From the desk of Rabbi Howald

 Earlier this month, I accompanied three of our post-confirmation students, Gennie Lopez, Sim Lenner, and Nathaniel Lee, to Washington D.C., for a 4 -day conference on social justice sponsored by the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism (the “RAC”). The conference, called the L’taken Social Justice Seminar, is an intense youth summit on Jewish values and public policy. L’taken exposes students to a variety of public policy issues, guides them in an exploration of the Jewish values surrounding the issues they care about, and teaches them the skills of an effective social justice advocate. Last Shabbat, I talked about my impressions of the extended weekend and my hope that the congregation can enable future students to attend this inspiring and meaningful conference.

When I mentioned the RAC, however, I recognized that most of us are not acquainted with the work of the Religious Action Center and its place in the interconnected organizations that make up the distinct groups within the universe of Reform Judaism. Most of us are familiar with the Union for Reform Judaism (“URJ”), the umbrella organization that encompasses all the Reform synagogues in North America. Standing alongside the URJ are the two professional conferences that serve our synagogues, the Central Conference of American Rabbis (the “CCAR”) to which I belong, and the American Conference of Cantors (the “ACC”) to which Cantor Bernstein belongs. Founded in 1961, the RAC serves all these organizations as the advocacy arm of the Reform movement, dedicated to educating and mobilizing Reform Jews around the legislative and social concerns central to our mission to repair the world, including economic justice, civil rights, religious liberty, Israel, and many more.

Over the years, the RAC has had an illustrious history on social justice. When Martin Luther King came to Washington D.C. to ask for the passage of civil rights legislation, the RAC offered him the use of its conference room. In that room, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were both drafted by the coalition of organizations advocating for social change and racial justice. For years, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights was jointly housed in the RAC’s offices, and many other important progressive bills were drafted or advanced there, including the Americans with Disabilities Act 1982, the Voting Rights Extension, the Japanese American Redress Act, the Civil Rights Restoration Act, the Fair Housing Act Amendments of 1988 and the Civil Rights Act 1991.

Today, the RAC continues to be one of the most forceful religious voices for social justice in the United States. Our movement is often at the forefront of efforts to remake our country for the better and the RAC is a consistent and experienced voice advocating our values in the nation’s capital. Today, the RAC continues to inform members of the Senate and the House on issues central to our movement’s mission to heal our broken world. As part of that mission, the RAC inspires and trains young people to be future advocates for social justice, even in the seats of power, by hosting four seminars a year, teaching hundreds of Reform teenagers how to live their values by speaking truth to power.

In the years ahead, we hope to send other students from Temple Israel to the L’taken seminar sponsored by the RAC. This will require careful planning and support from parents and the congregation. Now that you know more about the purpose of the seminar and the mission of the RAC, we hope that you will support our efforts to show young people how to translate our dedication to social justice into action capable of changing the world. More than ever, we need the enthusiasm and vision of our youth to lead the way to a better future and the RAC, I believe, provides an inspiring and proven program to get us there. I encourage each of you to attend our Shabbat service on March 8th where our recent attendees of the L’taken seminar will speak about their experience at the conference and the lessons they learned. After listening to them, I hope you will agree that both the RAC and the L’taken seminars are efforts of our movement both worthy of your support!

 

 

Rabbi Michael Howald