As a Black woman, a Jew, an American, and a human being, April 7, 2022, is a day that I will always remember. I will remember it for the historic event that it was: the confirmation of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman to the Supreme Court.
On Passover, we recount the Ten Plagues that were put upon the Egyptian people. While acknowledging the ancient plagues, we invite you to also incorporate into your Seder an accounting of some of the "plagues" and injustices that afflict our present-day society.
Around this time last year, I was preparing for my legislative assistant interview with the RAC when tragedy unfolded in Georgia. A racist and misogynist gunman, entered two Atlanta-area massage businesses and murdered eight people, including six Asian women spa workers.
This is not yet the America most of us dream of, but it is an unavoidable part of our DNA. American equality and exceptionalism are checks that are still in the mail. If we truly love what this country is capable of, we must continue to speak the hard truth to power.
Many of these steps are ones we called for in outreach to the transition team, and they are already having a positive impact. But legislation is vital to ensure these steps cannot be overturned at the discretion of a new president.
The Union for Reform Judaism shares resources for use in congregations and Jewish communities, as well as by families and individual, in our shared pursuit of justice.
Before the start of Shabbat, the Reform Jewish community hosted a live webinar, "Healing, Hope, Action: A Reform Movement Pre-Shabbat Gathering," sharing a Jewish framing for what we’re experiencing communally and as a country.
Democracy is, indeed, a promise we renew not just on election day, but every day. Democracy does not exist independent of our contributions to it. Citizens and immigrants, voters, and presidents – all of us build democracy.
On Monday, the FBI released its annual compilation of hate crimes statistics, which summarizes all hate crimes reported to the FBI in 2019. The grim data underscore the alarming power of hateful ideologies.