Fresh Updates from RAC

Editor’s Note: Rabbi Eger gave the following address on Monday at a rally before the Supreme Court organized by United for Marriage, a coalition that supports marriage equality. This week, the Supreme Court of the United States heard oral arguments in California’s Prop 8 case and the Defense of Marriage Act case. Read Rabbi Eger’s blog post about the cases.

As a rabbi and president-elect of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, I come here to be with you this morning at the Supreme Court on the very first day of Passover to say: Our nation is ready for marriage equality.

This is one of the holiest days of the Jewish calendar. It marks the day in Jewish tradition when we mark the Exodus from slavery in ancient Egypt; it marks the beginning of a journey to freedom. Today is our day to march toward that freedom, the freedom to marry.

I represent more than 2,500 Reform rabbis. We support marriage equality and have filed Friends of the Court briefs in both today’s Prop 8 case and tomorrow’s DOMA case. Do not let others tell you that all religions oppose LGBT equality rights. We Reform Jews welcome, support, include, and, yes, advocate full rights and equality, including the right to marry the ones we love.

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Passover has always been a family time for me. It is a time that my siblings, parents, cousins, grandparents, aunts and uncles come together. We tell stories, argue, eat, complain about what we’re eating – in other words, we do all those things that make us a family.  It is fitting then that this Passover could mark a turning point in the future of what it will mean to be a family for millions of America.

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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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As you may remember from my last post on the subject, the expansion of Medicaid is the provision of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that will do the most to provide health coverage to low-income people.

Originally, the expansion of coverage was mandatory for all states to implement in order to receive federal matching funds for their respective Medicaid programs. However, In June of last year, the Supreme Court ruled that the threat presented by the ACA of eliminating all Medicaid funding constituted “a gun to the head” of states and was therefore unconstitutional. As a matter of practicality, the expansion has now been rendered optional.

States are now debating whether to implement this expansion, a debate we as Jews have a vested interest in. We learn from ancient Jewish scholars and texts that providing health care is not just an obligation for the patient and the doctor, but for the society as well. It is for this reason that Maimonides lists health care among the ten most important communal services that had to be offered by a city to its residents. (Mishneh Torah, SeferHamadda IV:23). During the long history of the self-governing Jewish community, almost all communities set up societies to ensure that all members had access to health care. Doctors were required to reduce their rates for poor patients and, when that was not sufficient, communal subsidies were established (Shulchan Aruch, Yoreh Deah 249:16; Responsa Ramat Rahel of Rabbi Eliezer Waldernberg 24-25).

Therefore, the RAC has created a new webpage dedicated to Medicaid and Medicaid expansion; it serves as a terrific complement to our other resources on healthcare. From these pages you can find basic information about the Medicaid program and where it stands with regard to expansion in the various states. In addition, we have created an action page where you can send letters and emails to your legislators and governor urging them to expand Medicaid in your state. If you live in a state that has already committed to expanding Medicaid, you can also thank your elected officials for doing so.

Don’t delay – take action now!

Image Courtesy of Doctors for America. 

When the ink on the constitution dried, the ratifications of the states were complete and the structure of our country was finally taking shape, the privilege of voting was conferred upon a narrow class of citizens, wealthy land-owning white men. As time went on, voting rights expanded to larger casts of the electorate. Representative democracy became the crown jewel of our country. Voting gave citizens the power to change and control the government, making it responsive to the will of citizens and not the other way around. Martin Luther King, Jr. once declared, “Voting is the foundation stone for political action. The basic elements so vital to Negro advancement can only be achieved by seeking redress from government at local, state and Federal levels. To do this the vote is essential.” Indeed the right to vote is the single greatest right granted every American regardless of socioeconomic circumstance, familiar origins or racial identity. Though, the latter came about only very recently.

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Last week, my fellow LA Benny wrote a blog that included an interpretation of our cornerstone text “justice, justice, you shall pursue.” When thinking about the repetition of the word tzedek (justice), he suggested that perhaps it meant that we must pursue multiple “justices,” or multiple issues, at once. I want to suggest another interpretation: that the repetition of the word “justice” is there to help us understand that in order to truly “pursue” this worthy goal, we will often have to repeat ourselves. We will often have to work on the same thing multiple times in multiple venues until our voice is finally heard and change is achieved.

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This post is part of a special feature on RACblog. Continue to check in for a roundup of stories in which the RAC has been featured!

Rabbi Saperstein convened a gathering of influential, national religious leaders for a press conference in reaction to the horrific shootings a week and a half ago in Newtown, Connnecticut. Religious leaders traveled to Washington, DC and gathered at the National Cathedral for a press conference on Friday morning. The event was covered in the New York Times, Religion News Service, AP, CNN, JTA and London Times, among others.

Rabbi Saperstein’s full comments can be found here.

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Today the Supreme Court will decide whether or not to hear any of the marriage equality cases currently awaiting a grant of a writ of certiorari (cert). Nine petitions challenging the so-called Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) have been filed before the court, along with one petition challenging the 9^th Circuit Court’s ruling on California’s Proposition 8. The Court could decide today to hear any one of these cases, more than one, or to pass on all of them and, therefore, pass on ruling on the subject of marriage equality. The RAC and other LGBT rights groups hope that the Court’s decision to hear any of these cases could be a major step forward in the struggle for marriage equality in America.

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