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.
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The fourth anniversary of the earthquake in Haiti has come and gone. There were the usual speeches, press conferences, updates and flurries of attention. There was also, at least in some quarters, an expressed concern that it is “taking too long” to make a difference on the ground, that the problems of weak government, corruption, …
Read MoreWhat a month! Throughout the country, AJWS was buzzing with LGBT Pride to shine a spotlight on our work to fight for the human rights of LGBT communities in the developing world. One of our grantees, a leading LGBT rights activist from Kenya, traveled to the U.S. to speak about the struggles that LGBT communities face in …
Read MoreIn Biblical times, a woman whose husband died childless would marry his brother in order to give her late husband a surrogate heir within the family line. This is the law of yibbum, which is what Tamar had in mind in Parshat Vayeshev when she remained a widow, waiting to marry Shelah, her father-in-law Judah’s …
Read MoreIn this week’s parshah, Yitro, we read of the revelation at Sinai that follows last week’s Exodus from Egypt. What is this relationship between freedom and revelation, between Exodus and Sinai? The Chassidic master R. Yehudah Leib Alter of Ger explains that Sinai follows the Exodus because “the purpose of all the commandments…is so that …
Read MoreThe bumper sticker on my brother’s car reads, “Everyone does better when everyone does better.” This statement brims with optimism: it is a vision of shared work and shared gain. Yet as I repeat this phrase, the terms begin to flicker: Is the “doing better” economic or moral? Who is considered to be part of …
Read More“When your brother, Hebrew man or woman, is sold to you, he shall serve you six years, and in the seventh year you shall set him free.”[1] It disappoints me every year. Approaching the edge of the Promised Land in Parshat Re’eh, Moses outlines the possibilities and responsibilities for impending self-rule and national freedom. Inside …
Read MoreThere are a few lines from a poem by Mary Oliver on a tattered post-it note on my fridge door. “Tell me,” it asks whenever I reach for orange juice or milk with bleary eyes in the morning, “What do you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”[1] Parshat Nitzavim contains the …
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