On my desk, there is a small black and white photograph depicting the late Rabbi Arthur Lelyveld of Cleveland, his face bloody from a beating that he suffered at the hands of segregationists in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, during the Freedom Summer of 1964. It is now more than a half century later, and from what I…
Not long ago I had to get an MRI for a condition that might have been serious. It wasn’t; I’m fine. But I didn’t know that when I pulled up to the radiology building and saw it was on Activist Street. A message, I wondered, for someone facing mortality? If time is limited, then I…
Jews were well represented at Saturday’s Women’s March on Washington. But with attendance estimates as yet not definitively calculated but ranging in varied sources from “several hundred thousand,” to “far exceeding the turnout at Friday’s inauguration,” to “1.5 million,” most nationalities were as well. Still, in protests ranging from the Civil Rights era, to the…
The Forward asked three generations of the Pogrebin family to recount their experiences at the Women’s March in Washington, D.C. Here the grandmother, a veteran feminist activist and writer, describes how this protest left her soaring. Read daughter Abigail Pogrebin’s account here and granddaughter Molly Shapiro’s essay here. Pardon the hyperbole but yesterday was one…
We were made for this. The Jewish people and Jewish tradition itself were designed for survival. We were designed for social transformation. Now, with Donald Trump threatening the norms and institutions of our democratic society, we must come together to resist and respond to any attempt to set us back. We all hope that our…
Brooklyn activists filled a Park Slope synagogue January 16 to organize opposition to the incoming Donald Trump administration. Organizers estimated that hundreds of activists attended the meeting, held in the sanctuary of Congregation Beth Elohim, a Reform congregation. Called #getorganizedbk, the group was founded in November by New York City Councilman Brad Lander, who represents…
Tamar Manasseh likely won’t be ordained as a rabbi until next year, but she already has her congregation: a street corner in the Englewood neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side, where she has worked out her own solution to the city’s gun violence problem. Every afternoon during the Chicago Public Schools summer vacation, Manasseh and what…
As we enter unchartered political waters, American Jews are asking ourselves and our communal leaders hard questions. How can we make a real difference individually and collectively? Who in our community is poised to stand up for core Jewish and American values that we previously took for granted? Which advocacy organizations should we get involved…
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