On June 6, 2007, along with 429 other students, our son Max graduated from Lower Merion High School. As many of you may know, the state of Pennsylvania requires that all graduating students complete a senior project. At Lower Merion, seniors are required to do 120 hours of work to fulfill their project.

For his project, Max asked my parents to go with him to Germany so that he could see where they spent their childhood. My father was born in Bad Cannstatt, then a suburb just outside of Stuttgart, today part of the city. My mother came from Rommerskirchen, then a town of a few hundred families approximately 20 miles from Cologne, today a suburb of 10,000-12,000 people in the midst of a great building boom, given its proximity to Cologne and relatively inexpensive housing prices. In a wonderful gift to all of us, my parents invited our entire family to join them. How does one begin to summarize such an amazing and powerful experience? What follows are excerpts from a sermon I shared with my congregation, “Reflections on a Trip to Germany”.

Roberta Fahn Schoffman represents the Israel Policy Forum in Israel. In an op-ed entitled "Experience Trumps Appeal" that she wrote for the June 18 edition of the IPF Focus from Jerusalem, Ms. Schoffman urges Israel, the United States and the international community to take advantage of opportunities like the Arab League plan and to work with people who are willing to work with Israel - even if it includes Hamas. She observes that "if nothing else, experience has taught (Israel) .... that the longer we wait, the fewer options we have."

To read "Experience Trumps Appeal" in its entirety, click here.

State Rep. Babette Josephs, D-Phila., chairwoman of the House State Government Committee, introduced HB 1140, in May. The bill urges using divestment as a tool to influence ending the genocide in Darfur.

"The Sudanese government has been sponsoring ethnic cleansing of non-Arab Darfurians since February 2003. To date, more than 400,000 Darfurian civilians have been killed, and millions more have been displaced and are reliant on humanitarian aid," Josephs said. "The magnitude of the crimes in Darfur combined with the failure of the international community to stem these horrors has given each individual state an opportunity and a responsibility to use its treasury as a tool for change.

"Divestment is an effective way the Commonwealth can influence Sudan's behavior," she said.

Please contact your legislative representative serving on the House State Government Committee to urge support for passage of this critically important bill.

For details about this vital legislation, go to www.Babette.org.

Although JSPAN has not taken a position on guest worker legislation, we are including two analyses which present the pros and cons of this specific aspect of S.1348.

To learn more about why the guest worker legislation is an important addition to S. 1348, click here to read James Surowiecki's article in its entirety.

To learn more about "the most egregious negatives" of the guest worker program of S. 1348, as developed by Deborah White in Your Guide to Liberal Politics: U.S., click here.

To read the proposed Immigration Reform Act of 2007 in its entirety, click here.

We expect to hold telephone screening interviews very soon and begin meeting with candidates within weeks. Each inquiry will be shared only with the Search and JSPAN Executive Committees until we have spoken with the candidate.

Here is a great opportunity to work professionally on matters we all care deeply about, to experience the Jewish and secular structures that set social policy in our society, and because JSPAN is a young organization, to try new and innovative ideas in both "real" and "virtual" space.

If you know someone who fits the description and would be interested, please encourage that person to write to Ken@JSPAN.org. now.

To learn more about our new Board members, click here.

JSPAN recognizes the critically important effort that hunger and food insecurity relief agencies across the nation are currently expending to guarantee that the 2007 Farm Bill is enhanced and passed by the Senate and then the House. This organization endorsed the bill several months ago and has participated in the efforts of the Pennsylvania Coalition on Hunger to secure its passage. We are especially grateful to MAZON: a Jewish Response to Hunger, the only national Jewish organization dedicated solely to the issue of hunger, for speaking on our behalf in the halls of Congress. The Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank has been a grantee of MAZON since 1990.

To read the op-ed in its entirety, click here.