 HaShofar | The
Congregation B'nai Israel Social Action Committee Newsletter |
Nisan/Iyar 5766 |
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Contact us at: hashofar@congregationbnaiisrael.org | |
Shalom Social Action Friends:Below is a long list of things going on for you to take part in. Please consider joining in on any of the following activities. For more information on the six items below, scroll down to that message:
Volunteers needed to help construct our new Habitat house!!! We will be framing the entire house the week of April 3 – April 7. For complete details and to sign up for any of these days, please contact Elaine Chetrit at 336-1858 or e-mail echetrit@congregationbnaiisrael.org Urgently Needed! The Greater Bridgeport Area Furniture Warehouse Collaborative urgently needs quality used furniture for families and individuals in need. Our clients are formerly homeless or fall at or below federal poverty levels. Warehouse drivers will come to your house, pick up your donation for free and give you a tax deductible receipt. To Donate: 335-2725.
Million Voices for Darfur Rally for Darfur, Sunday, April 30th Locally, buses are being organized to DC and back from Westport and New Haven. Bus transportation from New Haven is being coordinated by Lauri Lowell at the New Haven JCRC 203-387-2424 ext: 318. Temple Israel of Westport is also putting a bus together. Cost: $45. Contact: 227-1293 ask for Sandy Gross.
Topic: Slavery, Rape, Genocide in Sundan Date: April 23 @ 7pm Place: Congregation Rodeph Sholom, Bridgeport This is an interfaith effort to raise awareness and encourage a response from people of faith. Jewish Family Service of Greater Bridgeport is looking for volunteers to deliver meals, drive homebound people to appointments. If you can help, call JFS at . They are asking for a commitment of one hour per week. The Leo Baeck Education Center of Haifa needs your help to provide food.
A daily hot lunch at one of our after school programs costs $3.70. A sandwich at school and one to take home in the evening costs $2.00. A monthly food basket for a needy family costs $60.00. The cost of a morning and afternoon sandwich for a school child for an entire school year $460. The cost of providing monthly food staples to a needy family for a year $720. The cost of providing one child with a hot lunch after school for an entire year $850. Please send your tzedakah to:
The sole goal of this program is to eliminate, to the extent that funding allows, hunger within our schools and extended community. We must stop the flow of children who come to school every day with stomachs so empty they cannot concentrate in class. To achieve this end, the Leo Baeck Education Center has established the following programs: Sandwiches for Junior High School Students Food Baskets for Needy Families Hot Lunch Program & Food Baskets for Ethiopian Families Hot Lunch Program for Children at Afternoon Care Centers Hot Lunch Program for Youngsters at After School Learning Centers VOLUNTEER OPPORTUNITIES IN THE GULF COAST TZEVET MITZVOT: ADULT MITZVAH CORPS FAMILY MITZVAH CORPS: AUGUST 9-13, 2006 |
B’nai Israel Joins Coalition of Churches and Synagogues to BUILD for Habitat for Humanity
Take Action on Darfur 
Speaker: Simon Deng
One-third of Israeli children live in poverty. The number of poor in Israel has risen to 1.53 million - 714,000 of them children - according to the 2004 Poverty Report, published by the National Insurance Institute (NII) in August 2005. 
The Leo Baeck Education Center Foundation
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Supportive housing combines affordable rental housing with individualized health, support and employment services. Supportive housing looks like every other type of housing because it is like other housing. People living in supportive housing have their own apartments, enter into rental agreements and pay their own rent, just as in other rental housing. The difference is that they can access, at their option, support services - such as the help of a case manager, help in building independent living skills, and connections to community treatment and employment services - designed to address their individual needs. Supportive housing has as its primary purpose assisting the individual or family to live independently in the community and to meet the obligations of tenancy. The length of stay is up to the individual or family - there is no time limitation as long as the tenant is in lease compliance. While participation in services is encouraged, it is not a condition of tenancy. Housing affordability is ensured either through a rent subsidy or by setting rents at affordable levels. Where tenancy is mixed in a single site, all tenants may have access to the on-site service supports, regardless of whether or not they have an identified special need. Over the past ten years, Connecticut has been a leader in pioneering and refining the supportive housing model. Since 1993, over one thousand supportive housing units have been created statewide through the demonstration program and subsequent Pilots Initiative using collaborative, multi-agency partnerships that have tapped the combined talents and resources of government, philanthropy, nonprofit organizations, and the private sector. | Connecticut
towns that have welcomed supportive housing have seen people who were homeless
for years become contributing members of their communities. Their use of expensive
emergency services has gone down. Once-blighted buildings have become the anchors
of rehabilitated blocks in newly vibrant neighborhoods. Supportive housing has proven to be a flexible, cost-effective solution to chronic homelessness that, at sufficient scale, can reduce gridlock within the mental health system, relieve overcrowded hospital emergency rooms and community shelters, prevent homeless children from becoming homeless adults, and serve as a foundation for a recovery-oriented behavioral healthcare system. The key to achieving these goals is creating enough supportive apartments statewide to meet current and future needs. | ||||
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The goal of the Campaign to End Long-Term Homelessness in Connecticut, known as the "Reaching Home" campaign, is to create enough supportive housing units to meet the needs of families and individuals who are facing long-term homelessness now and in the future Over the next ten years, Connecticut can expect to serve 6,000 long-term homeless households. Reaching Home is a ten-year plan that will end long-term homelessness in Connecticut by creating 10,000 new units of supportive housing. By the tenth year, normal annual turnover in these units will ensure that every person with a need for supportive housing will have immediate access.
