yourself from the community” (Pirkei Avot 2:5); accordingly, we must prevent anyone from being separated against their will.

The Community First Choice option expands access to home- and community-based care in your state, leading to better health outcomes for older adults and individuals with disabilities. Urge your governor and state legislators to implement this option, allowing increased matching funds for more services to more people.

Image from Department of Veterans’ Affairs

Earlier this month, the RAC co-sponsored a screening of the documentary “The Invisible War” about sexual assault in the military. This wasn’t the first time I had heard of, or even seen parts of, this film. It wasn’t the first time I was appalled by the injustices, angry at the violations or moved by the testimonies. But it was the first time I left feeling that, finally, others were paying attention.

There has been a flurry of news stories in the past few weeks regarding this atrocious trend in our armed forces. A Pentagon report released earlier this month estimated that there were 26,000 military sexual assaults last year. The Air Force official in charge of the sexual assault prevention programs was arrested for, ironically enough, sexual assault. An army sergeant working in their sexual assault prevention office was investigated for similar charges. And the manager of the prevention program on a military base in Kentucky turned himself in for stalking his ex-wife. It is perhaps possible that this month has been an anomaly – that it was a freak of coincidence that all of these cases arose in the same few-week period. But it is also possible, and indeed likely, that this month was a mere snapshot of military life. That these sorts of abuses of power and abuses of privacy and humanity and dignity occur every week, and that now is just the first time we – as a broad American community – are paying attention.

It is easy to get lost in the statistics of this issue – in the horrible realization that one in three women in the military are sexually assaulted over the course of her service, or in the appalling understanding that there was an average of over 70 sex crimes per day in the military this past year. Yet our Jewish tradition reminds us that “if you save one life, it is as if you have saved a world.” Yes, this is the story of an institution with a broken reporting system and a problematic rape culture. But it is also the story of the women whose narratives I heard about in the movie. It is also the story of our neighbor, our classmate, our friend who risks her life to protect her country yet isn’t granted the same protections herself. Let us seize this all too rare moment of attention on this crucial issue to raise up the stories of these valiant women and share their stories to help advocate for change.

Martin Luther King’s letter from a Birmingham Jail is one of the most powerful and stirring documents of the Civil Rights movement in America—in some ways more compelling than the now legendary “I Have a Dream” oration, which electrified the historic March on Washington 50 years ago.

Unlike the Dream speech, which was aimed at the conscience of all Americans, the jail speech was deeply personal and directed specifically at the leading clergymen in Birmingham who had called on King to abandon his public Birmingham campaign and content himself with the small, non-controversial steps that the clergymen were promoting behind the scenes.

One of the named clergymen was Rabbi Milton Grafman, Reform rabbi of the large and distinguished Temple Beth El. I knew Rabbi Grafman and visited with him at the temple several times in the late 1950s and in the 1960s, when I spent much of my time as co-director of the new Commission of Social Action of Reform Judaism in Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia and Florida, trying to implement the strong Civil Rights resolutions adopted by the then UAHC and CCAR in support of the landmark desegregation decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court. Many of those meetings with temple boards were tense, with our side emphasizing the imperative of justice in Reform Judaism and urging temple leadership to prepare for tomorrow’s South, not the anguish of yesterday and today’s racial cruelty. Board members in the Deep South resented our appeals, argued that behind the scenes progress was being made in their communities, and our public advocacy of civil rights endangered them locally and stirred up Anti-Semitism, and, in essence, “you should stick to religion and stay out of ‘politics.’”

