Click here to view JSPAN's resolution on The War in Iraq.

As Jews around the world celebrate the New Year, and we in Britain continue to mark the 350th anniversary of the re-establishment of our Jewish community, I am struck by the courage and resolution of t he Jewish people. To me, the Jewish community stands for what a community is all about. People respect each other as individuals, but they have a deep and profound sense of themselves as a community.

It is impossible to imagine modern Britain without its Jewish community. But for almost four centuries, Jews were forbidden to worship in Britain, even in private. All that changed with Cromwell's decision in 1656. Since then, arts, sciences, commerce, politics, the world of learning and thought, have all been illuminated by the names of distinguished Jews who have made their mark, added to the store of knowledge and helped to make the United Kingdom a better place.

Earlier this month, I was presented with a report by the All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Anti-Semitism. The report states that Jews in Britain have become more anxious and vulnerable to abuse and attack than at any other time for a generation or longer. This is simply unacceptable. The report found that British Jews often bear the brunt of people's anger over Israeli and American policies.

There is of course a wider issue here, about how dissent should be handled in a democratic society and we must continue to assert that the discussion should be carried out within the confines of peaceful, democratic debate. However, it is natural that Jewish people everywhere have a particular place in their hearts for what happens in Israel, to which for generations - they have prayed to return.

I believe that most people in Israel, and most Jewish people throughout the world, want to live side by side with the Palestinian people in peace. I would also like to say thank you to the Jewish community in Britain, which for the last three-and-a-half centuries has contributed enormously to Britain. I salute all they do for their community and country, their courage and endurance, their contribution and commitment to Britain, and Israel."

What’s striking about these [new organizations] is that they have nothing to do with the major Jewish “defense” agencies that once were the heart and soul of Jewish progressive activism. As big national agencies pull back from domestic issues and grass-roots activism to focus increasingly on Israel and anti-Semitism, innovative, community-oriented progressive groups are filling the vacuum — and appealing to a younger generation for whom social-justice issues resonate strongly...

... In Philadelphia, the Jewish Social Policy Action Network (JSPAN) is struggling to build the kind of base … several others have long enjoyed. While it seeks a critical mass of donors, the group is taking advantage of some high-powered legal talent among its volunteers to continue a tradition of judicial activism started by the group from which it sprang: the American Jewish Congress.

In the early 2000s, the AJCongress “walked away from us,” said Susan Myers, the chair of the JSPAN board. “They turned to the right, they weren’t doing as much in the domestic arena and then they announced they were closing the Philadelphia office.”

In response, a group of AJCongress refugees created JSPAN, a seat-of-the-pants group dedicated to the progressive domestic activism that was once an AJCongress hallmark, she said. …

With lawyers like Ted Mann — a longtime AJ Congress leader and former chair of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations — on board, the group has gotten involved in several local legal battles. Recently the group filed a brief in a case involving the city’s decision to sell condemned land cheaply to a Christian school, and another in high-profile litigation over a Pennsylvania school district that mandated the teaching of “intelligent design” in its public schools.

And, Myers said, JSPAN “was the only Jewish group that testified” when a minimum wage measure came up in the state legislature.

Despite a relatively conservative local Jewish community, she said, “our mailing list continues to grow and our public program is starting to bring out different audiences.”

Full Text: http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/newscontent.php3?artid=13504

Erin Gruwell's students, products of the turf wars in their school and the surrounding neighborhood between the White, Latino, African-American and Asian communities, struggle for survival and recognition. Erin discovers a connecting point - the history and message of the Holocaust – to open the students up to the realities of a world beyond their own. Through the technique of journaling, they express their frustrations and their anger, and, in the process, become a cohesive group with aspirations and dreams for the future.

After the film, JSPAN members gathered for dessert and an informal discussion with Dr. Robert Vogel, professor of education at La Salle University, and Michael Rosenberg, principal, and Michael Galbraith, eighth grade teacher at the Grover Washington, Jr. Middle School in Philadelphia. The school has adopted the teaching methodology developed by Erin Gruwell and is using it very successfully with approximately 110 students. The project is being supported collaboratively by the Department of Education at La Salle, under the supervision of Dr. Vogel. The educators described their results using the Gruwell methods, and the hurdle they face in working to expand the program.

Dear Dr. Hardman,

...in television interviews I have seen over the past week, President Carter has revealed himself to be so rigid and inflexible in his views that he seems to me no longer capable of dialogue. In an interview with Soledad O’Brien of CNN he failed to address a single one of the criticisms she quoted from various experts in a very serious tone of voice, pointing out that she was not reading the worst of the criticisms; he began laughing inappropriately while she spoke, and when she asked him how he would respond to the criticisms he stated, “With laughter.” In a number of interviews I have seen and heard him respond to highly specific questions merely by stating again and again in one form or another, “My book is completely accurate.” This rigidity of thought and complete failure to engage criticisms from much greater experts than me about his numerous and serious errors of commission and omission make it clear to me that an attempt by me to advise him would be pointless and counterproductive. In addition, his repeated public insinuations that the Jews control the media and the Congress—well-worn anti-Semitic slurs that, especially coming from President Carter, present a clear and present danger to American Jews—are offensive to me beyond what I can politely say.

Third, I am now carefully rereading parts of this very puzzling and problematic book, having read it through once quickly. I am not going to point out again here all the mistakes and misrepresentations pointed out by others (to take just one example, his flat contradiction of the accounts by President Clinton and Dennis Ross of events at Camp David at which they were present and he was not)—none of which he has answered--nor explain the grotesque distortion caused by his almost completely ignoring Jewish history between ancient times and 1947 (he devotes five lines on page 64 to that millennial tragic story and mentions the Holocaust twice; his “Historical Chronology” at the outset contains nothing—nothing—between 1939 and 1947). However, I will call your attention to a sentence on p. 213 that had not stood out for me the first time I read it: “It is imperative that the general Arab community and all significant Palestinian groups make it clear that they will end the suicide bombings and other acts of terrorism when international laws and the ultimate goals of the Roadmap for Peace are accepted by Israel.”

As someone who has lived his life as a professional reader and writer, I cannot find any way to read this sentence that does not condone the murder of Jews until such time as Israel unilaterally follows President Carter’s prescription for peace. This sentence, simply put, makes President Carter an apologist for terrorists and places my children, along with all Jews everywhere, in greater danger...

Sincerely yours,

Melvin Konner, M.D., Ph.D.
Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor
Department of Anthropology and Program in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology
    Emory University
Departments of Psychiatry and Neurology (by courtesy)
    Emory School of Medicine