JVoices: your jewish wake up call

if the site hadn’t been hacked.

ICE Raids hit the Bay Area a day after May Day, including scaring the shit kids at Berkeley schools
After the exchange with Eden last week about transgender youth, I thought I’d plug this amazing, indepth interview series that NPR is doing right now on trans youth.
Joseph Gindi gave one of [...]

This video speaks for itself, riffing off of Langston Hughes’ poem, “A Dream Deferred.” Many of us have friends, classmates, former classmates and family members who know all too well how U.S. policies around immigration are failing the future of our country, and so many young people. Add your name to the pledge that Obama, [...]

At what point does “obeying the law” become the wrong thing to do?..
I recently pondered this question when coming across a bumper sticker with the following words:

NO FENCE.
NO BORDER PATROL.
LAND MINES!
Hmmm…
One wonders if the person who decided to place this bumper sticker on their car has ever had a family member die or be maimed [...]

Since we got our first blogad tonight from Media Matters, it seemed apropos for another segment of “media not to be missed,” sometimes known as media mishegaas, especially because I want to highlight a few choice pieces. Hope everyone is having a wonderful chag! I had etrog schnapps for the first time, thanks to Netivot [...]

On the road, so for simplicity’s sake, here’s ACLU’s release:
Judge Issues Order After Lawsuit Is Filed by AFL-CIO, ACLU, and National Immigration Law Center
SAN FRANCISCO - A federal judge today issued an order temporarily blocking the government from implementing a new Department of Homeland Security (DHS) rule that would cause U.S. citizens and other authorized [...]

In recent years there’s been increasing awareness of Israel’s frequently inexplicable practice of the Law of Return, and the ways in which the Ultra-Orthodox have co-opted this to fan the flames of the “who is a Jew?” argument. Despite the strict methods they have for enforcing this policy, many immigrants from the former Soviet Union, [...]

Yes, it’s happened. We’ve been cited as a source in this week’s Washington Jewish Week in a piece about the Virginia immigration legislation. I appreciate the love. It’s a bit funny I must admit. I do wish Greenberg had contacted me for a decent quote rather than pulling a quick blip from the site. And [...]

Thank You Bob! Since it’s a TimeSelect piece, I’m pasting the whole article below.
Indentured Servants in America
By Bob Herbert
New York Times
March 13, 2007
A must-read for anyone who favors an expansion of guest worker programs in the U.S. is a stunning new report from the Southern Poverty Law Center that details the widespread abuse of highly [...]

At 5, he learned his primary colours. Red, blue, yellow. Except that the red wasn’t truly red, but a pinkish red that he later learned was called magenta, and the blue wasn’t really blue, but an electrical turquoise hue called cyan.
At 13, he learned the colour of longing when his family [...]

It is just after Rosh Hashanah, mere days after I chose to protest racist comments in my synagogue by praying at home on two of the holiest days of the Jewish year. Appalled by the bigotry of references to the genetic inferiority of African-Americans, aware that my rabbi shared my anti-racist views but was [...]