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Today is our last day as legislative assistants at the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism. None of us imagined on August 20, 2013 – our very first day – that this year would have gone by so fast. It is has been an incredible honor to serve and represent our vibrant, passionate Movement in Washington, D.C.; one that we will cherish always.

As President Obama deliberates over approval of the Keystone XL pipeline, Jennifer Brodkey Kaufman, Chair of the Commission on Social Action of Reform Judaism, sent the following letter to the White House, urging several key areas for consideration.

By Stéphane Beder In the past few days I have received numerous messages of concern from friends from all over the world. They refer to media coverage of the anti-Semitic attacks that took place in Paris and often make comparisons to World War II, such as the attacks of Kristallnacht. First, let me be clear: These are very serious and bad events but the situation is far from being the apocalyptic crisis that one could believe when hearing CNN; I can’t help thinking of my Israeli friends who explain that life continues even when siren alerts are heard several times a day.

With seemingly near constant news headlines of mass shootings and other acts of gun violence, debate on prevention measures for public safety is critical. The issue of whether universal background checks should be required for all firearm purchases is a possible solution to decrease some of these disturbing statistics:

• One in three people in the U.S. know someone who has been shot;
• On average, 32 Americans are murdered with guns every day and 140 are treated in an emergency room for gun-related injuries;
• Every day, about 51 people take their own life with a gun and 45 people are shot or killed in a gun accident.

The State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor released the International Religious Freedom Report for 2013 last week, which describes in great detail the state of religious freedom in many different countries.  Identifying “Countries of Particular Concern” is one of the things the annual International Religious Freedom Report is tasked with doing.  This year, Turkmenistan was added to the list of CPCs.  The eight other countries on the list, all of which have been on the CPC list previously, are Burma, China, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Uzbekistan.

By Rabbi Robert A. Nosanchuk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndRcsrruxC8&feature=youtu.be Quite often I remember my great bobe and zayde and the little village in Belarus they left to make a life here. I never saw the inside of their village. But I do remember my visits to their home as a child, and can still feel the bristle of my great zayde’s mustache on my cheek when he kissed me and greeted me. I feel called into Jewish activism by their legacy. And tonight I hear them and their generation speaking to me. They are asking: What did you learn from us? What did you learned from what has occurred to us in Europe and then here in the U.S.? What was the oppression we fled? And I hear them telling me of the help given to them when they arrived in this country- the shelter, food, and communal support they needed when they had nowhere else to turn? These compelling questions are carried with me as I look at what is occurring on our southern borders, here in the U.S. My eyes have become focused on the volatile situation wherein nearly 60,000 children from Central America have streamed across the U.S.-Mexico border, in a huge wave of migration from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.