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The Jewish Daily Forward
August 29, 2008
read the article at Forward.com
On the Jewish Agenda(s), Part 1
By Kenneth Bandler, William C. Daroff, Abraham H. Foxman, Jaime Rapaport, Barbara Weinstein and David Zwiebel
The next occupant of the Oval Office will help set the national agenda on a wide range of issues of importance to the Jewish community. While our collective concern for the security and well-being of Israel has featured prominently in discussions of our community’s stake in the upcoming presidential election, Jewish groups are also vigorous participants in debates over a diverse array of other issues both foreign and domestic.
With Democrats and Republicans assembling for their conventions, we solicited representatives from some Jewish organizations to each suggest an issue that should feature prominently on the communal agenda. We asked each of them to explain why this issue matters to American Jews and what course of action they would want to see our next president take.
The responses we received offer a glimpse into some of the diverse issues that figure into our broad, variegated and often hotly contested Jewish communal agenda(s). The first batch of responses is featured below. We will be publishing additional responses in next week’s edition of the Forward and on our Web site.
Stop Iran From Going Nuclear
By Kenneth Bandler
Iran has long figured prominently in American foreign policy. But now is the first time since 1980 that it has loomed so large in the run-up to a presidential contest. Then it was the ordeal of the American embassy hostages, held by “students” emboldened by Ayatollah Khomeini’s Islamic Revolution. Today, Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, presents an agenda more dangerous than one could have imagined immediately after the Shah’s demise.
Addressing Iran’s nuclear weapons program must be a top priority for America’s next president. We will need to find new ways of mobilizing international support for firmer economic and diplomatic actions to deter Iran, which remains defiant even after three United Nations Security Council sanctions resolutions, and is determined to cross the nuclear threshold.
A nuclear Iran would be a threat to global security. Europe would be in range of nuclear-armed Iranian missiles. And Iran’s Arab neighbors already have suggested that they would follow suit in developing nuclear programs.
The Jewish community wonders how the next president can best protect American interests in the Middle East — including the security of Israel — in the face of an aggressive, nuclear-capable Iran, whose president has threatened Israel’s existence while aiding Hamas and Hezbollah.
Options, including the prospect of military confrontation should political and economic measures fail, are daunting. But the security challenge posed by a nuclear Iran — with an ideologically driven government bent on remaking the strategic and political map of the Middle East — is the most daunting of all. Stopping Iran will contribute to a safer, more stable world.
Kenneth Bandler is director of communications for the American Jewish Committee.
Aid the Needy
By William C. Daroff
Although we are not officially in a recession, hard-working individuals and families are struggling to make ends meet. One of the most successful programs that directly combats the effects of a poor economy is the Emergency Food and Shelter National Board Program — a joint project between the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the nation’s six leading service organizations (including United Jewish Communities).
The EFSP program offers supplemental funding for local communities’ efforts to provide basic necessities — food, shelter and utility-payment assistance — in emergency situations. It helps to organize and maintain food pantries, community kitchens and shelters, among other services. Its success can be attributed to the autonomy local communities are given. Bureaucrats in Washington do not make any decisions on how funding is spent. Instead, local authorities in each community determine their own specific needs and have full control to allocate their share of the funding as they deem necessary.
Despite EFSP’s quarter-century-long track record of success, the program in recent years has faced attempts to drastically cut its funding. Fortunately, bipartisan majorities in Congress have continued funding for EFSP each year.
The Jewish community has long been a beacon of goodwill for those living through their darkest hours. No other federal program has had such a direct effect on those who need it most, and continued support for EFSP is a moral imperative. America’s next president must act as a friend of EFSP and embrace the program by pushing for full funding.
William C. Daroff is vice president for public policy and director of the Washington office of United Jewish Communities.