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Congregation B'nai Israel is a co-sponsor of the Reaching Home Campaign, advocating for supportive housing in Connecticut. We are the only house of worship signed on to this campaign and the campaign needs our help at this critical juncture. We need you to act now! We have a tremendous opportunity to take an important step towards ending homelessness in CT. The Governor's Interagency Council on Supportive Housing and Homelessness has recommended that the state create an additional 1,000 units of supportive housing.
| Governor Rell is now considering budget options that will provide the funding for 1,000 units of permanent supportive housing over the next four years; this budget will be released on February 9th, so as you can see time is of the essence. Contact your state senator and state representative today and ask them to support the Next Step for 1,000 units of permanent supportive housing in Connecticut. You can do this on-line by clicking here. In addition, as B'nai Israel has endorsed the Reaching Home campaign, so can individuals like us. To show support and endorse Reaching Home's ten-year plan, please visit click here. | ||||
This
success has created a diverse consensus championing supportive housing in Connecticut,
including elected officials, government administrators, healthcare and consumer
advocates, and even once-skeptical neighborhood groups who have seen how supportive
housing has strengthened their communities. Placement
into supportive housing reduced the individual's use of emergency services so
much that it paid for all but 5% of the costs of building, operating and providing
services in a unit of supportive housing. Simply put, it costs about the same
to provide supportive housing as it does to leave someone with a chronic illness
homeless - with much better results. 
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Operation Hope's supportive housing is home to more than 20 families, including 13 children. Now, the Town of Fairfield's RTM and town leaders have unanimously resolved to sell to Operation Hope/Micah Housing four lots, in order to create eight units for families at the Navy Housing site. |
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Supportive housing is cost effective! Statewide figures show that it costs $36 a day, the same as a homeless shelter, to operate housing. In contrast, incarceration costs $83, residential drug treatment cost $103 while inpatient psychiatric or medical cares costs more than $1,000. | Shelters are vital emergency stopgaps, but supportive housing is the best investment for a lasting solution, a REAL end to homelessness. | ||||
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As of January 27, the death toll from the Asian earthquake and tsunamis has reached 212,000. More than 4,000 individuals from Reform congregations have made donations totaling an estimated $700,000 to the Union for Reform Judaism's Asian Tsunami Relief Fund, while countless others gave directly to one of the organizations the Union suggested when it opened the fund in the wake of this tragedy. Once the immediate humanitarian needs of food, water and sanitation are met, there will be substantial long-term needs in each of the affected communities, including rebuilding infrastructure, training, education and psycho-social needs.
| In consultation with relief organizations and our partners within the Jewish community, the URJ has decided to take a long-term approach in our relief efforts by identifying a specific region, most likely in Sri Lanka, in which to focus attention. Visit http://urj.org/relief to donate to the Union for Reform Judaism's Asian Earthquake Relief Fund, or send checks payable to the Union for Reform Judaism (write "Asian Earthquake Relief Fund" in the memo section of your check) to: Union
for Reform Judaism | ||||
| HaShofar | The
Congregation B'nai Israel Social Action Committee Newsletter |
Relevant articles from past issues | |
Contact us at: hashofar@congregationbnaiisrael.org | |
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The Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life (COEJL) was founded in 1993 to promote environmental education, scholarship, advocacy, and action in the American Jewish community. COEJL is sponsored by a broad coalition of national Jewish organizations and has organized regional affiliates in communities across North America. COEJL is the Jewish member of the National Religious Partnership for the Environment. | Sign up to receive updates about COEJL's education, action, and advocacy campaigns. You'll receive a monthly e-update and a print newsletter three times a year, which will include holiday resource materials, highlights about Jewish environmental initiatives around North America, updates about the latest on Capitol Hill, and ways for you to get involved. Visit www.coejl.org/getinv. | ||||
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By reducing paper consumption, and recycling the paper that we use in our homes and schools and workplaces -- we can follow the law of bal tashchit (which is derived from a biblical verse about saving trees), save money and resources, and limit further depletion of creation. Reduce
Reuse
| Recycle and Buy Recycled
Background information and resources for recycling
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It
may be stating the obvious that the issue of poverty, and our obligation to help
those in need, has been with us since biblical times. It is interesting to read
the consistency of the Jewish message in this area through biblical, rabbinic,
medieval and modern times: Biblical
Texts
| Medieval
Texts "Every nation must learn that people of all nations are children of God, and must share the wealth of the world. You may say this is impractical, far away, can never be accomplished, but it is the work we are appointed to do. Sometime, somehow, somewhere, we must ever teach this great lesson." - Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel | ||||
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On Chanukah we light candles and perform mitzvot. On the 4th night of Chanukah, December 10th, we encourage families to donate the value of the gifts they would ordinarily exchange (or the gifts themselves). | B'nai Israel is collecting toys, pajamas, supermarket gift certificates, children's underwear & socks for Operation Hope. Drop off in the Religious School Lobby or at our Synaplex Shabbat celebration, Dec. 10 & 11. | ||||
