To New JSPAN Members:
Welcome to JSPAN!
We are delighted that you have chosen to join with us on our journey to be a definitive voice of progressive social change on the local and national stage.
We look forward to meeting you at our forthcoming program for paid- up members on May 19th . ( See flyer.) Thank you for your support!

To Prospective JSPAN Members:
We invite you to attend our May 19th, paid-up membership event which will give you a golden opportunity to see us in action ! Please consider becoming a JSPAN member now …and join with us as we look forward to a year of exciting programs and leadership on issues of domestic concern, both locally and nationally. We look forward to meeting you on May 19th!

Membership Co-Chairs:
Deanne S. Comer
Ruth Schultz

Click here to learn more about Cover the Uninsured Week.

As the campaign to expand access to health care continues across the nation, Pennsylvania is already moving forward to solve the health care crisis. In March, the Access to Basic Care program, or ABC, was introduced and passed in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives. If enacted, this program will provide access to quality, affordable health care for every Pennsylvanian.

Click here to learn more about Access to Basic Care.

ABC will come before the Pennsylvania Senate soon, and we need to make sure that our representatives in Harrisburg know that the time for health care reform is now.

Please attend one of the many events happening across Pennsylvania this week to show your support for the uninsured, the underinsured, and hardworking families who are struggling to pay rising health care costs.

Click here to find a Cover the Uninsured Week event near you.

If you can't make it to any of these events, please take the time to contact your legislator and let them know that you support ABC and hope they will, too.

Click here to contact your legislators.

The time for health care reform is now! Pennsylvania's families can't wait another day.

My first Israel-related memory goes back to my early childhood. My family was, by most late 40’s standards, quite Zionist-oriented. I recall their frequently playing a 78 recording of Al Jolson singing Hatikvah and, on the other side of the record, a stirring, patriotic song entitled simply Israel, based on the music of the wedding classic “Chussen Kaleh Mazal Tov”.

My father regularly raised money for Israel from Bayonne, New Jersey’s many Jewish merchants. I recall going into stores and offices with him and looking at the brochures he would leave behind of good looking young Jews in shorts, holding hoes or guns while rebuilding the Jewish homeland. No Jews that I knew in Bayonne looked anything like that, I can assure you, and so this Israel must have been a magic land where Jews were tough and lean and knew how to use guns. My friends and I weren’t even allowed Red Ryder Air BB rifles advertised in the back of our comic books, because we “might shoot somebody’s eye out with it”. Later on a friend of my father’s told me that some of the money they raised had been used to purchase weapons to be used by the Haganah, and I was thrilled that he had played some small role in the creation of the state.

I also have a dim recollection of sitting by the radio with my mother, sister and grandmother listening to the UN partition vote, and wondering which toys I would be able to take with me when we took the boat “home”, as I must have gotten the idea into my head that every Jew would return to our homeland. I think I discussed this with my older sister, who no doubt explained that we weren’t going anywhere (she probably told me that I was being “dumb”), and my dreams of looking like a tough Jew with hoe and gun in hand were shattered.

The government of Sudan relies on foreign investment, especially in its oil industry, for the revenue used to arm its military and the Janjaweed militias. If you are a Fidelity investor, your vote can make a difference. Even if you are not invested in Fidelity, you can still demand that mutual funds divest from companies whose business in Sudan is helping to fuel the genocide.

Thank you for standing against genocide.

* The following funds are on the ballot: Blue Chip Growth, Blue Chip Value, Capital Appreciation, Contrafund, Dividend Growth, Diversified International, Equity Income, Growth and Income, Growth Company, Low Priced Stock, Magellan, Puritan, Real Estate Investment, Utilities and Value.

Questions or difficulty voting?
E-mail Investors Against Genocide at Info@InvestorsAgainstGenocide.org
To read the text of the resolution against genocide, click here.

In addition, the Israelis rebuffed Carter's offer to try to secure the release of Corporal Gilad Shalit. At the same time, it is well known that Israel is engaged in behind-the-scenes negotiations with Hamas on a prisoner exchange. Mr. Rosenberg asks, "What sense does this make? .... Israel needs to get off its ideological high horse and deal with the reality that Hamas is a force that is not going away any time soon."

Even without peace, however, the approaching 60th anniversary of Israel's birth "should be celebrated. Despite all the hysterical pronouncements about Iran by various rabble-rousers, .... there is an Israel. It is strong and remarkably secure. .... Peace will be achieved. But even now, with all the problems, let's never forget that a bunch of visionaries in Europe, Jews who knew as little about building a state as they did about creating an army, had a dream and realized it."

To read M. J. Rosenberg's column in its entirety, click here.

Many Jewish and non-Jewish organizations across the United States are urging their members to write to President Bush asking him to boycott the Olympics in August if the provisions of the legislation are not addressed. China is Sudan's major financial and political supporter. This super power has the capacity to utilize its unique leverage with the Sudanese government, so that peacekeeping forces are effectively deployed in the Darfur region by the start of the games.

Should President Bush stay away from the Beijing Olympics? JSPAN has not yet taken a position on the legislation. Let us know how you feel about this issue. Click here to give us your opinion.

To read the full text of H. Res. 1093, click here.

Several American Jewish opinion-makers have recently launched the J Street Project, an organization dedicated to promoting the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and backing politicians who are committed to working toward peace in the Middle East.

Click here to read an analysis by The New York Times of the ways J Street is different from the "status quo" American Jewish lobby AIPAC.

Click here to read M. J. Rosenberg's analysis of why J Street is attracting young Jewish activists to its effort.

Please remember that JSPAN welcomes your donations to help us continue our important and effective work in Tikkun Olam. You may send gifts via PayPal on www.jspan.org. or to JSPAN, 1735 Market Street, Suite #A417, Philadelphia, PA 19103