I Support the Presbyterian Church (USA) Divestment Resolution

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by Rabbi Brant Rosen

As a Jew, a rabbi and a person of conscience, I am voicing my support of the divestment resolution being brought to the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) this June.

This resolution, which has been a point of divisive contention between the PC (USA) and some American Jewish organizations for many years, recommends the Church divest its funds from Caterpillar, Motorola and Hewlett-Packard. It was put forth by the church’s committee on Mission Responsibility Through Investment – an appointed body that recommended church divestment of companies engaged in “non-peaceful pursuits in Israel/Palestine.”

There is a long and tumultuous history to this resolution – here’s a basic outline:

- In 1971 and 1976 the Presbyterian Church stated that it had a responsibility to ensure that its funds be invested responsibly and consistent with the church’s mission.

- In 1986, the PC (USA) formed the Committee for Mission Responsibility Through Investing (MRTI) in 1986. The MRTI Committee carried out the General Assembly’s wish to engage in shareholder activism and as a last resort, divest itself of companies which contravened the GA’s position. Divestment would follow a phased process starting with attempted dialogue and shareholder resolutions and ultimately the total sale of and future ban on the church’s holdings in a company.

- In June 2004, the PC (USA) General Assembly adopted by a vote of 431-62 a resolution that called on the MRTI Committee “to initiate a process of phased, selective divestment in multinational corporations operating in Israel.” The resolution expressed the church’s support of the Geneva Accord, said that “the occupation . . . has proven to be at the root of evil acts committed against innocent people on both sides of the conflict,” that “the security of Israel and the Israeli people is inexorably dependent on making peace with their Palestinian neighbors”, that “horrific acts of violence and deadly attacks on innocent people, whether carried out by Palestinian suicide bombers or by the Israeli military, are abhorrent and inexcusable by all measures, and are a dead-end alternative to a negotiated settlement,” and that the United States government needed to be “honest, even-handed broker for peace.”

- In 2005, MRTI Committee named five US-based companies – Caterpillar Inc., Citigroup, ITT Industries, Motorola and United Technologies – for initial focus and that it would engage in “progressive engagement” with the companies’ management.

- In 2006, following an uproar of criticism from American Jewish organizations, the PC (USA) General Assembly overwhelmingly (483-28) replaced language adopted in 2004 that focused the “phased, selective divestment” specifically on companies working in Israel.  It now called for investment in Israel, the Gaza Strip, eastern Jerusalem and the West Bank “in only peaceful pursuits.” The new resolution also required the consideration of “practical realities,” a “commitment to positive outcomes” and an awareness of the potential impact of strategies on “both the Israeli and Palestinian economies.”  The 2006 resolution also recognized Israel’s right to build a security barrier along its pre-1967 boundaries. The GA acknowledged the “hurt and misunderstanding among many members of the Jewish community and within our Presbyterian communion” that resulted from the 2004 resolution and stated that the Assembly was “grieved by the pain that this has caused, accept responsibility for the flaws in our process, and ask for a new season of mutual understanding and dialogue.”

The most recent resolution is the result of this new process and now focuses on three of the original six companies under consideration.  From the PC (USA) website:

The General Assembly Mission Council (GAMC) is recommending that the upcoming 220th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) divest the church of its stock in three companies “until they have ceased profiting from non-peaceful activities in Israel-Palestine.”

The three companies are Caterpillar, Motorola Solutions and Hewlett-Packard.

At issue are their participation in the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, the construction of the “security barrier” between Israel and Palestinian territory, and the destruction of Palestinian homes, roads and fields to make way for the construction of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, which have been declared illegal under international law.

“We have run out of hope that these companies are willing to change their corporate practices [in Israel-Palestine],” said the Rev. Brian Ellison, a Kansas City pastor and chair of the denomination’s Mission Responsibility Through Investment Committee (MRTI). “We have made diligent effort to engage in conversation. We’d like to do more, to make progress, but substantial change does not seem possible.”