Keep Church and State Separate
By Abraham H. Foxman
Since President Clinton first signed legislation offering taxpayer money to intrinsically religious social-service providers — which grew into the Faith-Based Initiative that President Bush subsequently made a centerpiece of his administration — religious institutions have been eligible to receive billions in government social service grants. This was a flawed policy prescription that raised serious and troubling implications for religious freedom. The next president will have an opportunity to reassess this program and to return the relationship between government and religion to its proper course.
As a minority group in a majority Christian nation, Jews understand all too well the risk of government entanglement in religion and the importance of a high wall between church and state. Some — including well-meaning individuals in the Jewish community — insist that faith-based grants are constitutionally sound because they place religious groups on a level playing field with nonreligious service providers. This, however, ignores a number of serious problems, including religious providers that discriminate on the basis of religion in their hiring for taxpayer-funded jobs. It also ignores the harsh reality of recipients being forced to endure proselytizing in exchange for potentially life-saving services.
The next president must ensure that government money is not used for discrimination, that beneficiaries are not subjected to unwanted proselytizing, that secular alternatives are available, and that grants are not doled out to programs that promote a pervasively sectarian atmosphere with religious icons or sacred texts. The Faith-Based Initiative will always raise serious questions of law and policy, but these safeguards will help protect Americans and their religious freedom.
Abraham H. Foxman is national director of the Anti-Defamation League.
Enforce Our Labor Laws
By Jaime Rapaport
The right to bargain collectively, the right to a minimum wage, the right to protection from hazardous working conditions — these fundamental rights, now enshrined in American law, are being trampled upon at an alarming rate, just as they were when immigrant Jews suffered and sometimes died in the sweatshops of the early-20th century.
The National Labor Relations Board and the Department of Labor, the bodies responsible for enforcing labor laws, have been unable to stop the decades-long increase in the illegal exploitation of workers. Both the NLRB and the Labor Department have lacked the funding — and the sense of urgency — needed for enforcement.
Meanwhile, within the business community, some have begun to recognize that treating workers fairly can be a win-win situation. For example, in a recent Los Angeles Times opinion article, the owner of the Radisson hotel at Los Angeles’s international airport voiced his support for the concept of a living wage, arguing that dedicated and fairly compensated workers help increase guest satisfaction levels while reducing employee turnover.
But such forward-thinking entrepreneurs are placed in a difficult situation when their competitors are allowed to violate labor laws with impunity. The next administration must show respect for America’s workers by allocating the funds necessary to enforce the laws already on the books. American Jews — as historic victims of an under-regulated economy and as defenders of justice for all of God’s people — have an obligation to advocate for this change.
Jaime Rapaport is deputy director of Progressive Jewish Alliance.
Make Health Care Universal
By Barbara Weinstein
The Talmud teaches, “Whoever is in pain, lead him to a physician.” But 47 million Americans lack health insurance, and for them a visit to a physician is often a financial hardship. Eight out of ten among the uninsured are from working families. Nine million are children. The uninsured are disproportionately likely to be young adults who have aged out of their parents’ coverage or members of racial and ethnic minority groups. Too many in our own community are among the uninsured.
The United States is one of only two fully industrialized countries, along with South Africa, that do not ensure that all citizens have health coverage. States are starting to fill the void, but without a federal commitment to universal health coverage, we risk creating a patchwork system unbefitting the richest nation on earth.
Every person deserves a chance to be healthy. But too often that chance is limited to those with health insurance. Children without insurance are 13 times less likely to have a relationship with a primary-care doctor or clinic and twice as likely to die from injuries (even after hospitalization) as children with insurance. The difference health insurance makes is clear.
We look to the next president to fix our broken system. A single-payer structure would fulfill the principle of universality. And though no proposal will be perfect (What public policy is?), any final plan must be based on the standard of affordable, quality care. Our moral obligation to heal the sick will not be fulfilled until health insurance is available to all.
Barbara Weinstein is legislative director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism.
