Religious Action Center :: RACBlog

Deal or No Deal

2010-03-19T13:17:32Z

The decision to move critical health insurance reform toward passage by means of reconciliation may constitute a victory in the fight to preserve access to abortion services in reform. The Senate bill contains anti-abortion language that (though imperfect) is far less onerous than the Stupak Amendment in the House bill. Because the House will only have the opportunity to vote on the Senate legislation, the Stupak Amendment is, by all accounts, effectively dead.

For the last year, the Religious Action Center and other organizations which support reproductive rights have worked to pass meaningful and critical health insurance reform which does not constitute a further assault on a woman's right to choose. We worked toward "abortion neutrality" in the legislation - language that would not advance or further limit reproductive rights. With 47 million Americans currently without health insurance, health reform should never have become mired in the controversial yet important issue of reproductive freedom.

Of course, the best laid plans did not work out as such. After months of debate, numerous votes, much advocacy, and deal-making on all sides, the House-passed bill included the onerous, anti-choice "Stupak Amendment" and the Senate-passed bill included the less-burdensome but still deeply flawed "Nelson Compromise."

Now, the plan to pass desperately-needed health insurance reform is for the House to vote upon the Senate bill despite the reservations of more liberal members of the former and for any amendments to be made through the budget reconciliation process. However, because this process can only be used for budgetary measures, it appears that Stupak-style language (which failed in the Senate already) cannot be included in the ultimate form the legislation takes. A victory, of sorts.

The Nelson compromise language does constitute some restriction on access to abortion services. However, when measured against the myriad benefits of necessary reform, they cannot undermine our moral and religious obligation, our mandate to ensure the health and well-being of as many of the vulnerable members of our society as possible.

If you have questions or would like more information, please contact me at 202.387.2800 or at slehman@rac.org.

Let All Who Are Hungry Come and Eat

2010-03-18T22:38:51Z

This piece first appeared in the Jewish Council for Public Affairs' Confronting Poverty e-newsletter and is republished with permission.

As the deadline approaches for Congress to reauthorize billions of dollars to support vital child nutrition programs, the local Jewish community, along with interfaith partners, child and anti-hunger advocates, school children, and Members of Congress, held a Child Nutrition Seder today in Washington, D.C. Based on the traditional Passover Seder to encourage, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs created a special Haggadah to explain the plight of hungry children in American and to encourage Members of Congress to quickly reauthorize and strengthen the Child Nutrition Act.

The national Child Nutrition Seder, led by JCPA President Rabbi Steve Gutow, gave participants the tools to encourage federal, state, and local leaders to meet President Obama's goal to end childhood poverty by 2015. Leading portions of the Seder were Susan Sher, the chief of staff for First Lady Michelle Obama, Max Finberg, the director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, and three Members of Congress: Representatives Jim McGovern (MA-D), Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (FL-D), and Gary Peters (MI-D). Representative Gary Peters read a portion of the Haggadah, along with our friends from the faith and anti-hunger communities and school children from Maryland and Arizona. Representative McGovern encouraged Congress to pass a bill with greater funding so that child nutrition programs can reach all those children in need. And Representative Wasserman-Shultz discussed that as a mother, she understands how important it is to provide for children. She also discussed the value of healthy eating as well as physical fitness in order to combat the obesity problem in this country.

The National Seder, as well as the other Seders being held in more than 30 communities around the country, couldn't come at a better time. Yesterday, Senator Blanche Lincoln (AR-D), Chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee, released a draft of the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, the reauthorization bill of the child nutrition programs. Sen. Lincoln's bill takes positive steps in expanding program access to reduce childhood hunger and improves nutritional quality of the school feeding programs. Unfortunately Senator Lincoln proposed $4.5 billion in additional funding over the next 10 years. This is less than half of the $10 billion President Obama and the anti-hunger community believe is needed to properly expand these programs and reach more low-income children.

School children at the National Seder signed a letter to Senator Lincoln, asking the Senator to provide at least $1 billion in funding each year over the next ten years in order to expand access and provide more nutritious for the school feeding programs. To view the letter go here.

My Homeland, My Self, part 3

2010-03-18T21:49:05Z

In this blog series, based on the Focus story "Israel by Israelis," in the Spring 2010 edition of Reform Judaism Magazine, you will discover what it's really like to live as a Reform Jew in Israel from the personal stories of 18 Jews who champion our Movement in the Jewish state.