As stated above, I support this resolution without reservation and urge other Jewish leaders and community members to do so as well. I am deeply dismayed that along every step of this process, Jewish community organizations (among them, the Anti-Defamation League, the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the Jewish Council on Public Affairs) that purport to speak for the consensus of a diverse constituency have been intimidating and emotionally blackmailing the Presbyterian Church as they attempt to forge their ethical investment strategy in good faith.

It is extremely important to be clear about what is at stake here. First of all, this is not a resolution that seeks to boycott or single out Israel. Divestment does not target countries – it targets companies.  In this regard speaking, the PC (USA)’s ethical investment process seeks to divest from specific “military-related companies” it deems are engaged in “non-peaceful” pursuits.

We’d be hard-pressed indeed to make the case that the Israeli government is engaged in “non-peaceful pursuits” in the Occupied Territories and East Jerusalem.  I won’t go into detail here because I’ve been writing about this tragic issue for many years: the increasing of illegal Jewish settlements with impunity, the forced evictions and home demolitions, the uprooting of Palestinian orchards, the separation wall that chokes off Palestinians from their lands, the arbitrary administrative detentions, the brutal crushing of non-violent protest, etc, etc.

All Americans – Jews and non-Jews alike – have cause for deep moral concern over these issues.  Moreover, we have cause for dismay that own government tacitly supports these actions. At the very least, we certainly have the right to make sure that our own investments do not support companies that profit from what we believe to be immoral acts committed in furtherance of Israel’s occupation.

As the co-chair of the Jewish Voice for Peace Rabbinical Council, I am proud that JVP has initiated its own divestment campaign which targets the TIAA-CREF pension fund, urging it to divest from companies that profit from Israel’s occupation. Among these are two of the three companies currently under consideration by PC (USA): Motorola and Caterpillar.

Why the concern over these specific companies? Because they are indisputably and directing aiding and profiting the oppression of Palestinians on the ground. Caterpillar profits from the destruction of Palestinian homes and the uprooting of Palestinian orchards by supplying the armor-plated and weaponized bulldozers that are used for such demolition work.  Motorola profits from Israel’s control of the Palestinian population by providing surveillance systems around Israeli settlements, checkpoints, and military camps in the West Bank, as well as communication systems to the Israeli army and West Bank settlers.

And why is Hewlett-Packard under consideration for divestment by the PC (USA)? HP owns Electronic Data Systems, which heads a consortium providing monitoring of checkpoints, including several built inside the West Bank in violation of international law.  The Israeli Navy, which regularly attacks Gaza’s fishermen within Gaza’s own territorial waters and has often shelled civilian areas in the Gaza Strip, has chosen HP Israel to implement the outsourcing of its IT infrastructure.  In addition, Hewlett Packard subsidiary HP Invent outsources IT services to a company called Matrix, which employs settlers in the illegal settlement of Modi’in Illit to do much of its IT work at low wages.

I repeat: by seeking to divest from these companies the PC (USA) is not singling out Israel as a nation.  The Presbyterian Church has every right to – and in fact does – divest its funds from any number of companies that enable non-peaceful pursuits around the world.  In this case specifically, the PC (USA) has reasonably determined that these particular “pursuits” aid a highly militarized, brutal and oppressive occupation – and it simply does not want to be complicit in supporting companies that enable it.

I am fully aware that there are several organizations in the Jewish community that are already gearing up a full court press to intimidate the PC (USA) from passing this resolution in June.  JCPA President Rabbi Steve Gutow recently accused national Presbyterian leaders of “making the delegitimization of Israel a public witness of their church.” The Simon Wiesenthal Center has called the resolution “poisonous,” and that by considering it the PC (USA) is “showing its moral bankruptcy.”

These sorts of statements do not speak for me nor, I am sure, do they speak for the wide, diverse spectrum of opinion on the issue in the American Jewish community.  There is no place for public bullying in interfaith relations – it is, needless to say, decidedly counter to principles of honest, good faith dialogue.  To our Presbyterian friends: please know there are many Jewish leaders who stand with you as you support the cause of peace and justice in Israel/Palestine.

