Since 1990, when the US Congress established the National Days of Remembrance as our nation's official civic commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust and mandated the establishment of the US Holocaust Memorial Council which created the Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Jewish community, nation-wide, has gathered in synagogues, communities and institutions to recall the lives of the men, women and children who perished in those horrific years from 1933-1945.

To fulfill that mandate, the Philadelphia Holocaust Survivor Community and the Federation's Jewish Community Relations Council will co-sponsor a communal ceremony on Sunday, April 15th, Yom Hashoah (Day of Destruction) at the Monument to the Six Million Jewish Martyrs at 16th Street and the Benjamin Franklin Parkway at 1:00 p.m., to hear some of the poignant experiences told by members of the area's aging survivor population and witness the mantle of remembrance being shouldered by second and third generation family members, trusted heirs to their families' historical legacy.

Yet, despite all of the United States government's documented archival footage, thousands of treasured eyewitness recorded testimonies and a 2006 United Nations Resolution that established an International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the Jewish community worldwide still must endure hearing the persistent, powerful voices of deniers, with their attempts to nullify the events of Holocaust history.

And so, we too must be the standard bearers of Holocaust remembrance, carrying forth its intrinsic messages of individual courage, spiritual resistance, renewal and heroism.

We must listen to survivor stories, read memoirs and journals and tell of them to our children and grandchildren.

In telling of the pain of the past, we can point with pride to the survival of a people who still retain their code of conduct and compassion towards others.

We must support teaching of the history and events of the Holocaust and its relevant lessons to contemporary issues by supporting the work of the Pennsylvania Holocaust Education Council, which trains teachers and provides materials to school districts throughout the state, and the outreach projects of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. Support of such programs not only reinforces the authenticity of the events of the Holocaust, but builds awareness of patterns in contemporary society that may be stepping stones to other genocidal events. With historical memory, we need to remind ourselves that the words "we didn't know," "we weren't told", uttered by a world during the years of the Holocaust that couldn't believe what it was hearing or in some cases chose not to, cannot ever be justification for not speaking out when acts of inhumanity and institutionalized racism are set before us with such immediacy in this age of unparalleled advanced technology.

The harsh reality of the genocide in Darfur, with its devastating graphic pictures and staggering statistics, clearly tells us that such horrific events can happen again.

During these special days, let us not have our legacy to future generations be that we were bystanders to this genocide and other social injustices.

Let us vow to be rescuers in society and have remembrance of the past be the harbinger of a better future for all humanity.

In so doing, we will truly commemorate the Days of Remembrance of the Holocaust appropriately.

To learn more about Holocaust education in the United States:

• PA Holocaust Education Council
• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

"It is beyond shameful that 62 years after the Holocaust ended, the Holocaust archives located in Bad Arolsen remain closed. These archives are a testament and a memorialization of the suffering and bravery that united all Holocaust victims of all ethnic communities. It is imperative that we open these archives to Holocaust researchers now, while survivors still remain among us, so researchers can benefit from the insights of eyewitnesses," said Representative Hastings.

The Holocaust archives in Bad Arolsen are the largest closed Second World War-era archives in the world. Inside are 50 million records that disclose the fate of over 17.5 million individual victims of Nazism. In order to allow for open access to these important documents, each of the 11 members of the International Commission of the International Tracing Service (the United States, Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Israel, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland and the United Kingdom) must ratify, through their respective parliaments, the May 2006 amendments to the 1955 Bonn Accords.

However, to date only 5 out of the 11 Commission member countries (the United States, Israel, Poland, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom) have ratified the treaty. The International Tracing Service Commission will be meeting next in May, and efforts are being made to urge the unratified Commission member countries to expedite the ratification process by the time of the meeting.

As Congressman Hastings has observed, "For the remaining Holocaust survivors there is no time for further delay".

