Fresh Updates from RAC

The White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Wait, what? What happened to separation of church and state? How can this office exist, if it is created by the government? What do these so-called partnerships entail?

Actually, the separation of church and state is very much alive in the Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships, as I learned at an event on Monday at the Brookings Institution.

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“Joe Matera, a 41-year-old father of three from Patterson, New York, found himself out of work when his business analyst position in Connecticut was eliminated in a ‘restructuring’ in June 2011. While he and his family were kept afloat with the help of state and then federal unemployment insurance, he pursued an intensive job search that landed him a new job as a senior CRM administrator in August 2012.

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Newly released scores in mathematics, science and literacy show signs of improvement among Israeli youth but despite positive trends, gaps continue to persist between Hebrew-speaking and Arabic-speaking youth. Recently released, results on the TIMSS (Trends in Mathematics and Science Study) exam from 2011 rank Israeli fourth-and eighth-graders seventh, and 13^th in science, a vast improvement from ranking 24^th and 25^th respectively in 2007 when the test was last administered. Measuring the reading levels of fourth-grade students every five years, the PIRLS (Progress in International Reading Literacy Study) exam ranked Israel in 18^th place. In total, 63 countries participated in the math and science exam, and 49 took part in the reading test.

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A month ago, I tempted you with a taste of current fiscal policy (warning: please read Sequestration Part 1 before this, or you will be very confused, not to mention less informed!). You learned what sequestration is, where it came from and how it affects you and the programs you care about. So now let’s talk about the future. What are the options for avoiding the fiscal cliff? Will it be a cliff, or a slope? But most of all, why should you care?

If sequestration takes effect and the fiscal cliff hits, here is a snapshot of what is at stake:

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You’ve probably heard that this election next month is a big one. Many organizations – the RAC included – have spent hours and days and weeks and months encouraging people to Get Out the Vote and to exercise their rights as citizens of the United States to democratically and (mostly) justly select the leaders who will represent them.

Unfortunately, not all Americans have this fundamental right. In fact, there are 11.5 million people who live in the United States and contribute to our economy and society who not only do not possess the right to vote, but aren’t even recognized as legal residents of the country they call home.

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Welcome, CSA members!

This weekend the Commission on Social Action, the social justice policy-making body of the Reform Jewish Movement, will join us from across North America in Washington, D.C. for a jam-packed weekend during which we will delve into issues that are core to the mission of the URJ. Members of the Commission will hear from experts on a variety of topics: from voter suppression to the status of Israeli Arabs, from education reform to health care reform, and from gun control to the implications for Israel as a result of the Arab Awakening. We’ll even be spending a full afternoon parsing the nuances of religious liberty.

The RAC staff is looking forward to learning from and with the members of the Commission, and we’ll be sure to check back in with you throughout the next few days to report on what we’ve learned!

Growing up I always thought of banned books as something distant, something absurd that only happened long ago and far away. I could read with a removed shock the story of the “The Rabbit’s Wedding,” a picture book portraying the marriage of a light-furred rabbit and dark-furred rabbit that was ripped from the library shelves of Alabama in the late 1950s. I could laugh at the constant struggle around the country to remove Harry Potter from schools as it might lure children into attempting magic (though, truthfully, personal experience shows that that might have been a legitimate concern). And I could only imagine what my life might have been like if I, like some students around the country, had not been allowed to read such life changing works as Orwell’s 1984, Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, or Maurice Sendak’s (Z”L) Where the Wild Things Are. However, on this Banned Books Week, I think it is important to look at a couple critical censorship issues with significant political and educational affects on America today.

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Caution: Lots of learning contained in the post below; read at your own risk.

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