In a recent open letter to the PC (USA), Rabbi Margaret Holub, my colleague on the JVP Rabbinical Council expressed this sentiment eloquently with the following words:

Your Church has long been active in pursuing justice and peace by nonviolent means, including divestment, in many places around the world.  As Christians, you have your own particular stake in the land to which both our traditions have long attachments of faith and history.  We particularly acknowledge the oppression of Palestinian Christians under Israeli occupation and the justice of your efforts to relieve the oppression directed against your fellows.

To advocate for an end to an unjust policy is not anti-Semitic.  To criticize Israel is not anti-Semitic.  To invest your own resources in corporations which pursue your vision of a just and peaceful world, and to withdraw your resources from those which contradict this vision, is not anti-Semitic.  There is a terrible history of actual anti-Semitism perpetrated by Christians at different times throughout the millennia and conscientious Christians today do bear a burden of conscience on that account.  We can understand that, with your commitment to paths of peace and justice, it must be terribly painful and inhibiting to be accused of anti-Semitism.

In fact, many of us in the Jewish community recognize that the continuing occupation of Palestine itself presents a great danger to the safety of the Jewish people, not to mention oppressing our spirits and diminishing our honor in the world community.  We appreciate the solidarity of people of conscience in pursuing conscientious nonviolent strategies, such as phased selective divestment, to end the occupation.

I am proud my name is under this letter, alongside many other members of our Rabbinical Council. If you stand with us, please join us in supporting the PC (USA) divestment resolution at their GA in Pittsburgh this summer.

Why I Support BDS

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by Rabbi Margaret Holub

I try to think about why I hold the opinions I do.  In thinking about Israel and Palestine, like many of us my thinking is formed to a great degree by time I have spent in both places.  I have been especially moved by visits I have made to the West Bank in 1995, 2002 and 2007.  In particular I spent some time in Hebron in 2007, and that experience shaped my thinking and feeling quite deeply.  I also was involved for some years in advocating for a poor family in Beit Ummar whose house has been slated for demolition because it fronts on the settlers-only bypass road, and this caused me to keep up in some detail with the practice of home demolition over those years.

I find the details of the occupation to be emotionally wrenching and morally challenging to me as a Jew and as a rabbi.

I think back to my first visit to the home of a Palestinian peace activist in Ramallah.  As we made our plans to visit, he asked me if my husband wore a kippah — he said that they had been under curfew for 31 days recently, and his young children were consequently terrified of men in kippot.  I think of the  families I met in Hebron who have to climb in and out of windows to their own houses, because Palestinians are not allowed to walk on the street where their homes front.  I think of an old man on a donkey with his grandson, also in Hebron, forced to dismount and empty his saddlebags at a checkpoint.  I think of sitting in a meeting with the mayor of Beit Ummar, a Hamas member, and him joking mordantly that his 30 recent days in jail, his most recent of four post-election imprisonments, were a vacation — then saying that in fact those 30 days “injure me from inside.”  I think of the Sabarneh family, my “partner family” in Beit Ummar, whose very poor house has been slated for demolition for over a decade, learning that a portion of their field would also soon be seized for settlement expansion.

I know that there are policy reasons on the part of the IDF for many individual demolition orders, checkpoints, passbook requirements, segregated roadways, destruction of trees, confiscation of Palestinian farmland, detentions without charge, establishment of “sterile areas” and other particulars of the occupation which may seem defensible when judged in isolation.  I understand that high unemployment and deprivation and periodic violence may be seen as collateral damage.  But I find the larger project of occupation, viewed as a whole, to be shameful.  And I feel very strongly that it needs to end.