To read more about this Congressional effort:

• Letter to German Ambassador Klaus Scharioth (Jan 10, 2007)
• Urge remaining European nations to expedite opening access to Holocaust archives (March 9, 2007)

The Jewish Social Policy Network is proud to announce that Representative Barney Frank, distinguished member of Congress from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, will be the featured speaker at its Annual Meeting on May 20. Congressman Frank, who has been recognized by his colleagues as one of the fiercest wits and sharpest minds on Capitol Hill, has been serving in Washington for over twenty five years and is currently Chairman of the Financial Services Committee.

From Bayonne, New Jersey, Congressman Frank is a gradute of Harvard University. In 1967, he was hired to be chief of staff to Mayor Kevin White of Boston, one of a handful of young big-city mayors who were seen as an important part of the future of American politics. This was Rep. Frank's first venture into the political arena. He so impressed the local Democratic leaders that in 1972, he was asked to run in a Massachusetts state legislative district that included Back Bay and Beacon Hill. He won election to the Massachusetts House and then was reelected three times.

In 1980, after the Rev. Robert Drinan, a Jesuit priest, was forced to retire from the Fourth Congressional District at the insistence of Pope John Paul II, Barney Frank was elected to fill his seat and came to Congress in January of 1981. In his twenty five years in Congress, Rep. Frank has played a significant leadership role and has consistently demonstrated what Charles P. Pierce of the Boston Globe describes as a "visible, tangible sense of energy" on issues of concern to the progressive community.

We welcome Congressman Frank and invite the JSPAN family as well as the broader community to join us on May 20 for his presentation at our Annual Meeting!

On March 29, 2007, in the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, JSPAN filed its latest amicus brief. This case involved a challenge to the provisions of the Pennsylvania School Code which regulate home schooling. In six different lawsuits that were coordinated into one proceeding, home-school parents argued that the School Code violated their rights under the Pennsylvania Religious Freedom Protection Act (RFPA). They asserted that on religious grounds they had the sole and exclusive right to educate their children and that it would force them to violate their religious beliefs to comply with the registration and reporting requirements or the curriculum and testing requirements applicable to home schooling. Under the RFPA, when someone can show that a government regulation substantially burdens free exercise of religion, the government agency must show that it has a compelling state interest that cannot be achieved by any less restrictive means. The trial court ruled that the parents failed to show a substantial burden.

In the appeal, the ACLU filed a friend of the court brief in support of the parents arguing that forcing them to comply with the state law would be a substantial burden because it would force them to violate their religious beliefs. JSPAN filed on behalf of the school districts. Without addressing whether or not a substantial burden existed, we pointed out that the parents wanted a complete exemption from any state regulation and that this was inconsistent with the compelling interest the state has in the education of children. Because the parents presented an all-or-nothing choice and did not offer any less restrictive alternative, we urged the court of appeals court to affirm the dismissal of the lawsuit.

This is the first appellate court to hear a claim under the Pennsylvania Religious Freedom Protection Act and we are the only Jewish organization to file a friend of the court brief. Again we are filling an important niche and should feel very proud of our ability and willingness to step in where other Jewish organizations have not.

Click here for the full text of the brief.

Blowing your horn, patting yourself on the back, is not an admirable trait. But I hope the reader will agree with me that every once in a long while it is permissible, even admirable -- especially if it is not my horn that’s blown, but JSPAN’s. So here goes...

Two weeks ago, for the fourth time in a year and a half, JSPAN became an amicus, a ”friend of the court”, in religious liberty litigation. Count them: Opposing inclusion of “intelligent design” theory as an alternative to evolution in high school biology courses, opposing the Redevelopment Authority’s attempt to transfer property valued at more than $800,000 to a religious institution for the construction of a “faith based” elementary school, supporting a school district in New Jersey in its effort to stop a high school football coach from kneeling and bowing his head as the team prays before a game, and most recently, opposing home-schooling parents in their claim that it violates their religious beliefs to allow the Department of Education to determine whether they are meeting the state’s secular educational requirements.

In addition to the other superb work JSPAN is doing (see the article in the Philadelphia Jewish Voice, republished in this newsletter) it’s important, I think, that our readership know that a group of volunteer lawyers are devoting a great deal of their time to the preparation and submission of “friend of the court” briefs in religious liberty cases.

