JVOICES.COM

While the internet, Facebook and Twitter grant us a global connection, the focus on our local communities remain integral, necessary and vital to Jewish identity. That’s at least one message that Yiddishkayt and Jewish Artists Initiative are bringing to Los Angeles this Passover through this Ashkenazi seder celebration.
This Thursday, April 2nd, they’ll be hosting [...]

From the Jewish Women’s Archive:
Approximately 500 workers were sewing shirtwaists at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company’s sweatshop near Washington Square in Manhattan when a fire broke out on March 25, 1911.
The building lacked adequate fire escapes, firefighting equipment was unable to reach the top floors, and—most tragically—exit doors had been locked to prevent unauthorized work breaks. [...]

On Sunday, an emotional poetry reading took place in the city of Rehovot, Israel, outside the gates of the Weizmann Institute of Science in solidarity with the workers against the institute’s management.
The event was supported by a variety of poetry and art journals, including, “Dhaka“, “Direction East” “Maayan” and “Basta Tarbot” (an initiative of [...]

Labor Day. For many, a three-day weekend. For some, a reminder of the importance of the labor movement, and the benefits that this movement won for its members, their families and the communities they live in, and indeed the U.S. as a whole. It’s not for nothing that the book is entitled [...]

When I heard that Leveling the Playing Field: Advancing Women in Jewish Organizational Life by Shifra Bronznick, Didi Goldenhar, Marty Linsky, and Beverly Joel (who did layout and design for the book) was out, I knew I’d want to get at least an excerpt for readers.
While my experience in Jewish communal life is more [...]

A lil’ humor for ya:

Your shiny white emptiness
Drips rabid promises
From each saccharine fang,
Your glittering emerald eyes mocking
The singular certainty:
This darkness and I must dance and duel
Til the factory of your perfect machine
Cannibalises me
Into the likeness of
Some True Form that bears
Some True Name-
My true name and form, uncodified by
bar code or trademark,
Long since discarded in the Solipsistic Terminal,
Amid the trains [...]

Today, a number of TV blogs are shutting down in solidarity with the writers on strike.
We’re a blog with many writers who support our work and write for us. We’ve enjoyed the promise of new media as an open source venue for our voices.
Now, we’re shutting down our site in solidarity with writers demanding [...]

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 [...]