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IN
THIS ISSUE:
ARON ASSUMES WORLD UNION REGIONAL LEADERSHIP
Rabbi Melanie Aron assumed the role of president of the World Union's
Pacific Central West region effective January 1, succeeding Rabbi
Roberto Graetz, who stepped down after a four-year term. Aron will lead
efforts in central and northern California to promote the growth of
Reform and Liberal congregations in Israel, the former Soviet Union and
worldwide. She will also spearhead the regional work of ARZA, the
Association of Reform Zionists of America. “I am honored to succeed
Rabbi Graetz and to continue the great work he has done within our
region," she says, adding, "I hope to continue to build strong ties
between our American congregations and the Israeli Reform movement. The
Bay Area has grown to be a significant Jewish community and it is
appropriate that we step up to support Jewish needs worldwide." Rabbi
Aron was ordained at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion
in 1981 and served congregations in New Jersey and New York before
coming to Congregation Shir Hadash in Los Gatos, California, in 1990.
She also serves on the national board of the Union for Reform Judaism
and chairs its Adult Jewish Learning Committee.
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IMPJ
SOCIAL ACTIVISTS LEARN FROM AMERICAN COUNTERPARTS
The coordinators of Kehilat Tzedek, a joint social action project of
Israel's Progressive and Conservative movements, say they plan to
incorporate into the project some of what they learned about similar
programs during a recent visit to Reform and Conservative congregations
in the US. Na'ama Dafni and Aviva Giron say they found that American
congregations generally undertake social action programs on a broader,
interfaith level after determining which problems to tackle. They cited
Boston’s Temple Israel, a Reform congregation with what they called a
"unique" approach to such programs. “They begin by building
interpersonal relationships in their synagogue based on the local and
community problems that move them," says Giron. "They find what social
issues bother people right in their gut.” She adds that it’s more a
matter of social justice than social action. “Social action addresses
the systematic problems, but social justice gets right to the root.”
It’s an approach, she says, that seeks social justice not in a far off
community, but locally. “Social justice," adds Dafni, "isn’t just about
other people! Poverty is understood as a local, community problem that
the congregants feel connected to.” Between the two Israeli movements,
the Kehilat Tzedek project will blanket more than 70 Progressive and
Conservative congregations. The idea is to stimulate awareness,
involvement and commitment in an era of severe government cutbacks that
have affected such population groups as new immigrants, the elderly and
the disabled.
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TOP STUDENTS AT BELARUS HEBREW SCHOOL TOUR "JEWISH MINSK"
The religious school at the Progressive congregation in Bobruisk,
Belarus, recently rewarded academic excellence by sending top students
aged 5-16 on an outing to the nation’s capital. The group of 45, which
included teachers and principal Faina Zaharova, was shown around Minsk
by Yaacov Basin, a longtime lay leader of the Union for Progressive
Judaism in Belarus. The tour began at the building housing the Russian
Drama Theater; the structure was built in the 19th century as the city's
grand Choral Synagogue and served prior to World War II as the State
Jewish Theater of Byelorussia. Another site was the Yama (Pit), where,
on March 2, 1942, an estimated 6,000 Jews who had been rounded up from
area ghettos were slaughtered by Nazi executioners and local
collaborators. A 13-year-old student called the tour "an excellent
lesson of Jewish history" that enabled them to better imagine pre-war
and wartime Jewish life. The outing concluded with tickets to a
performance by the famed Russian Circus. The excursion was made possible
by the Union for Progressive Judaism in Belarus and by Britain's Hendon
Reform Synagogue, an affiliate of the Exodus 2000 program, which assists
Progressive communities in the former Soviet Union by linking them with
British Reform and Liberal congregations.
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