Please note that both Steve Masters and Lori Lowenthal Marcus are identified through their affiliations for informational purposes only and were not asked to write the following essays on behalf of their respective groups.

Point: Peace Demands An End to the Tragedy of the Settlements
by Steve Masters, Philadelphia attorney and president, Brit Tzedek v'Shalom, the Jewish Alliance for Justice and Peace

I support Israel. I always have, and I daresay I always will. I believe in the right of the Jewish people to a national home, and I love the home we’ve built. I’ve lived there, worked there, found friends and loved ones there.

But I long ago learned that supporting Israel can’t mean unconditional acceptance of official policy. One can love a place and still question its leaders. Indeed, sometimes that is exactly what love demands. When it comes to Israel’s settlement policies, that’s the kind of love I hold in my heart – the kind that questions, and demands change.

Simply put, the settlements represent one of the greatest threats to security of the Jewish State.

There are many reasons this is so. Israeli soldiers on settlement duty aren’t available to defend the country’s borders; money spent on settlement defense is money taken from Israel’s other military needs; time and resources spent preparing soldiers for such duty mean less training for conventional wars (a fact we saw play out to Israel’s detriment in the course of the 2006 Second War in Lebanon).

Denying basic human rights to any ethnic group on the basis of membership in that group is surely anathema to all who believe in the fundamental dignity of human beings. For any government to refuse the right of residence, employment, security or reproduction (refusal to allow families to house their offspring is tantamount to a denial of reproduction), or even breathing rights, to a populace based on their membership in an ethnic or other group constitutes the most blatant form of racist discrimination.

And yet the Meretz opposition to the construction of new homes in Judea and Samaria, and so the one being addressed in these opposing essays, turns the quest for justice and fairness on its head.

Meretz demands that we adopt and endorse the Arab Palestinian leadership’s racist policy officially denying Jews the right to reside in, be employed in, be secure in, or even breathe in, the territories under dispute. If we are really concerned about the safety of Israel and of the United States, as Meretz claims is its motivation in making this request of us, wouldn’t they be asking us to vehemently oppose the racist operative documents and actions of the ruling Arab Palestinian parties requiring that the area in dispute be judenrein?

Occasionally, people ask what kind of bread crumbs should be thrown. In the spirit of starting the New Year with a smile, here are some suggestions for breads which may be most appropriate for specific sins and misbehaviors:

One obscure news report caught JSPAN's attention. It seems that this past May, Governor Palin delivered a $25,000 check from the State of Alaska to the Juneau Christian Center (the JCC in local terms), an Assemblies of God church where she sometimes worships. The money was to be used to assist the Hub, a youth program associated with the church, in building a teen center on the JCC premises. According to the JCC web site, it appears that the teen center is part of an outreach program designed to proselytize. The Hub is listed with the IRS as a 501(c)(3) religious organization, as is the JCC.

Curious about why government money would be used to subsidize such a program, JSPAN began to gather information about what strings, if any, were placed on the use of these funds. Is government money being used to support the religious activities of a religious institution? As part of this effort, JSPAN President Jeff Pasek submitted a formal request under Alaska's Open Records Law to Emil Notti, the State Commissioner of Commerce, Community and Economic Development in Juneau, requesting copies of documents relating to "all requests for funding submitted since January 1, 2007 by or on behalf of the Hub Youth Center," as well as "all documents generated by or on behalf of your agency with respect to the .... Center."

As of this date, JSPAN has not received a reply from Commissioner Notti.

Now the ADF is taking on the Internal Revenue Service. And rather than waiting for the IRS to investigate an alleged violation, the Fund is directly challenging the rules that govern tax-exempt organizations.

According to an article by Peter Slevin, Washington Post staff writer, which appeared in that paper on September 8, 2008, the ADF is recruiting three dozen pastors from more than 20 states to endorse political candidates from their pulpits on September 28. "The effort is designed to trigger an IRS investigation that ADF lawyers would then challenge in federal court. The ultimate goal is to persuade the U.S. Supreme Court to throw out a 54-year-old ban on political endorsements by tax-exempt houses of worship."

On the other side of the issue, however, are "an opposing collection of Christian and Jewish clergy (who consider) the ADF's 'Pulpit Initiative' an assault on the rule of law and the separation of church and state." A counter effort has been organized "call(ing) for hundreds of clergy to preach on September 21 about the value of the separation of church and state."