Respect Religion
By David Zwiebel
Religion enjoys a special status in American culture and law. From an Orthodox Jewish perspective, that is a good thing. It has enabled us to freely educate our children, practice our faith, worship our God — and rebuild from the ashes.
There are signs, however, that the status quo is changing: Religious schools are in decline. Religious perspectives on cutting-edge issues, such as stem-cell research, are derided as anti-scientific impediments to human progress. Traditional religious attitudes regarding sexuality are portrayed as bigoted. Religious communities with progressive outlooks in accord with the spirit of secularism are embraced as part of the mainstream, while other perspectives are increasingly marginalized and occasionally even penalized.
The issue is further complicated by the universal revulsion throughout civilized society at radical Islamic fundamentalism. Many find it difficult to distinguish among the broad array of groups deemed to be “fundamentalist” and tend to regard fervently religious people of all faiths with suspicion.
Thus, while religion remains a powerful force in American culture and law, we have entered an era in which that position appears to be eroding. Further erosion could represent a serious challenge to the ongoing development of Jewish religious life in America.
Here’s hoping that the next president will promote policies that help parents who choose religious schooling for their children, allow faith-based service providers to seek federal funding without abandoning their religiously motivated employment practices, and give religious thinkers a respected place at the public-policy table in the debates over the great moral issues of our time.
Rabbi David Zwiebel is executive vice president for government and public affairs at Agudath Israel of America.
On the Jewish Agenda(s), Part 2
By Gideon Aronoff, Nathan J. Diament, Jerome M. Epstein, Nancy Falchuk, Rachel Goldberg, Richard S. Gordon, Ruth Messinger, Tom Neumann, Nancy Ratzan, Hadar Susskind and Susan B. Tuchman
In last week’s Forward, we published the first batch of their responses, which can be read here. This week, we publish the rest, which are printed below.
Reform Our Immigration System
By Gideon Aronoff
The collapse of the Comprehensive Immigration Reform bill last year left Jewish activists — who had overwhelmingly supported the effort — without a clear path forward. Since that time, however, we have witnessed in Postville, Iowa, the single largest immigration raid ever staged by the federal government, which targeted our country’s largest kosher slaughterhouse. This raid, and the way the workers were treated by the government and the company, has galvanized our community to reexamine questions related to immigration in 21st-century America.
Postville got our attention not only because it concerned a Jewish-owned and -operated business, which provides the American Jewish community with much of its kosher meat, but because of the greater implications of how we honor our religious traditions in the economic and political arenas. In this one dramatic incident, many of us saw our religious, ethical, national, communal and personal interests converge as we struggled with how to better ensure that our national laws reflect the inherent compassion of our Jewish tradition.
The federal government clearly has a responsibility to enforce our immigration laws. We as a nation, however, must understand the fundamental reality that a policy of raids targeting otherwise law-abiding undocumented immigrants cannot possibly create either real security and order — or justice and humanity — in our immigration system. The next president should lead a national effort to prevent future Postvilles by passing legislation that will address the needs of our economy, our workers and our employers — while safeguarding the welcoming and faith-based principles on which this country was established.
Gideon Aronoff is president and CEO of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society.
Spur Investment in Education
By Nathan J. Diament
Jews have promoted the value of universal education since first-century sage Yehoshua ben Gamla instituted schooling for all children. Today, as America pursues its own “no child left behind” policy, critics rightly note that Washington hasn’t provided sufficient funding to help schools meet ambitious new standards. But spurring community investment in education is as important as procuring federal funds.
In many states around the country, a proven method for catalyzing such investments is education tax credits. While the specifics vary from state to state, what these programs have in common is that they provide a tax credit — more valuable than a tax deduction — for individuals or businesses to make financial contributions to schools and scholarship funds. These state tax credits — supported by Democratic and Republican governors, and ruled entirely constitutional, even when some of the funds benefit families that utilize parochial schools — have added hundreds of millions of dollars to both public- and private-school budgets. The credits have helped public schools raise funds for extracurricular programs, tutoring and more. They also can ease the burden on middle- and lower-income parents who struggle with private-school tuition (including to pay for Jewish day schools) by encouraging the establishment of scholarship funds, administered in our communities by local Jewish federations.
