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Civil Rights and Social Justice Today

Unit 3, Lesson 5

Consider what contemporary civil rights and social justice issues matter to us today, and how Jews and African Americans determine their priorities and responsibilities to effect social change.

Overview

Enduring Understandings

  • Although the issues have changed, civil rights and social justice issues remain relevant in our world today.
  • One's ethnic, racial, and/or religious backgrounds may affect one's response to civil rights and social justice issues; however, people of the same background do not necessarily all have the same response.

Essential Questions

  • What are contemporary civil rights and social justice issues?
  • As a consequence of their histories of oppression, do Jews and African Americans have a greater responsibility to stand up for social justice and civil rights issues?
  • What are your priorities and responsibilities?

Materials Required

OPTIONAL:

Notes to Teacher

This lesson plan covers two (related) topics and lends itself to being taught over two separate sessions. The first portion of the lesson asks students to name today’s civil rights and social justice issues and then explores whether same-sex marriage should be considered a civil rights issue. The second “Optional” section of the lesson asks students to think about service projects in a more complicated way and invites the group/class to come up with a service or social justice project idea. Please note that this is not a lesson on doing a service project – there are many other resources for that (see Teacher Resources). Rather, the second section of this lesson is designed to complement work on a project you already are doing, or to serve as a starting point for discussion about what kind of project to do.

Please also keep in mind that the issue of gay marriage may raise strong "pro" and "con" feelings among your students. Some may be gay or may have gay parents or family members, and for them this is not a theoretical issue but rather an issue of their own rights. Some may feel strongly that same-sex marriage is not compatible with Judaism. You may want to remind your students that this issue can be heated and personal, that you are not debating whether same-sex marriage is "good" or "bad" or acceptable in the Jewish community, and that class discussion must remain sensitive to the feelings of everyone involved.

Lastly, your students will be listening to two clips of a 2009 Fresh Air interview with Congressman John Lewis (in which he discusses same-sex marriage). Before your class/session begins, setup a computer with speakers and open the Fresh Air interview link in two different browsers (such as Firefox, Chrome, Safari, or Internet Explorer), so that you can then have two separate NPR Media Players open. Once the audio loads, prepare for playing the first clip (1:19-3:43) by pausing the audio at 1:19. Pause the second audio player at 22:02 in preparation for playing the second clip (22:02-25:06). If you are having difficulty setting up the audio, you can choose to just distribute the transcript.

Lesson plan

Introduction: What have we learned? What does it mean for us today?

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  1. If you have used a number of the Living the Legacy civil rights lesson plans with your students, review with them some of what they've learned already. You may want to ask them some of the following questions, or distribute a graphic organizer with boxes for each question:
    • What roles did American Jews play in the Civil Rights Movement?
    • What were some of the reasons that Jews did and did not get involved in the Civil Rights Movement?
    • What caused the breakdown of the black/Jewish alliance?
    • What do you think the legacy is of Jewish involvement in the Civil Rights Movement?
  2. Transition the conversation from what your students have learned about the past to examining civil rights issues today by asking the following question:
    What are some of today's civil rights/social justice issues?
    (Write these on the board or on a large piece of paper, or ask students to come up and add their answers. This list will be referred to later in the lesson)

Case Study: Same-sex Marriage & the African American Community

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  1. If your students have included same-sex marriage on their list of contemporary civil rights/social justice issues, circle it on the board.
    -OR-
    Add same-sex marriage to the list on the board. Ask your students:

    Do you think this is a civil rights issue?
  2. Explain that there have been questions about whether or not this is a civil rights issue and that question, as well as the issue itself, has presented certain challenges to the African American community. We're going to explore this issue by listening to an interview and reading a newspaper article that present different views on the topic.
  3. Hand out the Same-sex Marriage & the African American Community Document Study, which includes the transcript of an NPR interview with Congressman John Lewis and a Washington Post article "Racial Pawns in the Battle for Same-Sex Marriage," and make sure audio is set to play the NPR interview audio.
  4. Have a student read aloud the introduction about Congressman Lewis.
  5. Ask your students to think about the following questions while listening to the interview:
    • What was John Lewis' experience with discrimination?
    • What are Congressman Lewis' views on Gay and Lesbian marriage? Why does he feel this way?
    • Does he think that this is an issue with which African Americans should be concerned?
  6. Play the Podcast clips (1:19-3:43 and 22:02-25:06 – see Note to Teacher). Have your students follow along with the transcript. Stop the audio at any point if you feel it would be helpful to define a term or clarify a point.
  7. After your class has listened to the John Lewis interview, break them up into small groups of no more than 3 or 4 students.
  8. Have your students discuss the questions about what they just heard. Remaining in their groups, students should then read and discuss the article "Racial Pawns in the Battle for Same-Sex Marriage," also included in the Same-sex Marriage & the African American Community Document Study.
  9. When all the groups have finished discussing both documents and the reflection questions, have them come back together as a class. Ask the following questions (give anyone the chance to answer who wants to answer, but do not require every student or every group to share their discussions):
    • How are the Lewis interview and the Harris article similar and/or different? How does each use the Civil Rights Movement in his arguments?
    • To what extent do you think same-sex marriage is a civil rights issue? What kind of criteria would you use to determine if this issue or others are really civil rights issues?
    • Based on what you've learned by studying Jews in the Civil Rights Movement, and on the material presented in these documents, do you think a group's experience with persecution/oppression in the past should make us expect more from them in support of another group's fight for justice in the present/future? If possible, support your argument using material from today's lesson and/or previous lessons.

