VA Rep. Enters L’Taken Speech into Congressional Record

For six weekends a year, the RAC programming and legislative staff works 16-hour days with little sleep and lots of coffee as we run the Bernard and Audre Rapoport L’Taken Social Justice Seminars. Over the course of those six weekends, nearly 2,000 high school students participate in the program, which is designed to expose students to a variety of public policy issues, explore the Jewish values surrounding these issues and teach the skills of an effective advocate. The four-day intensive seminar culminates on Monday, when the students visit their members of Congress and present effective, persuasive and passionate lobby speeches on the topic of their choice. Even years later, L’Taken alumni recall the lobbying experience as empowering and transformative – and I can imagine that Alex Lesser and Sam Dixon of Temple B’nai Shalom in Fairfax Station, VA (pictured above), won’t be forgetting the events of this past Monday anytime soon.

Alex and Sam worked together to write a speech urging their members of Congress to extend federal unemployment insurance, which is set to expire later this month. After delivering the speech together in their senators’ offices on Monday, they split up to visit their respective representatives in the House. Temple B’nai Shalom Assistant Educator and Youth Director Josh Fixler accompanied Alex to visit the office of Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA), where they met with the Congressman’s legislative director, Tim Aiken. The speech was so impressive that the next day, Rep. Moran entered the speech, in its entirety, into the Congressional Record, the official record of the U.S. Congress.

Before entering the speech, Rep. Moran said the following:

Mr. Speaker, I have the good fortune of representing many bright and promising young people. When they speak selflessly about the need to help those less fortunate and recognize that the federal government has a responsibility to address this need, it renews my hope for a better future. Yesterday was one such occasion. A young man, Alex Lesser, accompanied by Josh Fixler, Assistant Educator and Youth Director of the Temple B’Nai Shalom Congregation, came to my office on behalf of the Religious Action Center and the Union for Reform Judaism. Alex presented my office with a paper he and his friend, Sam Dixon, wrote jointly on the topic of economic justice and the importance of extending unemployment benefits. Alex’s and Sam’s eloquent words of reason deserve to be heard by my colleagues.

The full speech as entered in the Congressional Record is available here. Personally, I find this paragraph of the speech to be the most incisive and the one that best illustrates the students’ selflessness and promise of which Rep. Moran speaks:

We are here today because Judaism teaches us that this is a vitally important issue. God commands us in the book of Deuteronomy that ‘‘if there is a needy person among you . . . do not harden your heart and shut your hand against your kin. Rather, you must open your hand and lend whatever is sufficient’’ (Deuteronomy 15:7–11). It teaches us that providing for the needy is not just a matter of charity, but an obligation. Judaism also teaches that the highest form of tzedakah, the Jewish value of charity, is to help a person achieve self-sufficiency.

Unemployment insurance is that exact type of support that the homeless need to help them get back on their feet. I think that we can all agree that poverty is one of the worst fates imaginable. It is one of the most terrible sufferings. The Union for Reform Judaism has consistently fought against attempts to weaken the social safety net. This is clearly a moral choice as well as a political one.

Yes, by the end of the weekend we’re all exhausted and can’t imagine starting over again just a few days later with a whole new group of students. But then we work with students like Alex and Sam – we see the impact this experience has on them and the impact they have on their members of Congress – and we become re-inspired to continue training the next generation of Reform Jewish social justice advocates.

L’dor v’dor, from generation to generation, and may you go from strength to strength – or, as we say at the RAC, from L’Taken to L’taken.