From April 19-22, AJWS staff and 25 grantees attended the AWID International Forum on Women’s Rights in Development in Istanbul, Turkey. Seventeen-year-old Naboni Etansa from Ethiopia traveled to the Forum with the Jerusalem Children and Community Development Organization (JeCCDO)—an AJWS grantee and a partner in the Nike Foundation’s Grassroots Girls Initiative. Below are Naboni’s reflections …
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Ikal Angelei of Friends of Lake Turkana Wins Prestigious Award For Natural Resource Rights Activism New York, NY; April 16, 2012—American Jewish World Service (AJWS), an international development and human rights organization, today announced that Ikal Angelei, the founder of Friends of Lake Turkana, has won the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize. AJWS has funded Angelei’s …
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It goes without saying that American Jews are pretty into food—especially during the Jewish holidays. Food plays a central and sensory role in our lives and serves as a map of our history. Meals, recipes and the acts of eating and drinking teach us about who we are, where we live and where we come …
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I was very saddened to read about the death of Wangari Maathai yesterday, just a few days after I returned from spending several weeks with AJWS’s partners in Kenya and Ethiopia. Maathai was a world renowned environmentalist, the founder of the Green Belt Movement, a political and human rights activist, and the first woman from …
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Originally posted on the Global Circle blog.
Read MoreThis week’s Dvar Tzedek was originally published in 2009. Acharei Mot, Kedoshim. After Death, Holy. The mysterious yet evocative sound of the titles of this double parshah uttered together hints at the relationship between darkness and luminescence. It reveals a tension between two dimensions of the human experience: our potential for fallibility and distance from …
Read MoreThis week’s Dvar Tzedek was originally published in 2009. Acharei Mot, Kedoshim. After Death, Holy. The mysterious yet evocative sound of the titles of this double parshah uttered together hints at the relationship between darkness and luminescence. It reveals a tension between two dimensions of the human experience: our potential for fallibility and distance from …
Read MoreFor me, Parshat Vayishlach is particularly poignant because it chronicles the death of my namesake, the matriarch Rachel.[1] Rachel was young, perhaps only thirty-six, when she died giving birth to her second son.[2] Rabbinic commentators have long sought explanations for why one so young and righteous had to suffer, and many interpret Rachel’s death as …
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