Here is what we typically tell the court about JSPAN’s interest in the matter before it:

JSPAN is an organization of American Jews who seek to protect the constitutional liberties and civil rights of all Americans.

JSPAN believes that the First Amendment’s religion clauses are the bedrock of American freedom, and without the separation of church and state neither religious freedom nor any other basic freedoms can endure. While we share that belief with most Americans, the 1500 year Jewish experience of living as Jews in Christendom and in Islamic societies accounts for the uncommon depth and unanimity with which that belief is held by American Jews.

Religious minorities in America would regard themselves, in the words of Justice O’Connor, as “outsiders, not full members of the political community”, were it not for the separation principle first enunciated by the founding fathers and then re-emphasized in many Supreme Court rulings from mid-20th century until today. That American Jews today are full members of the community, indeed are the freest Jewish community in our two millennia Diaspora history, is the result of this nation’s adherence to the constitutional principle of separation of church and state.

JSPAN’s interest in this matter is in preventing any erosion of that principle.

On Wednesday evening, April 11th, at Congregation Beth Am Israel in Penn Valley, and again on Thursday evening, April 12th, at the Germantown Jewish Centre, JSPAN policy expert Marshall L. Dayan spoke about the Jewish Perspective on the Death Penalty.

Dayan, State Strategies Coordinator for the ACLU’s Capital Punishment Project, focused the first program on a discussion of Jewish perspectives derived from traditional Jewish teaching. Noting that many advocates of the death penalty rely on biblical text, Dayan cautioned against reading that text out of context and without the benefit of generations of scholarly interpretation. For example, the "eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth" language often cited in support of the death penalty is taken from text relating to monetary compensation for damages, not capital punishment for criminal conduct.

Moreover, in order for a murder to qualify for capital punishment under traditional Jewish law, it must have been committed intentionally. Thus, the "felony-murder rule" that accounts for a substantial percentage of the capital cases in the United States today (and a disproportionate percentage of the capital cases involving minorities) would not qualify as a capital offense under traditional Jewish law. A "felony-murder" is a murder committed in the course of committing another felony. For example, if someone took a gun and robbed a bank, that would be armed robbery, a felony (major crime). If during the course of that armed robbery someone died, that would constitute felony-murder, a capital offense. That would be true even in the case of a bystander who died suddenly from a heart attack induced by the shock and stress of the robbery, where the robber clearly did not intend to kill the victim.

Dayan observed that under Jewish law there were strict procedural requirements that applied to capital cases, and that under rabbinic tradition there was a heightened effort to avoid imposing a sentence of death. Thus, at least two eyewitnesses to the crime were required. Each eyewitness had to inform the person about to commit the criminal act that doing so would result in his being condemned to die, and the person about to commit the crime had to respond that he understood the consequences of his actions and committed the crime anyway. Circumstantial evidence, upon which so many cases today are decided, was not admissible evidence under traditional Jewish law. So, where a witness saw one man run into a building and saw another man running after the first man with a knife and following him into the building, and then saw the second man run out of the building with blood on his knife, and then saw the first man lying dead and bleeding in the building, that witness could not testify at all because he did not see the man with the knife stab the man who was dead.

A group of progressive individuals, firm in its belief that the ethical path of societal responsibility is a pillar of our Jewish tradition, decided four years ago to form an organization that would serve as a vehicle to carry forward the goals of social justice.

And so JSPAN was created!

With a small budget and a grand vision of transforming the social action scene, JSPAN members embarked on an ambitious agenda that has already accomplished remarkable feats.

This past year alone:

• JSPAN testified before the Pennsylvania General Assembly on the humanitarian reasons for raising the state minimum wage. JSPAN was the only Jewish organization to do so!
• When U.S. Senatorial candidate Katherine Harris gave a stump speech equating the failure to elect Christians as legislating sin and calling the separation of church and state a lie, JSPAN opposed her; and, with the help of the local press, secured an acknowledgement of error from the Florida Republican Party.
• JSPAN provided the speakers for programs about the injustice of the death penalty in both eastern and western Pennsylvania.