Are the occupation of the West Bank and the constriction of Gaza worse than the occupation of Tibet or the incursions of Sudan into South Sudan or other places of oppression of one people by another?  I don’t know.  But as a Jew, and particularly as a leader of Jews, I feel like I have “skin in the game” with regard to what Jews do in the world which is different than my relationship with other places of inequality and oppression.  For me, when Torah is quoted in support of these policies and Jewish politicians and bureaucrats write them and Jewish soldiers impose them, then kol yisrael arevim zeh im zeh (“all Jews are responsible for one another”) and as a Jew I feel responsible to voice my opposition.   I am surprised when I hear people say that we who don’t live in Israel shouldn’t judge what Israel does.  If that is the case, then we shouldn’t support Israel either.

I also feel some hirhur bi’tshuvah (“inclination to repentance”) as an American about the occupation, knowing that it is supported in such great measure not only by US foreign aid but also American weapons, training and political cooperation.  As Americans we are complicit in a whole panoply of oppressions.  But US commitment to Israel’s present policy is disturbingly large, even relative to its other malign commitments.

A happier source of my thinking is time I have spent in South Africa since the change happened there in 1992.  I have visited three times, including two extended sabbaticals there.  I went specifically to experience the aftermath of apartheid and to try to find some hope with regard to Israel and Palestine.  And I came away from my time there feeling hopeful indeed.  South Africa today is a difficult place in many ways, but it has made a largely successful transition to a multiracial democracy.  In particular, the slaughter of whites, which was so greatly feared in the waning days of apartheid (and maybe for its whole duration) never happened.  It is worthwhile to think about why that specter didn’t materialize.  South Africa has its own story and its own politics; but I think there is much we can learn there, not even so much about apartheid and occupation as about transition and healing.

I am most grateful that a wide cross-section of Palestinian organizations came together and issued their call for divestment.  This provides a way for me to do something besides passively holding supportive opinions.  I am still in the process of parsing out in my own conscience which parts of the complex landscape of BDS I support.  I have no hesitation at all about advocating for divestment from corporations whose products and facilities directly support the occupation.  This is where Jewish Voice for Peace is putting its efforts.  Thinking about South Africa in particular makes me inclined to support the boycott of Israeli products and divestment from Israeli corporations and sanctioning entertainers, sports figures and the like who choose to perform in Israel.  I think it is important for Israeli to know that world opinion is increasingly united in opposition to the occupation.  It’s time for it to end.

There is no joy for me in advocating against the actions of my own people.  I want Jewish business and culture and productivity to thrive in our world.  But not at cost of the lives and livelihoods and homes and farms of another people.  I hope very much that BDS will be a potent and quickly-effective worldwide movement and that very soon we can all, as South Africa has, turn our attention to the many crises of a just and sustainable aftermath to a cruel chapter in our history.

JVP and Ta’anit Tzedek Call for One Day Fast in Solidarity with Khaled Adnan

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Jewish Voice for Peace and Ta’anit Tzedek: Jewish Fast for Gaza are calling for a one day fast (from sunrise to sunset) on Friday, February 17, 2012 in solidarity with Khader Adnan, who today is in his 61st day of a hunger strike.

Khader began his hunger strike on December 18th, 2011  after he was arrested  in a nighttime Israeli military raid on his home in the West Bank village of Arraba. Since his arrest, Khader has been held in “administrative detention”–without trial or charges against him.  It has been reported that he is affiliated with Islamic Jihad, but no evidence of that affiliation has been presented.  Regardless of his political beliefs, administrative detention and the interrogations which sparked his hunger strike are entirely unacceptable according to international law.

His hunger strike is intended as a symbolic challenge to the Israeli government and military, as we learn from a letter from his prison cell in Israel’s Ramleh military hospital: “I hereby assert that I am confronting the occupiers not for my own sake as an individual, but for the sake of thousands of prisoners who are being deprived of their simplest human rights while the world and international community look on.”

Khader, 33, is  a father of two from the village of Arraba in the Jenin district. His wife is pregnant with their third child. Prior to his arrest, Adnan worked as a baker while studying for a master’s degree in economics at the Bir Zeit University.

Khader is chained to his hospital bed by Israeli authorities. An Israeli military judge denied his appeal challenging his administrative detention, essentially sentencing him to death.  Israel has ignored the pleas of numerous human rights agencies, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, to either “charge or release” Adnan.