To read "Ban on Political Endorsements by Pastors Targeted" by Peter Slevin, click here.

On September 8, 2008, a letter on behalf of JSPAN was sent to state senators, urging them "to put aside partisan differences ..... to achieve a bipartisan consensus on health care reform recommendations before the General Assembly."

To read the JSPAN letter to state senators, click here.

"One option left for the Bush Administration," explains Professor Spiegel, "is to craft a Bush-Olmert-Abbas statement detailing agreements reached to date, .... (but) there does not seem to be sufficient time left to complete enough details, even if the parties were prepared to do so." However, according to Professor Spiegel, there are several steps that the Bush administration can take in the next few months to "advance prospects for an eventual peace accord."

"The most important contribution Bush and Rice can make .... is to bequeath to their successors the sense that progress is possible in the Israeli-Palestinian arena if they quickly devote time, attention and political and diplomatic capital to it. .... A positive series of joint messages - either public or confidential - by the Palestinians and Israelis that communicated confidence in the future and invited the new president to continue and even accelerate his activities on their behalf would be critical in shaping the thinking of the transition team."

To read "How to Hand Off the Peace Process to Our Next President" by Steven L. Spiegel, click here.

The Mitzvah Food Project is coordinated by the Mitzvah Projects Task Force of the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia. It was launched in 1996 to alleviate hunger and malnutrition among at-risk families in the Greater Philadelphia region and provides ongoing food relief to vulnerable households once or twice monthly, with emergency provisions available as needed. The project works in partnership with volunteers and community groups, spearheaded by synagogues and Jewish organizations.

A major challenge facing food programs across the country is diminishing Federal and State funding. The Mitzvah Food Project is experiencing this first hand as it continues to expand to meet the growing demand for services in a dangerous climate of increasing food prices.

In the 2006-07 program year, the Project supplemented 67% of its food costs with support from the State Food Purchase Program. This program incurred a $150,000 – 5% -- budget cut this year. The full impact of this budget cut on The Project is not yet known.

Compounding this budget cut is the fact that the Consumer Price Index for food increased 4% in 2007, the highest annual increase since 1990, and as a result The Project experienced a surge in demand for hunger-relief services. Over the first six months of the 2007-08 program year, The Project served 30% more households than last year to meet this demand.

The ability of the Project to continue to provide food and basic staples to those in need will depend upon increased support from the community. You can help the Mitzvah Food Project meet these increasing needs by becoming a hunger relief advocate.

For more information about the work of the Mitzvah Food Project, contact Drisana Davis, Mitzvah Food Project coordinator, at ddavis@philafederation.org or (215)832-0531.

Join the Mitzvah Food Project Advocacy Net for updates and calls-to-action.

JSPAN has a clear policy of non-partisanship on political issues and does NOT endorse candidates for office. The editorial committee of this newsletter determined, however, that it was appropriate to include this article because of the large numbers of e-mails that have been circulating on the internet in recent months raising questions about Senator Obama's relationship to the Jewish community. JSPAN invites its readers to let us know if any of the other candidates for national office have Jewish relatives, so that we can share this information with our readers.

While Barack Obama has struggled to capture Jewish votes, it turns out that one of his wife’s cousins is the country’s most prominent black rabbi.

Michelle Obama, wife of the Democratic presidential nominee, is a first cousin once removed of Rabbi Capers Funnye, spiritual leader of a mostly black synagogue on Chicago’s South Side. Funnye’s mother, Verdelle Robinson Funnye, and Michelle Obama’s paternal grandfather, Frasier Robinson Jr., were brother and sister.

Funnye (pronounced fuh-NAY) is the chief rabbi of the Beth Shalom B’nai Zaken Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation in southwest Chicago. He is well known in Jewish circles for acting as a bridge between mainstream Jewry and the much smaller, and largely separate, world of black Jewish congregations, sometimes known as black Hebrews, or Israelites. He has often urged the larger Jewish community to be more accepting of Jews who are not white.

In this presidential campaign, Funnye’s famous relative gives an unexpected twist to the much analyzed relationship between Barack Obama and the Jewish community. On the one hand, Jewish political organizers, voters and donors — including some of the city’s wealthiest and most prominent families — played an essential role in Obama’s rise to power in Chicago. But the Illinois senator has struggled to overcome suspicions in some parts of the Jewish community, including skepticism about his stance on Israel, and discredited but persistent rumors that he is secretly a Muslim.

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