As the #MeToo movement has grown and spread across industries and sectors, it has laid bare an inescapable truth: the Jewish community is subject to the same kinds of issues, inequities and power dynamics that exist in other communities. Over the past few months, a group of leaders from several Jewish organizations have been discussing …
Read MoreIt’s international Women’s Day but men are seemingly still running the world, or at least the political parties that hold the fate of the survival of Israel’s government in its hands.
Read MoreLast month, high in the mountains of Guatemala and surrounded by fellow rabbis and human rights defenders, I was given an opportunity to witness what it means to stand up for justice that I will never forget. We were there as part of American Jewish World Service’s Global Justice Fellowship — a program designed to inspire, …
Read MoreThe U.S. Holocaust Memorial and Museum has rescinded a human rights award it gave to Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, the former political prisoner and democracy activist and now the civilian leader of Myanmar. The museum said it is taking back the Elie Wiesel Award given in 2012 because of what it calls Aung …
Read MoreOften when a group of American rabbis visit a foreign country, they spend most of their time with the local Jewish community. But the 13 Jewish leaders — including two from New Jersey — who were selected as Global Justice Fellows by the American Jewish World Service (AJWS) didn’t even step near a synagogue during …
Read MoreThe photograph captures the very definition of desolation, a black and white panorama of mud-soaked, utterly barren land that stretches from end-to-end and into the horizon. At the center of the image, a long line of children crosses the emptiness. There is an exhausted boy at the front dressed in drenched, filthy clothes. Like most …
Read MoreEach day, it seems, brings new stories that prove that our workplaces are sites of violence against women, the silencing of women’s ambition, and discrimination in women’s compensation. For some of us, this is new information. For many of us, it rings true, but the extent of the problem and the graphic ugliness of the …
Read MoreTwenty-four Jewish groups encompassing all major religious streams urged a Senate panel to advance a bill that would penalize Burma for its treatment of its Rohingya Muslim minority. “Passing this legislation through your committee and the full Senate would send a powerful message to the Burmese military and the global community that the United States …
Read MoreMore than 20 Jewish American organizations, including those representing the three largest Jewish denominations, signed a petition calling on the U.S. Senate to advance new sanctions against the Myanmar government, in light of the military’s violence against the Rohingya Muslim minority. The petition calls on members of the Senate to advance a piece of legislation called “The Burma …
Read MoreMore than 300 American Jewish organizations and communal leaders have signed a letter urging the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to pass the Burma Human Rights and Freedom Act, which targets the Burmese military in particular for its ongoing atrocities against the Rohingya people. The letter, sent to the committee on Friday, argued that passage of the …
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