Wrap Up

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  1. Have your class review the list of civil rights issues that they developed earlier in the lesson.
  2. Make sure each student has a sheet of blank paper and a writing implement. Have each student prioritize the list on the board and write down, in order, what they think are the 5 most important issues to them.
  3. When every student has finished making their own list, have them get into new groups to compare and discuss their lists.
  4. With students sitting with their new groups, ask the following questions of the whole class:
    • What criteria did you use to prioritize your list? (or How did you decide which items to put on your list and in what order to put them?)
    • How did your list differ from the other people in your group? If you discussed reasons for why members of your group had different priorities from one another, what were these reasons?
    • Where on your list were issues within the Jewish community? Do you think Jews should help the Jewish community first? Why or Why not? (See the article "Non-Zero Sum: Helping Others and Ourselves," listed under Teacher Resources [link], for further discussion of these questions.)
    • Do you think Jews have a greater responsibility to stand up for civil rights and social justice? Why or why not?
    • Who has the right/responsibility to define which issues Jews should be involved in? Jewish Movements? Synagogues? Social change organizations? Individuals?

OPTIONAL additional class session: Planning a Community Service or Social Justice Activity

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Note to teachers: This activity touches on the difference between community service and social justice work, which can be explained as the difference between meeting a communal need (e.g. feeding hungry people at a soup kitchen) and pursuing structural changes that would eliminate the conditions that caused the need (e.g. targeting the social causes of poverty and hunger).

  1. To begin the class or session, return to the question of whether a group's experience with persecution/oppression in the past should make us expect more from them in support of another group's fight for justice in the present/future. (Ask students to contribute what they remember being discussed in the previous class, or ask volunteers to each share a different perspective on the issue.) If it hasn't been covered, then ask students to consider this question specifically in relation to the Jewish community, and then specifically in relation to your class/group.
  2. Have everyone break into pairs and discuss the following questions. Then ask each pair to write their responses on the board or on a large piece of paper:
    • What are the conditions that move an individual or group from wanting to help or see change, to feeling compelled to participate themselves?
    • How, if at all, does your understanding of Jewish involvement in the Civil Rights Movement impact your class or group's sense of obligation to do service and/or social justice work?
  3. Distribute to each pair copies of the "Not Only for Ourselves": What are the Goals of Service Projects? Document Study, which is based on a speech given by Ruth Messinger of American Jewish World Service. Have students take turns reading the article out loud.
  4. Remaining in their pairs, students should answer the following questions (and take notes on their responses):
    • What happens in the story that begins the article? Why is the group meeting? What do they do? What happens in the end?
    • No one is suggesting that service programs aren't needed or shouldn't be done, but what do some people find wrong with such programs? Where is the focus? Where do they think the focus should be?
    • What qualities does Ruth Messinger believe make the best acts of service? What else would you add to this list?
  5. Come back together and have the pairs take turns writing up on the board both the qualities Ruth Messinger believes make the best acts of service and the qualities they would add to the list.
  6. Clarify the difference between a community service project and a social justice project and let students weigh in on what kind of project they think is most urgent and/or most practical for them to accomplish. (See related note at start of this section.)
  7. If you already are doing a service or social justice project, or are doing this lesson as part of a service learning program, guide your students in assessing the work that they are doing. Use the article and the lists of issues and qualities written on the board to think about where their project fits into the discussion, and encourage them to revisit the project’s goals and methods. If the group is eager to explore other types of service or social justice work, you may want to vote on possible new directions to explore. (Skip h-j.)

    OR
  8. Explain that using the list of civil rights and social justice issues that we made at the beginning of class, as well as the list of qualities we just wrote on the board, we are going to plan a mitzvah day/service/social change project. (Decide ahead of time whether this will be a hypothetical project or one that your class will really carry out themselves or for another class or grade.)
  9. Have your class vote to choose an issue on your list, and allow time for debate if there is not clear consensus. (You may want to narrow down the list based on issues that are relevant in your community, based on the prioritized lists the students made earlier in class, or based on what is feasible to complete; consider involving students in this process.)
  10. Once you have chosen a project, have the students use the Forward.com article, as well as the list of qualities for a good service project written on the board, to develop a program that is "linked to learning about and working to change the conditions that brought about the need in the first place."
Document studies

Same-Sex Marriage and The African American Community

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Introduction - John Lewis interview

Congressman John Lewis grew up in Alabama, the son of sharecroppers. His experience growing up in the deep South led to his involvement in the Civil Rights Movement where he chaired the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) from 1963-1966. In 1987, John Lewis became a Democratic congressman representing Georgia. As a politician he has continued to fight for civil rights causes. The excerpt below is taken from a transcript of a 2009 interview by Terry Gross for the National Public Radio (NPR) program Fresh Air.

