And on the day on which you bring the sheaf of elevation offering—the day after the Sabbath—you shall count off seven weeks. They must be complete: you must count until the day after the seventh week—fifty days; then you shall bring an offering of new grain to God. (Lev. 23:15-16)

Take a census of the whole Israelite company by the clans of its ancestral houses, listing the names, every male, head by head. (Numbers 1:2)

Counting is very much on the mind of the Jewish people at this time of year. It is the theme of the Torah portions at the beginning of the Book of Numbers, which we began this past Shabbat. (The very title of this fourth book of the Torah, Numbers, makes this obvious, though the Hebrew title, Bamidbar, In the Wilderness is far more descriptive of this book- but that is for another D’var Torah.) Why would the Torah spend any time teaching us about counting? What ethical lessons are we to learn from these passages? And how might they inform how we are to live our lives today?

Let’s begin briefly with the second text, taken from the opening verses of Numbers. The Israelites have been encamped around Mt. Sinai for more than 2 years. Soon, they will leave Sinai, and begin their journey to the Promised Land. They will need to conquer the land, and need to know how many men over the age of 20 they have to form a fighting army. This is the nominal reason for taking a census at this time.

But what strange language the Torah uses in instructing us to number the people. The language of the Torah is not “count” but rather “lift up high the heads of the people.” And why are we told to list each name? What is the Torah trying to teach us about counting?

Adam Bonin is a graduate of Amherst College and the University of Chicago Law School, where he studied election law under then- Professor Barack Obama. He is a member of the law firm Cozen O'Connor, where he currently represents major insurance companies in the multi-billion dollar subrogation recovery lawsuit against the individuals, entities and nations in financing Al-Qaeda, seeking to hold them accountable for the September 11 tragedy.

Adam Bonin is a graduate of Amherst College and the University of Susan Bolno is an attorney and community volunteer. She is involved with the Epilepsy Foundation and the Lower Merion/Narbeth Montgomery County Youth Aid Panel.

David Broida is a community and political activist who recently retired after serving over 30 years as the Upper Merion Township Director of Parks and Recreation. He is a board member of the Arthur Ashe Youth Tennis and Education Center and chaired the upper Merion Martin Luther King, Jr. National Holiday Committee

Rabbi Elliot Holin is the founding Rabbi of Congregation Kol Ami, a reform synagogue in Elkins Park established in 1994.

Jennifer Kates is a Penn Law graduate and associate at Dechert. She is a very active blogger on Young Philly Politics and a board member on the River Ridge Foundation for Environmental Education, Urban Land Institute and Pa Housing Alliance.

Daniel Loeb is the publisher of the Philadelphia Jewish Voice. He received his PhD from MIT and is a theoretical mathematician and geneologist. Daniel maintains a family web-site with 30,000 names that goes back to biblical times.

Maureen Pelta is Professor of Art History at Moore College of Art, serving as chair of the Liberal Arts department. She received her PhD in the History of Art from Bryn Mawr College. The first American-born daughter of two Holocaust survivors, Maureen is an active advocate of Holocaust education. She has chaired the Mordechai Anielewicz Creative Arts Competition, an annual arts contest for secondary school students, which focuses on the Holocaust and its history as a means of teaching tolerance.

Rabbi Joshua Waxman, a Harvard graduate, received his rabbinic ordination at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and serves as the Rabbi of Congregation Or Hadash in Ft Washington. He is an alumni of the Wexner Graduate Fellowship Program.

Cards may be sent through our office at $10 for each - send your request to jspan@jspan.org. If you wish to purchase them in bulk and have them available to send yourself, you may buy them at the bargain price of three (3) for $18. Again, jspan@jspan.org or call JSPAN at 215-635-2554.

