Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism

December 3, 2008

Getting Serious about Preventing WMD Terrorism

The Commission on the Prevention of WMD Proliferation and Terrorism, led by former Sens. Bob Graham of Florida and Jim Talent of Missouri, announced at a press conference earlier today the findings of their bipartisan panel. In a stark warning to the United States and the world, the commission found that "unless the world community acts decisively and with great urgency, it is more likely than not that a weapon of mass destruction will be used in a terrorist attack somewhere in the world by the end of 2013."

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Intelligence or Divine Randomness?

Thanks to the Texas Board of Education, Intelligent Design and Evolution have reappeared on the forefront of public debate. Recently, Reform Rabbis testified in front of the Board of Education on the importance of keeping religion from the classroom and Rabbi Ana Bonnheim posted on the RACBlog about that experience.

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December 2, 2008

Brickner Fellows Retreat A Success!



Rosalind Gold is Program Director of the Rabbi Balfour Brickner Rabbinic Seminar and Fellow Program.

Mid-November saw the first gathering of this year's Brickner Fellows. The Rabbi Balfour Brickner Rabbinic Seminar and Fellow Program, sponsored jointly by the RAC and CLAL (the National Jewish Center for Leadership and Learning) and funded through a generous endowment by Mr. Al Engelberg, is part of a two-year commitment by a group of rabbis to study and learn together and to gain the tools necessary to do effective, honest social justice advocacy. 

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Preview: Fitzgerald v Barnstable

Bob Sedler is a Distinguished Professor of Law at Wayne State University Law School and a member of the URJ's Commission on Social Action.  All views expressed are his own.

courtdaylogo.pngThis case arises out of an unfortunate situation of peer-on-peer sexual harassment at the elementary school level, involving a third grade boy and a kindergarten girl. When the girl's parents complained to the school authorities, they investigated the matter. They decided not to take disciplinary action against the boy, and proposed that the girl ride a different bus. Her parents rejected this suggestion and countered with other proposals that the school authorities rejected. There were no further incidents aboard the bus.

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December 1, 2008

Another Step for Stem Cells

This holiday season, Claudia Castillo will have something extra to be thankful for- a functioning windpipe- thanks to the miracle of stem cell research. Castillo has been breathing easier since an operation performed in June by a team of French doctors using stem cells drawn from her own bone marrow to line a tracheal passage transplanted from a donor. While it is still too early to call the procedure a definite success, so far Castillo is doing well and her body is accepting the tracheal transfer, due in part to the stem cells used in the procedure.

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November 25, 2008

The Horror of Human Trafficking

Rabbi Sharon Sobel is the Regional Director for the Canadian Council for Reform Judaism. Rabbi IIlyse Glickman is the National Social Action Coordinator for the Canadian Council for Reform Judaism and is also the rabbi at Am Shalom Congregation.

At the Canadian Council for Reform Judaism's (CCRJ) regional Biennial last week, Human Trafficking was a highlighted social action theme. Paving the way in our region is Montreal's Temple Emanu-El-Beth Sholom, which has formed a congregational committee against Human Trafficking and hosts an annual Human Trafficking conference at their synagogue - they even won aURJ Fain Social Action Award for their work in Human Trafficking. With the aid of the members of this committee, the Biennial program offered a workshop dedicated to the education of our delegates on the subject of trafficking of persons. As part of this workshop, a survivor spoke to her personal experience having been a trafficked person in the sex industry; bravely, she is one of the first survivors to speak publicly about her trauma.

In addition to the workshop, the communal hands-on art project for the Biennial was devoted entirely to Human Trafficking. Our artist in residence was Temple Emanu-El-Beth Sholom's Religious School Principal Ilana Kuska. With her guidance and expertise, our delegates created a banner that will henceforth be used as a teaching tool in our congregations to bring the issue of Human Trafficking to the fore.

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Do Not Stand Idly By

This week, major news outlets brought the world the appalling story of Abraham Biggs, a young Floridian, who committed suicide while an entire chatroom community watched via webcast.  He posted a suicide note.  He posted the drug cocktail he would use.  He set up his webcam, and by the time he slipped into unconsciousness, 181 people were watching the video.  And only then, did anyone call the police.

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November 24, 2008

Healthcare Reform: Why 2009 is Our Time

Earlier this month I blogged about the URJ's "Health Care for All" Initiative, which is focused on achieving health care reform at the state level, and what Reform Jews across the country are doing to improve health services in their communities. 

In Connecticut, Congregation Beth Israel has joined healthcare4every1, which has formed a diverse coalition of faith leaders to advocate for health care reform in Connecticut. The group recently put out a slide show titled "Why 2009 is Connecticut's Time," which includes tons of great facts and statistics that are true not only in Connecticut, but across the country.

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Pandora's Box

Andy Goodman is the President of the Union for Reform Judaism's Greater New York Council and a partner in the law firm of Garvey Shubert Barer, where he chairs the East Coast Litigation and Security Industry Practice Groups.  All views expressed are his own.

courtdaylogo.pngOn November 12, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in Pleasant Grove City, Utah v. Summum, nominally a free speech case, but at its core perhaps the first example at the High Court of a phalanx of troublesome issues likely to arise from the Court's 2005 Establishment Clause decision in Van Orden v. Perry, 545 U.S. 677. Summum is a small religious organization believing that Moses came down from Sinai with "Seven Aphorisms," not the Ten Commandments. Pleasant Grove rejected Summum's offer to donate a monument of the Seven Aphorisms to stand in the town's Pioneer Park, in which there already stood a monument to the Ten Commandments, donated in 1971 by the Fraternal Order of Eagles, and the lone non-historical monument in the otherwise aptly named park. Summum judicially challenged Pleasant Grove's rejection, arguing that the municipality was unconstitutionally barring private speech (the erection of the Seven Aphorism monument) in a public forum. Pleasant Grove countered that the Ten Commandments monument was permissible government speech so that the city was not required to accept Summum's monument. Summum prevailed in the Tenth Circuit, and the Supreme Court granted Pleasant Grove's cert petition.

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November 21, 2008

A Texas-Sized Fight for First Amendment Rights

AnaBonnheim.jpg
Rabbi Ana Bonnheim is the Assistant Director for Education at the Union for Reform Judaism's Greene Family Camp. All views expressed are her own.

I went down to Austin this week to testify before the Texas State Board of Education (TSBOE) to keep intelligent design out of our public schools. Rabbi Nancy Kasten, Dr. Cynthia Schneidler, Cheryl Pollman, and Max Brodsky joined me on the trip from Dallas.

The TSBOE is currently revising the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) standards. Groups of teacher-writing teams wrote solid drafts of K-12 science curricula; the TSBOE asked a group of six experts to review the draft. Two of those experts advocate language that opens the door to introducing religious teachings in the science classroom. The third expert, Stephen C. Meyer, is head of the Discovery Institute, which is known for pushing the teaching of intelligent design in public schools.

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