If you’re looking for a powerful, thought-provoking film to see this summer, look no further than Finding Fela—a new documentary that opened this past Friday in New York City at IFC and has bookings throughout the country opening on various dates this month. Fela Kuti was the brilliant Nigerian performer who became a human rights …
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August 4, 2014 – Today in Washington, D.C., President Obama is making history by welcoming multiple heads of state from Africa to the first-ever U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit.
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Originally published in The Health Care Blog. In 1985, during the height of the AIDS crisis in New York City, I was elected to the New York City Council. Time and again, I felt heartbroken as my friends and constituents lost their lives to a deadly disease without a cure. Too frequently, they suffered the …
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Despite global praise for Burma’s democratic reforms, the country hasn’t resolved its decades-long legacy of ethnic persecution. Burma’s refugees fear what will happen to them next. Learn more below. Naw Htee Ku doesn’t want to talk about the past. She’s sitting on a concrete floor not far from the amplified music and clapping of Mae Ra …
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NEW YORK – American Jewish World Service (AJWS), the leading Jewish international development and human rights organization, condemns the election of Uganda’s Foreign Minister, Sam Kutesa, as President of the United Nations General Assembly.
Read MoreThe strange story of Bilam, his talking donkey and the blessings he bestowed on Israel is recounted in Parshat Balak.[1] After the Israelites successfully defended themselves against the attacking Amorites, the Moabite king, Balak, asked Bilam to curse the Israelites in order to weaken them. Following several rounds of negotiations with Balak’s representatives and with …
Read MoreAfter my grandfather’s death, I rifled through a shabby valise into which he had tossed important-seeming documents. Among the runic scraps were several fragile pages of type-written Yiddish with their English translation, signed and dated, Tel Aviv, 1957, and titled “Sworn Declaration in Lieu of Birth Certificate.” The Declaration’s armature of legalese, embossings, seals and …
Read MoreFor as long as people have organized themselves into civil societies, corruption has placed its thumb on the scales of justice, diverted the flow of essential resources and helped turn the wheels of power. But while corruption may have indiscriminately left its mark on every age, it is not so even-handed in its distribution today. …
Read MoreAmong Parshat Mishpatim‘s many ethical ordinances is the provision for a refuge to shelter manslaughterers from those seeking vendetta justice.[1] While similar havens are explored in later discussions of arei miklat—biblical Israel’s “cities of refuge”—the asylum referenced here is specifically for the desert generation, for whom Rashi teaches, God designated “the encampment of the Levites” …
Read MoreExperiences and behaviors that we define as “spiritual” tend to be of a specifically inward nature. We generally associate spirituality—admittedly, an opaque term—more with thought, soul and self than with action, materiality and society. In other words, we are more likely to identify a reclusive monk as spiritual than an outspoken politician. The Torah provides …
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