Khader Adnan is but one of thousands of Palestinian prisoners being held in Israeli prisons.  According to a January 1, 2012 report by Addameer, a Palestinian prisoner support organization, there are currently 4417 Palestinians held as political prisoners in Israel jails, 310 of whom are being held in administrative detention without trial or formal charge.

This Friday, the people of Bil’in, together with their Israeli and international supporters, will participate in a demonstration marking seven years of resistance to the Wall, settlements and Occupation. The gathering will be dedicated to Khader Adnan.

Jewish Voice for Peace and Ta’anit Tzedek stand with the people of Bil’in and all those who work tirelessly for peace with justice in Israel/Palestine. We are calling on all our friends and colleagues in this movement to join us in a one day fast this Friday in solidarity with Khader Adnan.

May his sacrifice not be in vain. May we all live to see the day in which human rights, civil rights and equality are enjoyed by all inhabitants of Israel/Palestine. May we work to make it so.

An Open Letter to the Presbyterian Church (USA)

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We write to you as members of the Jewish Voice for Peace Rabbinical Council to encourage your efforts to initiate phased selective divestment from corporations which profit from or support Israel’s occupation of the West Bank.  We applaud your initiative and want to communicate our support as Jewish leaders who also work for justice and peace for the people of Israel and Palestine.

We are aware that the Jewish Council on Public Affairs (JCPA) has unleashed a powerful campaign to dissuade you, and consequently dissuade the Presbyterian Church (USA) from moving forward with its well-considered divestment campaign.  We have been dismayed to learn the JCPA has called your divestment campaign “anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, and at times anti-Semitic”.

As Jewish leaders, we believe the JCPA’s stance does not represent the broader consensus of the American Jewish community. There is in fact a growing desire within the North American Jewish community to end our silence over Israel’s oppressive occupation of Palestine.  Every day Jewish leaders – we among them – are stepping forward to express outrage over the confiscation of Palestinian land, destruction of farms and groves and homes, the choking of the Palestinian economy and daily harassment and violence against Palestinian people. Members of the Jewish community are increasingly voicing their support for nonviolent popular resistance against these outrages – including the kind of cautious, highly-specified divestment such as the Presbyterian Church (USA) is preparing to undertake.

However, even if the American Jewish community were unanimously opposed to such phased selective divestment by your Church – which is not at all the case – we believe it is still important that you move forward with the thoughtful multi-year process which your Church has begun.  Your Church has long been active in pursuing justice and peace by nonviolent means, including divestment, in many places around the world.  As Christians, you have your own particular stake in the land to which both our traditions have long attachments of faith and history.  We particularly acknowledge the oppression of Palestinian Christians under Israeli occupation and the justice of your efforts to relieve the oppression directed against your fellows.

To advocate for an end to an unjust policy is not anti-Semitic.  To criticize Israel is not anti-Semitic.  To invest your own resources in corporations which pursue your vision of a just and peaceful world, and to withdraw your resources from those which contradict this vision, is not anti-Semitic.  There is a terrible history of actual anti-Semitism perpetrated by Christians at different times throughout the millennia and conscientious Christians today do bear a burden of conscience on that account.  We can understand that, with your commitment to paths of peace and justice, it must be terribly painful and inhibiting to be accused of anti-Semitism.

In fact, many of us in the Jewish community recognize that the continuing occupation of Palestine itself presents a great danger to the safety of the Jewish people, not to mention oppressing our spirits and diminishing our honor in the world community.  We appreciate the solidarity of people of conscience in pursuing conscientious nonviolent strategies, such as phased selective divestment, to end the occupation.