Rabbis in the Deep South during that era faced soul-searching challenges. Many communities in the area were dominated by White Citizens Councils, a “genteel” version of the KKK. Many Jewish businessmen felt especially vulnerable to pressure—whispering campaigns, boycotts, even threats of violence. Some opted out and also demanded that their rabbis and Jewish organizations lay low as well. A small number of rabbis in the Deep South—like Rabbi Jack Rothschild in Atlanta—simply rejected such counsels and stood literally with Martin Luther King, willingly taking the public heat along with the acclaim of civil rights advocates within the temple and beyond. Critics of course proclaimed “I told you so” when the temple was bombed, ignoring the fact that several synagogues that were attacked had been conspicuously silently on civil rights matters. One or two rabbis—like Julius Feibelman of New Orleans—may have gone public too soon and got burned by a vicious newspaper assault. Some rabbis avoided the public arena but—like Rabbi Charles Mantinband of Hattiesburg, Mississippi—worked tirelessly and effectively behind the scenes, strengthening inter-religious support systems, reaching out to black professionals in the community (not one of whom had ever voted or expected to vote), and helping national agencies to be more sensitive to communities under stress.

Some rabbis became tragic marrano-like figures—silent on the outside, torn with guilt on the inside—knowing that Judaism is based on principals of social justice but certain that their community could not abide his speaking out on civil rights issues locally. I had great affection for one rabbi so afflicted—Rabbi Eugene Blachsleger of Montgomery, Alabama—who confessed to me: “When I shave in the morning, I cannot look at myself in the mirror because I know as a Jew what is right and what is wrong, and I cannot say it.” Nobody had to remind the rabbi that, in that very town, a predecessor Reform rabbi had bravely defended the Scottsboro boys, one of the most infamous cases of injustice in American history, and that rabbi had been run out of the congregation and the town virtually on a rail.

Several Southern rabbis became so conflicted that they joined their angriest lay-persons in lashing out at the national Jewish agencies and especially the then-UAHC and CCAR, threatening to silence them by withholding funds or even quitting the parent body. Rabbi Maurice Eisendrath faced down these threats, inviting Martin Luther King to address the UAHC biennial assembly despite a two-year campaign to cancel the invitation. To Eisendrath, a commitment to equal justice was the very heart of Reform Judaism and could not be compromised at any price.

Rabbi Grafman, who was scolded by King in his rejoinder from jail, was respected by the clergy community and his own members who included several of the heavy hitters of the Birmingham business community. But when I visited with him during the demonstrations in Birmingham, he boiled over: “Listen, you can just go back to New York and leave us alone. Frankly, I would not give one hair of one of my members for all of your damn shvartzes put together.”

Decades later, I read in the New York Times, an eye-catching report that this same rabbi had proudly presided over a conference on race relations in Birmingham in warm tribute to the work and words of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. That story struck me as ironic, but cities and nations and people are capable of drastic change. When I was invited to speak at the temple in the 80s, Rabbi Miller had helped to establish a lively Social Action Committee which was esteemed in the temple and in the community, reaching out to the black community, in a new Birmingham which had a black mayor and a striking network of civil rights memorials and monuments to that historic era of Martin Luther King and the traumas of change.

Indeed, Birmingham has much to remember, good and bad. It was once one of the most infamous symbols of an America gone wrong—Bull Connor, the vicious chief of police, deploying fire hoses and snarling dogs against children demonstrating for human rights; Governor George Wallace, parlaying every racist trick in the book; shadowy racist cowards blowing up a church and killing small children. Yet, ironically, it was precisely this catalogue of horrors in Birmingham which tipped the scales of history, provoking President Lyndon Johnson to embrace the civil rights revolution in Washington with its heart-stopping and incredible promise: “We shall overcome!”

And the culmination of all this history was the adoption of basic civil rights laws which were drafted by black lawyers from the NAACP and Jewish lawyers from the Commission on Social Action, working as a team at the tables in the conference room of the newly-established Religious Action Center in Washington, D.C. If the walls of the Religious Action Center could speak, they would recall the work of those who labored in a holy cause, notably Martin Luther King and the rabbis and laypersons who marched with him. Yet, after all, what moved and inspired all of them to enable the miracles of change which have followed—for people of color, for women, for persons with disabilities, for gays, for immigrants—is nothing more or less than the Hebrew prophets and a Jewish hunger for justice, alive and well in bad times and good.

Al Vorspan is the Senior Vice-President Emeritus of the Union for Reform Judaism and for 50 years served as the Director of its Commission on Social Action.