For our next president, a federal education tax-credit program is a winning approach for bringing more support to educating all American children. For a Jewish community concerned with assimilation and the high cost of educating young Jews, it is a proven and beneficial means of support.
Nathan J. Diament is director of public policy at the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America.
Protect Our Planet
By Jerome M. Epstein
Among the many critical issues that our next president will face, perhaps none will be more important in determining the future of humankind than how our nation grapples with an ever-worsening worldwide environmental crisis.
Climate change is causing unprecedented and often disastrous weather problems, resulting in food shortages, illness and terrible loss of life. It affects all of us. Our global water supply is endangered, the quality of our air is being destroyed, and our children’s and grandchildren’s futures are jeopardized.
Judaism commands us as God’s partners to care for the world God has given us. The Torah and rabbinic literature teach us that we are the stewards of this earth, and those teachings govern our lives. We must convey these values to the next president.
Although no president can reverse ecological trends unilaterally, his values and programs must reflect the priority of creating a new ecological balance. The new president must inspire and foster investment in creating alternate sources of energy, while reducing reliance on current fuel sources, especially those that leave a carbon footprint. Some of these measures will be unpopular in many quarters. Strategies we should pursue include adopting incentives to convert most vehicles to run on alternative fuels, a significant investment in clean-air technology and an initiative to commercialize — and thus popularize — solar and wind power.
Both candidates should lay out clear, concrete courses of action, so that when the next president is sworn in, he can claim a mandate to restore ecological sanity.
Rabbi Jerome M. Epstein is the executive vice president of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism.
Support Stem-Cell Research
By Nancy Falchuk
The next president of the United States should immediately overturn the current restrictions on federal funding of human embryonic stem-cell research. Human embryonic stem-cell research holds the promise to treat and cure chronic and debilitating conditions such as cancer, diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, multiple sclerosis and spinal-cord injury — conditions plaguing more than 100 million Americans.
Yet, seven years after President Bush’s August 9, 2001, announcement restricting federal funding for stem-cell research to those lines created prior to that date, only 16 stem-cell lines are available for federal funding, and none of these are suitable for human research.
Funding for embryonic stem cell research should not be held hostage to politics or religion — it is about saving lives. Droves of members of both major political parties support the research, evidenced by the congressional passage in 2006 and 2007 of bipartisan bills that, had they not been vetoed by President Bush, would have lifted the federal restrictions. Similarly, support for stem-cell research is not defined by religion. Millions of Americans with strongly held religious beliefs support stem-cell research, a position backed by all major streams of Judaism.
In the meantime, researchers are moving overseas to countries with more supportive stem-cell policies — countries, such as Israel, that are surging forward in this promising field. Until we have a president who lifts the federal restrictions, the United States will remain on the sidelines, along with millions of deserving patients and their families.
Nancy Falchuk is national president of Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America.
Help Americans Age Healthily
By Rachel Goldberg
We know that the next president must address health care — what we don’t know is whether the person who takes the oath of office in January will understand that aging is a central component of this issue. Because seniors already have Medicare, some assume health-care reform is not an aging issue. Medicare is a good program, but healthy aging (which is the goal for everyone) can’t start at age 65 — and it can’t happen without lifelong access to affordable healthcare. Those who receive Medicare after years of being uninsured tend to have more (and more expensive) health problems. Overcoming insurance industry cherry-picking to make health care affordable to people in their 40s, 50s and early 60s must be a priority for the next president. The Jewish community — which is disproportionately well-represented among Americans age 50 and older — is keenly aware of the importance of health-care access to healthy, independent aging.