With prayers for peace,

Rabbi Margaret Holub, JVP Rabbinical Council

Rabbi Brant Rosen, JVP Rabbinical Council

Rabbi Alissa Wise, JVP Rabbinical Council

Rabbi Julie Greenberg, JVP Rabbinical Council

Rabbi Michael Feinberg, JVP Rabbinical Council

Cantor Michael Davis, JVP Rabbinical Council

Rabbi Rachel Barenblatt, JVP Rabbinical Council

Rabbi Lynn Gottleib, JVP Rabbinical Council

Rabbi Laurie Zimmerman, JVP Rabbinical Council

Rabbi Rebecca Alpert, JVP Rabbinical Council

Rabbi Joseph Berman, JVP Rabbinical Council

Rabbi David Mivasair, JVP Rabbinical Council

Rabbi Brian Walt, JVP Rabbinical Council

Rabbi Jeremy Milgrom, JVP Rabbinical Council

David Basior, Rabbinical Student, JVP Rabbinical Council

Alana Alpert, Rabbinical Student, JVP Rabbinical Council

On Religious Ethical Zionism: An Open Letter to J Street

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by Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb

I would like to respond to the J Street letter, “Join Us in Supporting Religious Ethical Zionism” and share why I cannot sign this letter in its present form.

Although I also strongly condemn the actions of those who participated in the crimes you describe and am glad you are speaking out in public to denounce these crimes, I find that your letter has some serious shortcomings which I would like to address:

1) The crimes and sexist/racist behaviors committed by “Anti-Zionist Haredim and Ultra-Zionist settlers” are only one aspect of a system of structural violence which defines Israel’s relationship to Palestinians. The Israeli state and its various civil and government institutions, employ both direct and indirect forms of violence to displace Palestinians, seize their land, detain them illegally in prison, deny them access to water, their livelihood, holy places and families.

2) While settler violence is increasing, it is, as we all know, carried out with impunity because neither the Israeli military, nor Israeli police are committed to protecting Palestinian human rights. 500 Palestinian homes were destroyed in 2011. Over 200 children were arrested and detained as a matter of policy for “throwing stones.” Thousands of soldiers deny Palestinians from all sectors of civilian life the right to travel freely on the road. Settler violence and state violence go hand in hand.

Settler violence would not happen without the implicit cooperation of the state. Many times Israeli state support of settler violence is explicit, as in its practice of bringing Israeli teenagers to remove furniture from Palestinian homes destroyed in the Negev.

3) By singling out the most extreme version of Orthodoxy as a culprit we are, I believe, failing to understand the larger structural issue of systemic violence symbolized by the word “Occupation.” Attitudes, beliefs and behaviors which dehumanize “Arabs” through constant stereotyping accompanied by military occupation has a deteriorating effect on the whole society. For instance, Birthright Israel alumni often report frequent hate speech directed toward Palestinians during trips by their guides and sometimes the IDF kids that accompany them.

4) Speaking out is important on a symbolic level. I believe however, that more is needed. What actions are we taking to pressure Israel into ending the confiscation of Palestinian lands, unchecked administrative detention, checkpoints, the continual expansion of settlements and the outrageous siege of Gaza which seems to know no end?

Our outrage at so many violations of human rights should be broad and deep. We cannot condemn only one sector of the society without articulating its relationship to the whole. Singling out these specific crimes without reference to the context obscures the system of violence out of which these acts are born.

You may know the story of a person who sees a drowning man floating down the river and pulls him out. More bodies keep coming and she keeps trying to rescue each and every one. She fails to realize, however, that until rescuers go to the source of the violence upstream and deal with what is causing people to be thrown into the river in the first place, she will never be able to truly halt the violence.

Thank you for your courage and your decision to speak out in order to stand up for human rights.

L’shalom
Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb

A Statement in Support of the PennBDS Conference

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by Rabbis Alissa Wise and Brant Rosen

The upcoming PennBDS conference, to take place Friday, February 3 through Sunday, February 5 has been met, even before it has begun, with enthusiasm and support from a wide variety of well-respected organizations and individuals. It has also been met with concern and resentment from a small, but vocal group of individuals and organizations – including Jewish organizations.

Of all the public statements made against conference organizers and the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions (BDS) movement in general, accusations of anti-Semitism and comparisons to Nazism that are the most troubling and most in need of refutation and condemnation.

