Fresh Updates from RAC

This post is part of a weekly feature on RACblog. Check in at the end of the week for a roundup of stories in which the RAC has been featured!

Last night, the Boy Scouts of America voted to end their ban on gay scouts, while maintaining their restriction on gay scout leaders. This partial victory was welcomed with pride across the Reform Movement. In fact, the RAC coordinated a clergy letter urging the BSA to accept gay scouts, which was signed by over 500 clergy! That story was covered widely in the Jewish press, particularly by outlets including JTA, The Times of Israel, and The Jewish Journal of Greater L.A.

This past week, a group of rabbis also came to D.C. to speak with their Senators and advocate for comprehensive immigration reform. Their words were powerful, and they represent only a small sample of the many rabbis taking a stand on this issue across the country. Just this week, op-eds written by rabbis on this very issue were published in local secular and Jewish press. Check out Rabbi Seth Limmer’s op ed in the New York Jewish Week.

Yesterday, rabbis from across America came to Washington D.C. to raise their voices in support of comprehensive immigration reform. The rabbis participating in the advocacy day spoke with key legislators about the bipartisan Senate immigration bill introduced last month, expressing their support for the legislation, offering ways to continue to strengthen it and discussing strategies for advancing this issue in their home congregations. They also highlighted key priorities for Reform Jews in the immigration reform process – a comprehensive approach to keeping families together, humane and balanced border protection, a pathway to citizenship and workplace protections for all. Rabbis in yesterday’s meetings urged their legislators to ensure the inclusion in final legislation of these policies, which uphold the humanitarian principles central to the Reform Movement.

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Yesterday, Reform Jews from across the country lifted up their voices together to demand comprehensive immigration reform that does justice to our American and Reform Jewish values. Over 11 million undocumented immigrants live in the shadows of our communities. Families face up to decades long backlogs in acquiring visas, workers are left without protections, children are left behind as parents are deported, and LGBT Americans cannot sponsor the visa of a spouse. Yesterday, hundreds of Reform Jews across our nation called to tell our Senators: we can, and we must, do better. Read more…

In this week’s Torah portion, we are exposed to one of the Torah’s more troubling stories. Miriam, who has been a character around which the Israelites have gathered and rallied through the exodus from Egypt, speaks poorly of her brother Moses. As a result, Miriam is cursed with leprosy. While there are many problematic elements in this story, one of the key takeaways is that words – both in the Bible and today – have a lot of meaning.

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This post is part of a weekly feature on RACblog. Check in at the end of the week for a roundup of stories in which the RAC has been featured!

Welcome to this week’s edition of “Featuring the RAC,” written from the offices of the Jerusalem Post’s 26^th most powerful Jew in the world! In all seriousness, we were immensely proud to see Rabbi Saperstein on JPost’s list, and equally proud of our friend Anat Hoffman who scored the #5 spot.

This week, Rabbi Saperstein also joined the Interfaith Alliance, National Council of Jewish Women, and other religious organizations calling for the inclusion of a ban on religious profiling in the immigration reform bill. Here at the RAC we’ve been hard at work advocating for comprehensive immigration reform more broadly, as well.

Rabbi Saperstein also voiced concern this week over the status of the Jewish population in Hungary by signing a letter with several other leaders of American Jewish organizations. The letter, addressed to Secretary of State John Kerry and Ambassador Michael Kozak, read in part: “Given the growth of hatred against Jews and other minorities (particularly the Roma) in Hungary, we urge you to keep the issue of intolerance and discrimination squarely on the US-Hungarian bilateral agenda…We also encourage you to raise the matter personally in your direct dealings with Hungarian officials.”

On Tuesday, May 21, lift up your voices together and call your Senators and tell them that you support comprehensive immigration reform to address our nation’s broken system. Along with others across the country, tell Congress that you demand reform that does justice to our American and Reform Jewish values.

Dial 1-888-897-0174 to hear key points and automatically connect to your Senator.

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This post is part of a weekly feature on RACblog. Check in at the end of the week for a roundup of stories in which the RAC has been featured!

This week, Rabbi Saperstein was invited by Vice President Biden for a private meeting lasting 2 and a half hours with 20 other faith leaders to discuss next steps in the gun violence prevention debate. Reporting out from their conversation, Rabbi Saperstein recognized that the Administration is still very much committed to passing gun violence prevention legislation, but “The conversation presumed the vote would happen first on immigration…That seemed to be the back-and-forth on both sides – that immigration was a key priority right now. When that vote took place, it would be an opportunity to refocus on this.”

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While the new Senate comprehensive immigration reform bill takes many strides toward improving our immigration system, it also includes some significant steps backward. Our Jewish tradition not only teaches us, but commands us to treat the foreigner living in our country with the same laws as our own.

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