The president must do more than expand access. We also must begin to address the failings of a health-care system not designed to meet the needs of older people. Our current system struggles to provide specialty care to older adults, to manage chronic conditions, to coordinate care and to retain direct-care workers. Those problems won’t fix themselves, and they will grow more acute as the 65-and-over population grows from about 12% of our total population to 25% in 2030. Health-care reform proposals are coming, and so is the retirement of the baby-boomers. The next president must make this critical connection and act accordingly.
Rachel Goldberg develops B’nai B’rith International policy on aging and serves as its legislative advocate on a range of senior issues.
Help Shape International Law
By Richard S. Gordon
International law will play a growing role in determining our nation’s foreign and military policy. That’s a given. We have debated how, if at all, international law should apply to those held at Guantanamo. We have watched as the legal duty to prevent genocide has been effectively shredded by inaction over Darfur. But other developments in international law that are critically important to us as Americans and as Jews have gone largely unnoticed.
The law of war, as interpreted at the United Nations and by many in the human rights field, has become a weapon in the hands of terrorist forces that use human shields to launch attacks against civilians in Israel, Afghanistan and Iraq, and then claim impunity from counter-attack because of the civilians in whose midst they operate.
Meanwhile, the Organization of the Islamic Conference is working to make it a criminal violation of international law to defame religion, and specifically Islam. If it succeeds, it could be a crime to speak of Islam giving rise to terrorism. Under this theory, Jordanian prosecutors are already seeking the extradition of Danish journalists for publishing cartoons critical of Islam.
International law is neither irrelevant, nor is it the key to salvation — content matters. The next president will have to both accept international law as a restraint on American behavior and work to shape it so that it is not misused by those who threaten peace and freedom.
Richard S. Gordon is president of the American Jewish Congress.
Save Darfur
By Ruth Messinger
We are six years into a tragedy in Darfur that has resulted in more than 450,000 lives lost and 2.5 million people displaced. President Bush has used the term “genocide” to describe this mass murder. Yet his term is winding down, and he has not done nearly enough to bring security to the region.
Options at the president’s disposal have included pressuring China to stop underwriting the genocide through petrodollars, arms shipments and diplomatic cover at the United Nations; initiating a reinvigorated peace process between the Sudanese government and rebel groups; calling on other nations to contribute more troops and equipment, such as helicopters, to the international peacekeeping mission; and pressing the international community to impose sanctions against Sudan if it continues to restrict peacekeeping efforts.
When Russian tanks recently rolled into Georgia, President Bush quickly issued a strong statement of rebuke, hinting of possible diplomatic consequences for the Russians. He then dispatched troops and sent Condoleezza Rice to Georgia for emergency meetings. Where is the same urgency regarding Darfur?
More than 4 million Darfuri people now depend on humanitarian aid for survival; aid workers can’t access the camps; villages continue to be attacked by government-backed militias, and all we hear is lip service from President Bush. He does not even have a full-time diplomatic team in Sudan. Both candidates to succeed President Bush have promised to prioritize ending this genocide. The Jewish community knows the danger of waiting — we must demand that our next president honors his pledge before it is too late.
Ruth Messinger is president of American Jewish World Service.
Expand Domestic Energy Production
By Tom Neumann
Energy gets top billing as both a domestic and foreign policy issue in this election. It is a domestic issue in that the energy crisis is a key factor in our current economic crisis. It is international in that our dependence on foreign oil restricts America’s ability to operate in the international arena.
No single policy will solve the energy crisis. To find alternatives to imported oil, the next president must support domestic exploration and drilling, as well as expand domestically generated energy sources, including nuclear power, clean coal, natural gas, hydrogen, bio-fuels, wind, solar and hydropower. This is, quite simply, a matter of national security.
Clearly, the energy issue goes well beyond a Jewish agenda. But in reducing our dependence on foreign oil suppliers — such as Iran, Iraq and Russia — we also will have a positive impact on a number of issues that are of particular concern to the Jewish community.