Israeli Reform Jews--some born in Israel, some via aliyah--share their stories about the agony and the ecstasy of living in this still young and struggling Jewish state.

Today, participants will respond to two questions, listed below.

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Has Reform Judaism become more accepted among Israelis?

Rich Kirschen: Maybe it is me, but wherever I go these days in Israel, whenever I mention that I am a Reform rabbi, people say, "Kol ha kavod!" "Good for you!" When I gave a series of lectures on Reform Judaism to my army platoon, they loved it. I am optimistic about Reform Judaism taking root here, but it will take time. Remember, Reform Judaism had a late start in Israel. We weren't here in 1948. It took us until the '70s to start building institutions that eventually sowed the seeds of today's Reform Israeli Movement.

David Forman: The Reform Movement's inroads into Israeli society have been marginal at best--and I believe that we have erred greatly in trying to garner support among our Diaspora brothers and sisters by telling them how dreadful Israel is in respecting the rights of non-Orthodox Jews. We have basically turned off many North American Reform Jews to Israel. The truth is, the cup is half full. Our Reform settlements--Kibbutz Yahel, Kibbutz Lotan, and Har Halutz (a free-enterprise community in Northern Israel)--would never have been founded or maintained had it not been for Israeli government subsidies. Our educational institutions receive government aid as well: The Ministry of Religion subsidizes our HUC-JIR seminary in Jerusalem as a yeshiva. The Ministry of Education disburses funding to the Leo Baeck Education Center in Haifa, and its sports center was partially built with moneys from the national lottery. It's time we start telling these positive stories instead of blaspheming Israel.

Levi Weiman-Kelman: One measure of Reform acceptance in Israel is its depiction in Israeli popular culture. In the Israeli sitcom Avodah Aravit (Arab Labor), the main character sends his kid to a Reform Movement nursery school. In the TV drama Serugim (meaning knitted kippot), about young Orthodox Israeli women, one character has a date that turns into a sleepover. Her date didn't bring his tefillin, so she goes next door and asks her neighbor, a female Reform rabbi, to borrow a tefillin. We have become part of the religious and social landscape.

Miri Gold: While my daughter was in the army, I participated in a television show that was aired just before the Pesach seder. She received numerous calls from friends who didn't know that her mother is a rabbi. She had never told them. She felt that it was too hard to explain the idea of a woman rabbi, since in her mind it was unheard of among her peers. Even when she filled out forms asking her mother's profession, she wrote "teacher." She is still self-conscious about her mother being "different." I think this stems from the fact that Reform Judaism is still unknown to or unappreciated by a great part of Israeli society. Israeli haredim (ultra-Orthodox Jews) often accuse Reform Judaism of dividing the Jewish people; they'd prefer that Jews be non-observant than Reform. Other traditional Israelis consider Reform as "watered-down" Judaism and judge Reform Jews as lazy or wishy-washy because we choose our level of observance; they don't understand that Reform is rooted in prophetic, ethical, and moral Judaism. As for non-observant Israelis, many will go to an Orthodox shul when they need a sanctuary for a bar mitzvah, wedding, or funeral. They have had little or no exposure to the Reform Movement and simply assume that the Orthodox hold the patent on how to be Jewish. Some of them find women leading services or putting on tefillin shocking or distasteful.

That said, once Israelis are exposed to a Reform bar mitzvah, bat mitzvah, or wedding, a great many are pleasantly surprised to have had such a meaningful and enjoyable experience. Women who resent sitting in a balcony gallery or behind a wall or curtain are pleased to be counted as equals, and both women and men appreciate being able to sit together as a family. Often women are emotionally transformed by participating in the ritual. Only then do they realize that Reform Judaism is a legitimate, powerful alternative for people who would never choose an Orthodox lifestyle.

Matthew Sperber: The Reform Movement's hope to create a framework in which secular Israelis would feel comfortable with a Jewish lifestyle has been achieved only partially. Yet, I remain an optimist. I believe that after we make peace with the Palestinians, Israelis will deepen their search for a clearer understanding of Jewish identity, and the Israeli Reform Movement will come into its own as it provides answers.

How is the experience of living as a Jew different in Israel than in your former country?