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Are you looking for a way to support Jewish military personnel serving in Iraq and elsewhere, particularly during the Jewish holidays? You still have some time to send them cards and care packages for Chanukah. | For information on a number of opportunities for individuals and congregations to offer support to Jewish troops, visit the Support Our Soldiers webpage. | ||||
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The Religious Action Center's Advocacy Network is designed to provide an immediate and coordinated grassroots response just at the point when vital legislation reaches a crucial stage in the legislative process. Network members whose representatives and senators are "undecided" on specific legislation will be contacted. | By becoming a Network member, you can translate information into action at critical junctures in the legislative process. You can make a difference. To sign up or for more information click here.
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The recently released National Jewish Population Survey has disclosed the following statistics about our United States Jewish population: We are the best-educated Jewish population in history. Eighty percent of Reform Jews have received a college degree, compared to 29 percent of the total population. More than 25 percent of us have received a graduate degree, compared to only 6 percent of the total population. We are the wealthiest Jewish community in history. More than one-third of our households earn in excess of $75,000 annually, twice the national percentage. Our median income is $54,000, nearly 30 percent higher than the United States median income. Our educational achievements have had the unfortunate effect of separating us from those most affected by racial inequality, poverty, hunger, and homelessness. We may understand the issues intellectually, but we do not feel the issues in our kishkes. Our financial success has widened the gap even farther. We understand that people are poor and hungry and homeless, but we don't live or work where we are likely to see and feel the problem except for the hungry who visit our soup kitchens, the hungry and homeless who panhandle on our street corners, and those who sleep on the sidewalks of our cities as we drive by. I ask you to consider the following demographic statistics:
| Despite the efforts of our congregations to feed the hungry and provide shelter for the homeless, unintentionally, we have not seen the forest from the trees. We have not recognized, as we should have, that new efforts and approaches must be created as these problems have not abated and have, in fact, significantly worsened, and that was true even before the severe economic downturn of the last three years. [In response, the Union of Reform Judaism passed a resolution titled "Proposed Resolution on Confronting and Combating Poverty in the United States" at the 2003 biennial.] However, if we treat this resolution as a feel-good resolution, one designed to reiterate where we stand, and then go home and pat ourselves on the back and do nothing more than what we have been doing for the last thirty years, we might as well not adopt the resolution for all the good it will do, or actually all the good it will not do because of our inaction. Both the Joint Commission on Social Action of Reform Judaism and the Board of Trustees of the Union must make finding the solution to the problems of poverty, hunger, and homelessness a priority issue for the Movement and not just an issue that appears in Biennial resolutions. However, all such efforts will be for naught if we don't convert our commitment into actions by our congregations. Our synagogues must become centers of activism and centers of passion for those social justice issues that demand our attention.
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However, all such efforts will be for naught if we don't convert our commitment into actions by our congregations. Our synagogues must become centers of activism and centers of passion for those social justice issues that demand our attention. | |||||
Click here to learn more about the URJ's Poverty Initiative.When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap all the way to the edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. You shall not pick your vineyard bare or gather the fallen fruit of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the stranger: I am Adonai your God(Leviticus 19:9-10). | |||||
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It was the speech above, along with the passage of the URJ's "Resolution on Confronting and Combating Poverty in the United States" that led the URJ's Committee on Social Action (CSA) to declare the year 5765 as "A Year of Focus on Poverty." While the entirety of Russell Silverman's speech is, of course, compelling, we were particularly drawn to his comments at the end, when he implicitly challenges all Reform congregations to create new approaches and initiatives to combat poverty. The Union can only provide the framework within which to structure - the solutions must come from the Union's members, the congregations, and, in turn, from the congregation's members. As we consider this challenge, we wish to make you aware of B'nai Israel's programs related to the issue of poverty:
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As always, we welcome and encourage all of you to contact us with your own thoughts and ideas to help us meet URJ's challenge of creating new approaches to combat poverty. | ||||
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"If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, when?" (Pirkei Avot) |
Ready, Aim, Click! | ||
Internet. World wide web. On-line. E-mail. Terms virtually unheard of twenty years ago, but ubiquitous in 2004. The internet allows us to teach, learn, and communicate in ways we never could have imagined. The world that we seek to repair has, indeed, grown smaller because of the internet. Information on social action issues can be disseminated at a moment's notice to a global audience. The benefits have been many:
- The internet is a source of information and learning about the issues
that matter to you. Its vastness and its immediacy cause us to be well informed
and up-to-date.