Tom Neumann is executive director of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs.
Restore Judicial Independence
By Nancy Ratzan
A top priority for Jewish women and men in this election must be restoring an independent federal judiciary and Department of Justice dedicated to the preservation of constitutional rights. The next president must pledge to nominate an attorney general and federal judges who have unequivocal records upholding the law and the gains made during the last half of the 20th century.
After years in which there has been a concerted effort to re-create our justice system to conform to an extreme ideological agenda, it is critical that the next president take a different course. True to his word, President Bush appointed judges in the mold of Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas who seek to reverse the course of the courts since World War II, eroding fundamental rights and freedoms. New federal appeals court judges in lifetime seats now include one who wrote a Justice Department memo rationalizing torture and another who called Roe v. Wade “the worst abomination of constitutional law in our history.” Similarly, the Department of Justice selected career attorneys based on their political beliefs, not legal credentials or competence.
For Jews this transformation of the judicial system has been especially problematic. As a minority group, we rely on the courts as our bedrock defense of civil rights and civil liberties, including reproductive and religious freedom. Demanding the revival of a truly independent judiciary must be a top priority for Jewish voters, lest the next president and his ensuing federal bench undermine our constitutional rights for decades to come.
Nancy Ratzan is president of the National Council of Jewish Women.
Confront Poverty in America
By Hadar Susskind
In America there are more than 37 million people living in poverty — including 13 million children. More than 47 million Americans do not have health insurance. There is a nationwide affordable housing crisis. As of 2006, the U.S. Department of Agriculture found that nearly 11% of Americans were, at some point in the year, “food insecure.” Childhood poverty alone is believed to cost America $500 billion each year in lower productivity, poor health and lost potential. And yet, a comprehensive strategy to slash poverty by half would cost only $90 billion per year.
For America to be a strong country, a healthy country and a just country, our next president must make combating and eradicating poverty a top national priority. And there are proven steps that we can take to make a real difference: We should expand the Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit, guarantee child care assistance to low-income families, promote early education for all children, properly fund affordable housing programs whose budgets have been slashed over the years, and expand Pell grants and other means of making higher education a reality that is achievable for all students.
Jews care about poverty because the Torah calls for us to do so, because our own community suffers from its impact and because we are committed to a strong, healthy and just America. The time has come for the Jewish community to speak up and join in the call for our next president to make reducing poverty a national priority.
Hadar Susskind is Washington director for the Jewish Council for Public Affairs.
Fight Campus Antisemitism
By Susan B. Tuchman
Jewish college students face increasing hostility on campus. The effects have been serious: On some campuses, students have reported being afraid to wear yarmulkes, Stars of David or anything pro-Israel. They’re reluctant to express pro-Israel views. Some even fear for their safety.
Racial and ethnic harassment and intimidation are unlawful. Under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, schools receiving federal funding must provide an environment free from racial and ethnic discrimination. These schools would be held accountable by the U.S. Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights if they tolerated an environment hostile to African Americans, Arab Americans or other racial and ethnic groups.
Jewish Americans, however, do not enjoy the same protection. OCR treats Jews as a religious group outside the purview of Title VI. OCR maintains that it will not investigate allegations of antisemitism unless discrimination based on the complainant’s race, color or national origin is also alleged.
Jews, however, are more than a religious group. We share an ancestry, traditions, language and culture. As an ethnic group we are entitled to Title VI’s protections.
There’s bipartisan support for ensuring that Title VI protects against antisemitism. Recently, three Republican senators wrote to the secretary of education, objecting to OCR’s current policy. Six Democratic members of the House of Representatives have sent a similar letter.
Our next president should direct OCR to enforce Title VI so that students are assured an environment free from antisemitism. Efforts are under way to amend Title VI, clarifying that Jewish students are protected. Our next president should sign such an amendment into law.
Susan B. Tuchman is director of the Zionist Organization of America’s Center for Law and Justice.
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