Dalya Levy: When I was seven, I was playing with a friend in her yard in Anniston, Alabama when she told me that I had killed Jesus. I responded that I hadn't killed anyone and, anyway, I didn't know anybody named Jesus. Levi Weiman-Kelman: Once, when shopping at a supermarket in Madison, Wisconsin, the check-out clerk asked me why I was wearing a pot holder on my head.

Nancy Reich: Growing up, ours was the only Jewish family in an Irish Catholic neighborhood in New York. We celebrated the holidays with our relatives and congregation, and there was a gastronomic angle to our Judaism, but it wasn't enough for me...for years I wanted to be like my friends who celebrated Christmas and Easter. I often went to church with my friend from next door, and we used to role play taking the blessed sacrament: We cut out circles of American cheese in lieu of the wafer, and "the priest" put the wafer on my tongue. It was the only time I could receive the sacrament, since obviously I couldn't line up with all the Catholics in church. The fact that I made it through adolescence and chose to be Jewish was a major triumph.

Michael Livni: In 1962 I served as intern on the psychiatric ward at Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn. Late one night I was summoned to see a 15-year-old African-American girl who was confused, sobbing, hysterical. In those days it was termed "adolescent situational state." I sat with her for 15 minutes before she was capable of speaking. Her story was simple: She had been gang-raped for over an hour. I realized that this girl was perfectly normal. It was the society around her that was sick. That experience was pivotal in crystallizing two life decisions. First, psychiatry was not a route to my tikkun olam, repair of the world. Second, I needed to make a difference, to actively participate in the creation of a different type of society. I chose to live on a kibbutz in Israel in the belief that our Jewish heritage has the potential for creating a society which will reflect the words of the prophet Micah: "Do justice, love goodness, walk modestly with your God. Then will your name achieve wisdom..." (Micah 6: 8-9).

Has Israel realized this vision? Absolutely not! Does this fact absolve us from continuing the attempt? Absolutely not!

"It is not for you to finish the task, nor are you free to desist from it" (Pirke Avot 2:16).

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You can click here to learn about the participants. In the next entry in this blog series, in participants will answer the question, "Are there aspects of Jewish life in your former country you wish you had now in Israel, as well as aspects of Jewish life in Israel you wish your former country would emulate?" For any inquiries or comments about Reform Judaism in Israel, feel free to contact me!

Measure Twice, Help Once (For the Better)

2010-03-18T21:34:23Z

At our L'taken seminars, I do an activity with participants in which they take on the identity of a new person and attempt to find enough food to feed them and those for whom they are responsible for one day (they can go to the food stamp office, the grocery store, or an emergency money station). Their new "characters" each have a specific income but, after they work out their expenses, realize that for each day, they have a minimal amount left over to spend on food - somewhere between $1 and $9. When we talk about the simulation, many are surprised that a person's income does not always correlate to the amount of cash left over after housing, medical and family expenses were deducted.

The truth is that most government programs determine eligibility based on "cash income," a system that has been in place since 1960. The system operates on the assumption that a family will spend 1/3 of their income on food; this has been tagged to inflation, and the measure now stands at about $22,000 per year for a family of four. The problem, as the Center for American Progress points out, is that the amount a family spends on food "now amounts to around one-seventh [of total costs] as the costs of housing, childcare, and health care have all risen disproportionately." As a result, the "poverty threshold has fallen far behind the actual cost of meeting basic needs, and while "when the measure was first instituted, a person living at the federal poverty line earned about 50 percent of the average American's income; today that proportion has fallen to approximately 28 percent."

In short, as Peg Chamberlain writes, our current system is "woefully inadequate in helping assess levels of poverty in America today." The good news is that the federal government also has gotten the message, announcing earlier this month that it would begin producing a new, supplemental measure of poverty to go alongside the traditional cash-income formula. The new measure, which is set to be released in the fall of 2011, will be complicated, but will attempt to identify a particular income level that is required to accommodate basic needs such as food, housing, and clothing as the new threshold to measure who needs government assistance and who does not. As the New York Times points out, the new measure will also seek "to calculate the value of in-kind benefits, like food stamps, and whether homeowners have a mortgage."

Of course, simply measuring poverty in a different way will do little to bring people out of poverty. However, as my L'taken participants can tell you, strictly income-based qualification levels do not reflect the true costs of living that force many families - including those with a cash income above the federal poverty line - into poverty. The better we are able to understand who needs help, the better positioned our government can be to provide services. As New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg has said, "If you can't measure it, you can't manage it."