The legacy of persecution against Jews runs deep and this prejudice is real even today. Accusations of anti-Semitism should not be taken lightly. Nor should they be issued carelessly. This much we owe to those whom we have lost.

We strongly reject the incendiary accusations that have been made against the Palestinian call for BDS. Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions is part of a time-honored, non-violent legacy – tactics which have been used in a multitude of historic struggles for justice where a less powerful people have sought nonviolent means to right injustices.

In the civil rights movement in this country boycotts were a key tactic in winning equity for African Americans. In the global struggle against Apartheid in South Africa, corporate accountability campaigns were instrumental in shifting the balance of power.

Certainly Jews are no strangers to the downside of power dynamics. But, as painful as it is for us to face, it is Israelis, not Palestinians, that hold disproportionate power. Moreover, Israel is wielding its power in increasingly oppressive ways, whether through government theft of Palestinian land, discriminatory laws, home demolitions, regular, brutal crackdown on nonviolent protest, etc.

The legacy of institutional oppression against us has left many Jews traumatized. This legacy has also inspired increasing numbers of Jews to stand in solidarity with the oppressed, including Palestinians. While there are certainly many liberation movements around the world that we should – and often do – support, BDS is a specifically Palestinian call for solidarity that has been issued from Palestinian civil society. The relevant question before us is not “what about human rights abuse in other countries?” The real question, quite simply, is “do we believe that this particular call is worthy of our support?”

We understand that there are those of good faith who do not support BDS for tactical reasons. This is a valid conversation – and the organizers of PennBDS have made it clear that they welcome all who attend the conference in the spirit of respectful inquiry and debate. But we believe that attacking the conference and the BDS movement as anti-Semitic and akin to Nazism is slanderous, inflammatory and utterly beyond the pale. As Jews and people of faith, we believe the Palestinian call for BDS to be an honorable one and we pledge our support to the work of the PennBDS conference.

Sell the Torah, Put the Kid in School

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by Rabbi Alissa Wise

When I entered rabbinical school, I had a secret agenda – to finally find a Jewish practice to strengthen and sustain my social justice work and commitments that went beyond Biblical quotes imploring us to treat the worker fairly, but that would hold a practice of reflection, honesty, integrity and accountability. I found that practice in mussar.

Mussar, more or less, means ethics. It comes from Proverbs 1:2 where the meaning is about instruction, discipline, or conduct. Mussar is the ethical thread in Judaism — we can find it in Torah, Gemara, halakhah (Jewish law), Jewish literature, and the long history of Jewish labor and social justice activism.  It was also, more formally, an ethical, spiritual, and cultural movement founded in the 19th century in Eastern Europe by Rabbi Israel Salanter.

I relate to Rabbi Salanter in part because he, like me was a rabbi and an organizer. He traveled around from shtetl, to village, to town supporting communities of mussar practitioners—Jews devoted to ethical living.

There is a story of Rabbi Salanter visiting one of the mussar towns he was organizing, and, to his great surprise, finds a school-age boy sitting on the street in the middle of the day.

He asks him, “Boy, why are you not in school?”

The boy replies “My parents don’t have enough money to pay the tuition, so I can not go to school.”

This enrages Rabbi Salanter—what kind of mussar town can have a young boy not in school?

Rabbi Salanter promptly takes the boy and heads to the school. He demands from the headmaster “Why is this boy not in school?”

The headmaster replies “His family can’t pay the tuition, and we can’t have him in school if he doesn’t pay the tuition.”

At this point Salanter is fuming. He rushes into the the House of Prayer, opens the ark and finds in it a big, beautiful Torah scroll. He turns to the headmaster and demands—”sell the Torah, put the kid in school.”

As we ended our JVP West Coast Regional Leadership Development Institute outside Portland, Oregon last weekend, this story was the only one I could use to describe my feeling of who we are and what we are doing at JVP.  We at JVP strive for this – a sense of radical responsibility in the world, of obligation to community, not just to self, and above all else a readiness and ability to refocus.