Wednesday, March 15, 2006

Friends in my places...

Hey all. Just wanted to make sure you noticed I added a few friends to the side. Please make sure to stop by and say hi, and tell em Ruby K sentcha!

Abacaxi Mamao- very insightful blog from a very insightful friend, ALG. Fantastic read!
AhavatCafe- another great friend of mine, who i think likes coffee, and apparently, according to her last post, likes kermit too!
ZT- Had the privellege of meeting young ZT in DC while staying with him and FJD, and the rest, as they say, is history. Jew stuff and Progressive political stuff from a my boy who's fighting the fight with BIG LABOR!

And hey, speaking of friends, in the continuing saga of how the Jewish establishment seems quite good at turning potential breakthroughs into shit, here's an article from my friend Ben Murane and Ilana Sichel about the failure of Hillel's Spitzer Forum on Public Policy/JCPA Plenum to actually tackle social justice in a real meaningful way that treats young Jews, not as window dressing or puppets, but as partners:

"Last week Avraham Infeld, president of the Jewish campus organization Hillel, rightfully stated that tzedakah is easier than tzedek. The difference between charity and justice, he pointed out at the Spitzer Forum on Public Policy/JCPA Plenum, is the difference between providing essentials like food or clothing and dealing with the root causes of poverty and inequality.

Infeld's insight was so right. Why, then, was Hillel's Spitzer Forum, which was ostensibly committed to social justice, so very wrong?

According to the conference literature, the forum's priority was to "make the connection between being a responsible citizen and a responsible Jew, by exploring social justice work through a Jewish lens." But what we experienced during this three-day bonanza was a culture of luxury, condescension and half-hearted commitments that was embarrassingly inconsistent with the mission. The apparent contradiction of hosting a social justice convention in a four-star hotel, the insulting infantilization of students, and the noticeable failure to address the structural inequities within the Jewish state, prompted us to question not only how Hillel defines social justice, but how it is training the next generation of Jewish leaders. "

Read the full article in the Forward here.

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