For Eddie: I Am Keeping My Promise
Twenty-two years ago, I made a promise that has shaped my life and my work ever since. My beloved partner Eddie, a talented musician, was dying of AIDS.
Read MoreRepairing India’s Food System Is About Access, Not Scarcity
Posts
Our Journey to Capitol Hill
More than 150 AJWS supporters gathered in Washington, D.C. this week for the 2014 AJWS Policy Summit. Yesterday, after 48 hours of inspirational programming and skills building, we headed out to Capitol Hill to urge our legislators to pass the International Violence Against Women Act (IVAWA), which was introduced in the Senate on May 8th. …
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Nigeria: AJWS Allies Respond to Girls’ Abduction
Protesters around the world have drawn unprecedented international attention to the plight of more than 250 girls in northern Nigeria. Most of the girls, who were kidnapped by the Islamist militant group Boko Haram on April 15, remain missing. American Jewish World Service and other human rights groups—in Nigeria and many other countries—spread the word …
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How Being a Third Generation Holocaust Survivor Inspired My Journey to Social Justice
Every day, but especially on Yom Hashoah, I think about my family’s experience in the Holocaust and how that has shaped who I am today. As a young child, I didn’t fully grasp what being a Holocaust survivor meant. I knew that my grandfather had a big family before the Holocaust and that my great …
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Sex Workers Can Speak for Themselves
WONETHA is a human rights-based organization and registered NGO, based in Uganda. WONETHA seeks to improve the health, social and economic wellbeing of female adult sex workers in Uganda. Veshya Anyay Mukti Parishad (VAMP), India, is a collective of women in sex work against injustice who have mobilized in order to speak out about HIV …
Read MoreDvar Tzedek
Masei
Parshat Masei, the portion of journeys, begins with a recounting of the Israelites’ travels from slavery in Egypt to the borders of Israel. Yet within this re-telling of the Israelites’ trek comes a different journey: the path of a manslayer into exile. An entire chapter of the parshah addresses the process by which an unintentional …
Read MoreKorach
This Hitler has only one objective, justice for his own people, sovereignty for his people, recognition of the independence of his people, and their right to their resources. If that is Hitler, then let me be a Hitler tenfold.[1] -Robert Mugabe In Zimbabwe in 1979, Robert Mugabe was a symbol of national pride, …
Read MoreBeha’alotcha
“I don’t understand why I keep making the same mistakes,” a patient of mine recently told me. He had called for a chaplain in the middle of the night because he felt overwhelmed by remorse. “I have been hospitalized five times now. I’ve lost my girlfriend, my friends, my law practice, all because of drinking… …
Read MoreNaso
“Is that the law? Now?” These were the words of Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf when he learned, six years ago, that a woman named Zafran Bibi had been sentenced to death by stoning.[1] Under the Hudood ordinances, fundamentalist interpretations of Islamic law, a woman convicted of adultery can be executed with only circumstantial evidence against …
Read MoreBechukotai
Parshat Bechukotai is one of the Torah portions that makes me cringe. Like chapter 28 of the book of Dvarim, it promises abundant blessings to those who obey God’s commandments and ghastly disasters for those who do not. So when bad things happen to good people, as they always do, some good people assume that …
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