Through the internet, primarily via e-mail, you can receive alerts to take action on a specific issue - a 21st century version of a "call to arms."
- Finally, the internet has made it easy to donate money and time to virtually any worthy cause.
The internet has revolutionized virtually all aspects of life, and the world of tzedakah is no exception. With this issue, we offer a number of excellent sites as a representation of what can be found. Those of you who "surf" will undoubtedly find a myriad of others. Along with this issue, we have created a social action links section, which will include the web addresses of all of the sites mentioned here. It is our intention to update this page with new links over time, and you are invited to submit suggestions for new links to hashofar@congregationbnaiisrael.org. Please visit the new social action links section.
The Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism
The
Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism (RAC) has been the hub of Jewish social
justice and legislative activity in the nation's capital for over 40 years. It
has educated and mobilized the American Jewish community on legislative and social
concerns as an advocate in the Congress of the United States on issues ranging
from Israel and Soviet Jewry to economic justice and civil rights, to international
peace and religious liberty. The RAC is the Washington office of the Union
for Reform Judaism and the Central Conference of American Rabbis, representing
1.5 million Reform Jews and 1,800 Reform rabbis in 900 congregations throughout
North America. The RAC has embraced the Internet as a way to inform the public
about social action issues and the Jewish response, and offer several effective
web-based programs available to all, including:
- Chai IMPACT
is the Religious Action Center's grassroots "action alert" publication. Chai IMPACT
alerts you to pending legislative issues and policy initiatives.
- The Advocacy Network is designed to provide an immediate and coordinated grassroots response just at the point when vital legislation reaches a crucial stage in the legislative process. You can choose the issue(s) for which you want to be contacted.
For more information, visit the RAC web site at: www.rac.org, and click on the 'Take Action' link at the left.
Heal the World - Literally
The
McCain-Lieberman Climate Stewardship Act is a bipartisan reaction to the dangers
of global warming, and the Bush administration's policy of indifference toward
them. The Take Action Center offers an on-line petition to support the McCain-Lieberman
Act and the creation of national caps on greenhouse gas emissions.
Sign the petition to tell Washington that global warming is an issue of utmost importance that demands immediate and meaningful action. Upon signing this online petition, your support for this Act is automatically sent to your U.S. Representative, your two U.S. Senators, and President Bush. Visit their web site at: www.takeactioncenter.org.
The Israel on Campus Coalition
The Israel on Campus Coalition (ICC) is a partnership of the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation and Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life, in cooperation with a network of national organizations committed to promoting Israel education and advocacy on campus. The nearly thirty organizations currently participating in the ICC are dedicated to working collaboratively to assist students in fostering support for Israel on the college campus. The Israel on Campus Coalition was formed during a consultation convened by the Schusterman Family Foundation in March 2002 to evaluate the worrisome rise in anti-Israel activities on college campuses across North America. Jewish community professionals in attendance concluded there was an essential and immediate need for:
- Increased
strategic cooperation and collaboration among community organizations from across
the political spectrum
Improved sharing of information, ideas and resources to minimize duplicative efforts
- A shift to pro-active advocacy and educational initiatives to better support Israel on campus
From their web site, you can sign up for Israel Campus Beat, the ICC's free weekly email newsletter for students, with the latest student opinion, top Israeli news, expert analysis and campus news. This is a worthwhile newsletter not just for the college student, but for all of us concerned with anti-Israel sentiment. Visit the ICC web site at israeloncampuscoalition.org.
The
Connecticut Coalition for
Organ and Tissue Donation
The
Connecticut Coalition for Organ and Tissue Donation (CCOTD) is dedicated to public
education and public awareness for all Connecticut residents about the lifesaving
benefits of organ and tissue donation.
For more information about organ donation, and these organizations, visit the CCOTD web site at www.ctorganandtissuedonation.org, and the Coalition on Donation web site at www.shareyourlife.org.
Donate for Free!!!
Simply click a button at each of these sites. For each click, a donation is made by the sponsors of each site at no cost to you. Each site also provide additional information about its respective cause:
- Donate
a free mammogram
Give free food to the hungry
Improve a child's health
Feed an animal in need
- Save our rainforests
And let us not forget the links to two retailers who contribute a portion of your purchases directly to our Congregation:
