JVOICES.COM

The American Jewish World Service-AVODAH partnership wants you to self-define as an activist. Last night’s Inside the Activists’ Studio conference in New York (co-sponsored by Jvoices.com) set out to celebrate every kind of social consciousness, from choosing to buy fair trade coffee to going door to door for housing rights. Well over 100 Jewish activists [...]

The New Israel Forum is an annual event put on by the New Israel Fund, an organization that raises money for social change in Israel. It’s a group that has an interesting challenge: it appeals to pro-Israel Jews in the United States, and then gives the money to nonprofits in Israel who are often bitterly [...]

I had my first delightful taste of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival this afternoon, attending a screening of At Home in Utopia, (check out the trailer) a moving and intimate portrayal of when, in the 1920’s, Jewish communists pooled resources to build cooperatively owned apartment complexes in the Bronx. The film primarily focuses on [...]

(apologies to those who aren’t living in new york city - this is an event announcement)
(it seems like there are many more radical purim extravaganzas going on all over the country, though, and i’m posting this announcement in part to encourage folks to think big and exciting for next year…)
this year’s eighth-or-so edition of the [...]

Jewish Voice for Peace

JOB DESCRIPTION
DIRECTOR OF EDUCATION AND OUTREACH

JOB TITLE:
Director of Education and Outreach

SUMMARY OF POSITION:

The Director of Education and Policy is responsible for providing internal and external education through a wide variety of methods that increase the ability for members, supporters and allies to [...]

whenever i start to get bored with the idea of staying vocal as one of the surprisingly few non-closeted secularists in most of the electronic jewish spaces i frequent, something like this comes up.
ruth messinger, former manhattan borough president, american jewish world service president, and makher-in-chief of the current (and problematic as well as important, [...]

one.
i’ve been meaning to write something about the destruction of temples, and whether it’s something to mourn. partly because i have a soft spot for some aspects of tisha b’av despite my secularism, and partly inspired by a friend’s experience being told by a progressive jewish organization that a drash she wrote for them [...]

From the introduction:

Two Jews, a crumbling empire, and a struggling resistance movement walk into a bar…

For people who have committed themselves to fundamental social change, the situation we’re stuck in with antisemitism is like a bad joke.

From one side, progressive and radical activists and scholars are being attacked by organized campaigns to brand us antisemites. In particular, it’s virtually impossible to speak out critically about Israel without being charged with antisemitism.

At the same time, we face real currents of unchallenged anti-Jewish oppression in our movements and the world. This endangers Jews, corrupts our political integrity, and sabotages our ability to create the effective resistance our times demand. …

Among the contents:

-Antisemitism is still a world problem
-How could Jews be oppressed?
-But Arabs are Semites!
-Meet the amazing, disappearing oppression
-Let’s look at an example of how antisemitism works.
-If you liked COINTELPRO, you’ll LOVE the Protocols of the Elders of Zion
-The Revolution, the Jews and the “Generous Offer”
-Time Out! (A Word to Jews)
-Innoculate your Palestine work against antisemitism
-Tips for every activist

…and more.

My latest article in Jewish Currents Magazine:
I am already late with this article, and if I am to keep up with developments relevant to my topic, I will never finish. Anti-Semitism is on the rise — and progressive Jews are to blame, according to a recent essay published by the American Jewish Committee (“‘Progressive’ Jewish [...]