Fourteen rabbis have been named 2017-2018 Global Justice Fellows with American Jewish World Service (AJWS), the leading Jewish organization working to promote human rights and end poverty in the developing world. AJWS announced the selection today of 14 Jewish leaders from across the United States who will participate in this prestigious program.
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I am parachuting into the brutal realities of a population whose daily struggles I couldn’t even imagine a few days ago.
Read MoreIn Guatemala we witness one of the most atrocious massacres in the history of the country and of Our America. They were under the protection and protection of the State. At least sixty girls tried to flee March 7 from the Safe Home “Virgin of the Assumption”, it was a hell they were living. There …Read More
Read MoreGrisela Mendez Gonzalez is mourning the tragic loss of her father, Bernardo Mendez, and I’m learning from her grief. The cause of his death? It all started with a silver mine. When a Canadian mining company arrived in their mountainous village in the Oaxaca region of Mexico, it quickly began guzzling the water local people …Read More
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Nikhil Aziz, Director of Natural Resource Rights at AJWS, visited AJWS’s grantee organizations in Guatemala and has been sharing stories from his travels. Lesbia Morales is in her early 30s. She was the first woman president of AJWS grantee Comité Campesino del Altiplano (CCDA), a grassroots organization of small-scale farmers supported by AJWS. The group works in 11 …Read More
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“We are telling the truth. We want to be heard, and we want justice,” said a petite, elderly woman to a room full of journalists and human rights activists in Guatemala City on February 13, 2016. A survivor of sexual slavery during Guatemala’s decades-long civil war, the woman’s face was obscured by a Mayan scarf to protect her identity.
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Seeking justice for bloodshed in the name of development
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Hundreds of Maya Achi people were murdered to make way for a dam in Guatemala. Decades later, their families finally find justice. Back in 1982, Carlos Chen Osorio was a young man with a family: his wife, Paulina, and their toddler children, Enriqueta and Antonio. Paulina carried their third child inside her, and expected to …Read More
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Indigenous communities work together to defend their land and way of life. In Guatemala, indigenous people whose families have lived and farmed in one place for generations are now facing rapid encroachment on their land and way of life. Many Mayan communities lack official land titles, despite obvious historic and cultural ties to their land. …Read More
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This week, we are pleased to welcome guest writer Rabbi Brent Chaim Spodek. Everybody wants something. There are very few of us who have reached the level of equanimity that we are happy with what we have; the rest of us want things that are still out of our reach. For oppressed peoples, the most …Read More
Read MoreThis week, we are pleased to welcome guest writer, Dvar Tzedek alumnus Guy Austrian. Rock by rock, stone by stone, each one passed hand to hand along a human chain of young Jews and indigenous Guatemalans: our energy was high on this beautiful day during our AJWS delegation to rural Guatemala. We cleared a riverbed …Read More
Read MoreHundreds of young Mayan students gathered with their teachers and a small group of New York Jews, standing in a wide circle as we observed an astonishing spectacle. Rivulets of bubbling candle wax streamed onto the ground. Flowers withered and crumpled in smoke and flames. A priest of the Maya Achi tradition presided over the …Read More
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