Fresh Updates from RAC

This post is part of our Passover series, in which we think about the application of our age-old Passover story and traditions to the crucial issues we face today. For ways to infuse your seder with social justice, see our holiday guide.

Each year our seders culminate in the same jubilant cry, “Next year in Jerusalem!” Indeed the entire night can be seen as build-up to that promise, a journey toward freedom. But at the same time it is a profound retelling of oppression. We are commanded not only to remember that we were slaves in the land of Egypt, but to tell the story as if it happened to us personally: to say, “This is what the Lord did for me when he brought me out of the land of Egypt.”

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This post is part of our Passover series, in which we think about the application of our age-old Passover story and traditions to the crucial issues we face today. For ways to infuse your seder with social justice, see our holiday guide.

Somaly Mam was just 14 years old when a man claiming to be her grandfather took her from her village and sold her into slavery in a Cambodian brothel. After years, she escaped and has since secured freedom for tens of thousands of other young girls enslaved Southeast Asia’s brothels. She has been called the “modern Harriet Tubman.” Might she be considered in some ways, a modern Moses?

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This post is part of our Passover series, in which we think about the application of our age-old Passover story and traditions to the crucial issues we face today. For ways to infuse your seder with social justice, see our holiday guide.

We all know the story of Passover. In response to Pharaoh’s refusal to free the Jews from slavery, God unleashed ten plagues upon the Egyptians to entice their leader’s acquiescence. These punishments were ecological disasters, which had devastating effects on the Egyptians; even the Jews were impacted by some of them, namely blood, frogs and lice. The key to the story is the great suffering that had to be endured until the Egyptian’s leader finally agreed to free the slaves.

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I’ve written before on RACblog about the important marriage equality cases before the Supreme Court this term: Windsor v. United States, the case that challenges the so-called Defense of Marriage Act; and Hollingsworth, v. Perry the challenge to California’s constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. While there have been many developments and much speculation since that time, I want to fill you in today specifically on the overwhelming number of briefs that were filed in the cases before the deadline last week.

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Fun costumes, drinking (for those who drink), delicious hamentaschen, Haman (booo!), Esther and Mordecai, another tale of Jewish persecution and redemption: these are the first thoughts that come to mind when I think of Purim. I grew up living a somewhat ‘typical’ Reform Jewish East Coast life, where I learned about and celebrated the various Jewish holidays at Hebrew school, camp, and youth group. The annual production of the Purim Spiel in my home congregation was a huge deal; an outside producer was even hired as the director! As a child, Purim served solely as an excuse to dress up in costume and run around with friends.

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This is one eventful weekend! We have the start of Black History Month, Groundhog Day, the Super Bowl, and to top it all off, the first weekend of Jewish Disability Awareness Month. How will we possibly survive all the excitement? What were they thinking when they planned all of this for just a few short days?

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“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

Martin Luther King, Jr., as you have seen in other RACBlog posts this week, fought not only for civil rights, but against injustices all over the country in all sectors of society. Even civil rights, though, has a broader definition than the race relations component with which it is usually associated.

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“Rabbi Shimon said: If three have eaten at one table and have not spoken over it words of Torah, it is as though they had eaten of the sacrifices of the dead, for it is written (Isaiah 28:8) ‘All tables are covered with filthy vomit; no place is clean.’ But if three have eaten at one table and have spoken over it words of Torah, it is as if they had eaten from the table of God, for it is written (Ezekiel 41:22) ‘He said to me, ‘This is the table that stands before God.’’”– Pirkei Avot 3:4

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