In Parshat Shmot we read the famous story of Moses at the burning bush. Moses’s response to his first interaction with God can offer us powerful lessons about our own way of perceiving the world, and our relationship to the injustices that surround us.
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“Gay and Vilified in Uganda,” by Frank Mugisha (Op-Ed, Dec. 23), reminded me that the public narrative about lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex issues, particularly in the Western media, has radically changed — but not enough.
In the 1980s and 1990s, the narrative was about AIDS. Today, it’s about the right to marry and serve openly in the military.
Yet the need for justice extends far beyond these specific struggles.
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Foreign Policy Magazine recently released its list of the Top 100 Global Thinkers of 2011. We were disappointed—though not so surprised—by the paucity of women on this list. So, we’ve added six extraordinary women who deserve recognition. Leymah Gbowee, Liberia. You’ve probably heard a lot about Leymah Gbowee, in the news and on our blog. …
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Through its description of the devastating famine in ancient Egypt, Parshat Vayigash suggests two models that can inform our response to hunger today. By this point in the biblical narrative, Joseph, Pharaoh’s trusted vizier, has been reunited with his brothers in Egypt. The rest of his family, however, is still suffering from terrible famine in Canaan. …
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The New Republic recently published a piece by Sebastian Strangio that exposes the dark underbelly of microfinance. Strangio highlights a Bangladesh-based story about impoverished rural farmers forced to sell their organs on the black market to repay their microfinance loans. This tragedy emphasizes the growing backlash on the ground and in the academy against microfinance …
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Originally posted on the blog of Where Do You Give? September 1997: I am sitting with my family on the soft, beige carpet in the family room ready to begin our annual tradition. Index cards are lined up in front of us: “Hunger in Africa” “Literacy in America” “Homelessness in Mountain View, CA.” My parents …
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When Jewish comedian Gilda Radner lit a menorah on Saturday Night Live in the 1970s, it was the very first time that lighting Chanukah candles had been broadcast on national television. The skit was a hilarious riff on the ubiquity of Christmas, but what millions of viewers remember most is Gilda. After reciting the blessings over …
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Rectifying pervasive social injustice around our world proves an incredibly daunting and complicated challenge. Each case of injustice is caused by not just the obvious perpetrators, but often myriad unintentional secondary offenders and a seemingly intractable web of social, economic and political systems and power brokers. Given these tangled causes, the average person may feel …
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Where Do You Give? Invites Artists to Reimagine Tzedakah Box for 21st Century New York, NY; December 12, 2011—American Jewish World Service (AJWS), an international development and human rights organization, has launched a national design competition focused on philanthropy and social change. Where Do You Give? challenges artists to create a 21st century icon inspired …
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Foreign policy speeches do not typically give me chills. Not so with the speech that Secretary Clinton gave yesterday evening in Geneva on the evening of December 6th. Her remarks, which I was fortunate enough to hear in person, made a powerful, timely and truly historic argument for the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual …
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