The case arose when Donna Busch, an Evangelical Christian, attempted to read from Psalm 118 to her son's class in the Marple Newtown, Pennsylvania school district. She came to the classroom as part of a curricular program known as the "All About Me" week during which parents are invited to share a talent, short game, small craft or story. After the teacher and and administrator acted to prevent Busch from reading Psalm 118 to the class, she sued. Backed by a religious right group, she claimed that the school district had engaged in "viewpoint discrimination" in violation of her First Amendment rights.

A federal judge in Philadelphia ruled against Busch, but he also held that the school district had engaged in viewpoint discrimination. In her appeal, Busch contended that any restrictions on her speech must be viewpoint neutral, even in a school setting. She claimed that it violated her free speech rights for the school to restrict her speech based on its religious viewpoint.

In its amicus brief, JSPAN urged the appellate court to affirm the trial court's decision, but to reject any application of "viewpoint discrimination" principles. According to the JSPAN brief, the court should apply a line of Supreme Court decisions that authorize school officials to enforce reasonable rules to ensure that young children are not exposed to proselytizing activities as part of the school curriculum.

It has been estimated that 1 in 4 individuals of Ashkenazi Jewish descent is a carrier of a gene mutation that could result in the birth of a child with a serious, life-threatening disease. The Victor Center provides genetic education, screening and counseling to healthy individuals at risk for being asymptomatic carriers.

With a simple blood test, carrier screening is available to identify a wide spectrum of diseases. Most often the diseases occur in families with no prior history of the disease. Carriers are only at risk of passing the gene change on to their children. It is important to realize that while the diseases are more common in the Ashkenazi Jewish population, they also occur in other ethnic groups.

Chris Satullo: Only you can slay the gerrymander

It's slipping away.

Don't let it.

A bill to curb gerrymandering is in trouble in the Pennsylvania legislature. Gerrymandering is the dark art of drawing electoral districts to stack the deck in favor of incumbents and the party in power. Pennsylvania is the second-most-gerrymandered state in the land. House Bill 2420 "is a key pillar of fundamental, transformational reform," says Barry Kauffman of Pennsylvania Common Cause.

So, of course, friends of the status quo are trying to bury this bill in committee.

The main thing that can save this reform is - you. Your voice, dinning in key lawmakers' ears, could get this bill to the House floor, where it has a chance of passage.

Pennsylvania Health Action Network (PHAN) will hold a press conference on Thursday June 12th at 11:00 am on the steps of the Montgomery County Courthouse in Norristown about PA-ABC and the Families USA survey. County Commissioner Joe Hoeffel and one Republican State Representative have agreed to speak.

On Wednesday June 11th PHAN will deliver postcards to Sen. Dominic Pileggi's district office in Media in Delaware County, urging him and Sen. Ted Erickson to support ABC legislation. For more information contact Antoinette Kraus at PHAN, 215-557-0822 or akraus@philaup.org.

For the Rendell Administration's explanation of PA-ABC and its funding, click here.

In a press release on June 2, The Pennsylvania Moratorium Coalition, of which JSPAN is an active member, praised Rep. Tangretti for what it called a "common sense" approach to the death penalty. The Coalition stated, "The introduction of H.B. 2565 follows a report by the American Bar Association (ABA) indicating serious flaws in how Pennsylvania operates the death penalty. ... The ABA report found that the Commonwealth is at significant risk of executing an innocent person. It also noted major flaws in representation for poor defendants and rampant juror confusion in capital cases. .... (Rep.) Tangretti's bill gives the public and the state government an opportunity to learn more about how the death penalty functions and malfunctions in Pennsylvania."

The study commission outlined in H.B. 2565 would study various aspects of capital punishment in Pennsylvania, including the impact on victims' families, the financial costs of the death penalty, and the Commonwealth's compliance with a U.S. Supreme Court decision outlawing the execution of persons with mental retardation.

Similar legislation was introduced in the Pennsylvania Senate last year.

To read H.B. 2565 in its entirety, click here.

To learn more about the work of the Pennsylvania Moratorium Coalition, click here.

