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By showing your generosity to the RAC on this #GivingTuesday, you demonstrate your commitment to our shared values. Today, we join charities and social justice organizations in the United States and around the world celebrate Giving Tuesday, an initiative to direct the consumer energy of "Black Friday" and “Cyber Monday” toward positive change. Because study of and reading from the Torah is vital to Jewish living and life-long Jewish learning, the Torah scroll itself has always been a powerful and essential ritual object within Jewish and synagogue life.  After years of traveling to our many conferences, the RAC’s Torah scroll is in need of repair – so we are making it the focus of our #GivingTuesday efforts this year.

Green Kislev and Hanukkah Challenge to Use CFL Light Bulbs

Welcome to December and the Jewish month of Kislev! Hanukkah, the Festival of Light, is just around the corner and as the days shorten towards the winter equinox later this month, it seems fitting to focus on how we light our houses for this month’s Green Challenge.

Disaster struck Saturday night at a school building in Jerusalem.  Four firefighter teams were called in to extinguish a blaze that destroyed a first-grade classroom.  The larger tragedy is that the fire seems to have been an act of premeditated arson, and the school targeted for being a model of Jewish-Arab community building.  The torched building housed a Hebrew-Arab bilingual school—The Hand in Hand Jerusalem School—where Jewish and Arab parents send their children to play and learn side-by-side.

Today marks World AIDS Day, a day devoted to raising awareness of the AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome) epidemic. Despite many advances in the treatment for AIDS since the AIDS epidemic first began in the 1980s and increased knowledge on how to prevent the spread of HIV (the human immunodeficiency virus), 1.5 million people died of AIDS-related illnesses in 2013 alone. And, AIDS continues to be a serious issue around the world. Jewish tradition emphasizes the importance of bikur cholim, pikuach nefesh and gemulit chasidim—caring for the sick, saving lives and deeds of loving kindness—and these are the values that spur us to take action to educate others about HIV/AIDS in order to empower them to take control of their own health and advocate for HIV/AIDS prevention.

Monday night, St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch announced that a grand jury had decided there was not enough probable cause to indict police Officer Darren Wilson in the death of Michael Brown, an unarmed 18-year-old who was fatally shot on August 9, 2014. In response to the decision, Rabbi Rick Jacobs, President of the Union for Reform Judaism, and Rabbi Steve Fox, Chief Executive of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, issued the following the statement:

Jewish tradition emphasizes the importance of access to health care. Maimonides lists health care among the ten most important communal services that has to be offered by a city to its residents. (Mishneh Torah, SeferHamadda IV:23). It is therefore important that we stay up to date on the latest developments in the health care landscape and take action to advocate for increased access to affordable health care when possible. This past month alone has been full of important health care developments:

This year, in advance of Thanksgiving, we’ve written about using the national holiday as an opportunity to engage in interfaith dialogue and a chance to consider those among us who have less. What we have not yet talked about this year is the tragic underside to a holiday that in most of our memories is filled with family, food and football. After all, as adults we know that Thanksgiving is more than the pilgrims shaking hands with Native Americans and sharing cornucopias of squash and apples; this a holiday on which we have a choice to raise up the voices of the oppressed, the colonized and the oft-forgotten among us. I’m talking about Native Americans.

This midterm election, only 36.4 percent of the voting eligible population cast ballots. The disappointing turnout is not surprising- midterm election turnout has been declining and is always lower than presidential elections. But, this year is particularly troubling because of the disenfranchisement that occurred across the country.

When Representative Alma Adams (D-NC-12) was sworn in earlier this month, we hit a milestone for women in politics: 100 women—the most in history—currently serve in Congress. There’s been a lot of conversation about how, despite the progress this figure symbolizes, 100 women out of 535 Senators and Representatives is not enough. Noticeably absent from this conversation, however, is a discussion of how money in politics affects who runs for office. When we talk about money in politics, we tend to focus on candidates’ campaign expenditures. But the outsized influence corporate donors and wealthy individuals have on political campaigns affects far more than a candidate’s campaign events or the ads we see on TV in the final push before Election Day. Campaign contributions affect who can run for office in the first place, with money serving as a substantial barrier for women and people of color seeking to start a campaign.