House Bill 1140 will divest Pennsylvania's resources from companies whose business helps the Sudanese government fund its brutal campaign of murder, rape and displacement in Darfur. It is time for Pennsylvania to join the twenty-four states and the federal government in this national effort to ensure that tax dollars do not support the Sudanese regime's genocidal campaign against it own people.

American Jewish World Service is asking JSPAN members to keep up the pressure on Pennsylvania State Senate legislators. It is critically important that H.R. 1140 is brought to a vote as quickly as possible in committee and then given immediate passage on the senate floor.

Click here to access the telephone numbers of PA State Senate members.

On May 23 the movement spoke out against alleged worker abuse at the largest Kosher slaughterhouse in the United States, and on May 28 the movement's Committee on Jewish Law and Standards endorsed a religious ruling encouraging the hiring by Jewish-owned businesses of unionized workers and the payment to them of a living wage. The JTA article goes on to explain that "both decisions point to the rising assertiveness of Conservative rabbis on social justice issues, but they also have laid bare the tensions between activist rabbis who want to see the movement take firm positions and those who remain cautious about the fallout from such actions."

To read the JTA article in its entirety, click here.

On May 15, 2008, a new study, "Coexistence in Israel: A National Study", led by Harvard Kennedy School associate professor Todd L. Pittinsky, research director of the school's Center for Public Leadership, was released. The report finds strong support for coexistence efforts among a majority of Jewish and Arab citizens of Israel as the nation celebrates its 60th anniversary.

The study was conducted in Hebrew and Arabic, and included 1,721 adult interviewees. Researchers at the University of Haifa assisted. The findings may buoy hopes for long-term peace in the region.

Among the study's findings:

• 73% of Jewish citizens and 94% of Arab citizens want Israel to be a society in which Arab and Jewish citizens have mutual respect and equal opportunities.
• 77% of Arab citizens would rather live in Israel than in any other country in the world.
• Arab citizens and Jewish citizens both underestimate their communities' liking of the "other."
• 66% of Jewish citizens and 84% of Arab citizens believe that Israeli government investments in coexistence efforts in Israel should begin now, and not wait until the end of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

A second encouraging report of Jewish and Arab coexistence efforts appeared in The New York Times on May 29 under the headline "Web Start-Up a Joint Israeli-Palestinian Venture." In "the first joint technology venture of its kind between Israelis and Palestinians", G.ho.st, an Internet start-up, has been launched. A video hookup connects a team of software developers in the central Israeli town of Modiin with another team in the West Bank town of Ramallah.

G.ho.st will offer users "a free, Web-based virtual computer that will let them access their desktop and files from any computer with an Internet connection." The name of the company, pronounced "ghost," is short for Global Hosted Operating System. A test version of the service is available now, and an official introduction will take place in the fall. Zvi Schreiber, the company's British-born Israeli chief executive, comments, "We are doing something across cultures and across two sides of a tough conflict. I was prepared for the possibility that it might be difficult, but it hasn't been."

To read "Web Start-Up a Joint Israeli-Palestinian Venture" in its entirety, click here.

Mr. Friedman states that neither the Israelis or the Palestinians have "enough energy or authority to produce a solution. (This) energy shortage today is on three levels: First is the level of hope and trust." The second "energy shortage" has resulted from the wall that the Israelis built around the West Bank, "so effectively shut(ting) down Palestinian suicide bombers that the Israeli public right now feels no sense of urgency. .... The third energy shortage is the fact that the political system in both Israel and among the Palestinians is so internally divided that neither one can generate the authority to take a big decision."

Mr. Friedman suggests bringing "a trusted third party", Jordan, into the process, "to help the Palestinians control whatever West Bank land is ceded to them. .... Without a radically pragmatic new approach - one that gets Israel moving out of the West Bank, gets the Palestinian Authority real control and sovereignty, but one which also addresses the deep mistrust by bringing in Jordan as a Palestinian partner - any draft treaty will be dead on arrival."

To read Thomas Friedman's op-ed, "Time for Radical Pragmatism", in its entirety, click here.

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