Visit www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99560979 for the audio recording of this interview. The excerpts in the transcript correspond with the following times in the audio: 1:19-3:43 and 22:02-25:06.

"Congressman, Civil Rights Icon John Lewis" Excerpts from Fresh Air Interview

Rep. JOHN LEWIS (Democrat, Georgia): When I was growing up in rural Alabama, it was impossible for me to register to vote. I didn’t become a registered voter until I moved to Tennessee, to Nashville as a student.

GROSS: Why was it impossible?

Rep. LEWIS: Black men and women were not allowed to register to vote. My own mother, my own father, my grandfather and my uncles and aunts could not register to vote because each time they attempted to register to vote, they were told they could not pass the literacy test. And many people were so intimidated, so afraid that they will lose their jobs, they will be evicted from the farms, and they just – they almost gave up.

GROSS: Your parents were sharecroppers. Now…

Rep. LEWIS: My mother and father and many of my relatives had been sharecroppers. They had been tenant farmers like so many people in the South. They knew the stories that had occurred. They knew places in Alabama where people were evicted from their farm, from the plantation. They read about, they heard about incidents in Tennessee where people were evicted from the farms and plantations back in 1956, in 1957 in West Tennessee between Nashville and Memphis, Tennessee.

GROSS: Now because of that did you – did your parents tell you not to bother to try to vote because it would be dangerous, they might lose their farm? I mean, you were – you were educated, you could certainly pass the literacy test.

Rep. LEWIS: My parents told me in the very beginning as a young child when I raised the question about segregation and racial discrimination, they told me not to get in the way, not to get in trouble, not to make any noise. But we had people that were educated. We had teachers, we had high school principals, we had people teaching in colleges and university in Tuskegee, Alabama. But they were told they failed the so-called literacy test…

GROSS: I want to quote something that you wrote in an op-ed piece in October 2003. And this was about gay rights and the right for gay people to marry. You wrote: I have fought too hard and too long against discrimination based on race and color not to stand up against discrimination based on sexual orientation. I’ve heard the reasons for opposing civil marriage for same-sex couples. Cut through the distractions, and they stink of the same fear, hatred and intolerance I have known in racism and bigotry.

Now, I’ve heard some African American leaders say that it’s wrong to make – I’m not quoting you here. I’m saying this part myself. Your quote has ended. And I’m saying, I’ve heard some African American leaders say that it’s wrong to make any connection between the civil rights movement and the gay rights movement because discrimination against African Americans and discrimination against gays are completely – completely different things, and being gay and being black are completely different things. What’s your take on that?

Rep. LEWIS: Well, I do not buy that argument. I do not buy that argument. And today, I think more than ever before, we have to speak up and speak out to end discrimination based on sexual orientation. Dr. King used to say when people talked about blacks and whites falling in love and getting married – you know, at one time, in the state of Virginia, in my native state of Alabama, in Georgia and other parts of the South blacks and whites could not fall in love and get married. And Dr. King took a simple argument and said, races don’t fall in love and get married. Individuals fall in love and get married.

It’s not the business of the federal government. It’s not the business of the state government to tell two individuals that they cannot fall in love and get married. And so I go back to what I said and wrote those lines a few years ago, that I fought too long and too hard against discrimination based on race and color not to stand up and fight and speak out against discrimination based on sexual orientation.

And you hear people defending marriage. Gay marriage is not a threat to heterosexual marriage. It is time for us to put that argument behind us. You cannot separate the issue of civil rights. It one of those absolute, immutable principle – we got to have not just civil rights for some but civil rights for all of us.

GROSS: When you say not just civil rights for some, you even mean not just civil rights for African American but for gay people too?

Rep. LEWIS: Not just civil rights for African American, other minorities, but civil rights also for gay people.

Congressman, Civil Rights Icon John LewisFresh Air. National Public Radio. 19 January 2009.

Discussion Questions - John Lewis interview

  1. What was John Lewis' experience with discrimination when he was growing up?
  2. How do you think these experiences influenced him?
  3. What is John Lewis' view on Gay/Lesbian marriage? How does he connect his views to the Civil Rights Movement?
  4. What does Congressman Lewis think the African American community should do in terms of discrimination based on sexual orientation?

Introduction - "Racial Pawns in the Battle for Same-Sex Marriage"

Taylor Harris is an African American graduate student studying at Johns Hopkins University. In November 2008, she contributed the following article to The Washington Post.

Racial Pawns in the Battle for Same-Sex Marriage

Their refrain was as familiar to me as dining hall food, and equally as offensive. All too often, white liberal classmates at the University of Virginia would ask, “Shouldn’t blacks, more than any other group, support gay rights?”

I never understood my classmates’ need to align the historical struggles of blacks with those of homosexuals and then push their quadratic equation of oppression on me. Was not one point of Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man,” a classic text for college seminars, that blacks deserve an existence free from an assigned role? That they should not be pawns of any social movement? And even if they hadn’t read the book, wasn’t it clear that stereotypical assumptions based on race are regressive?

Hearing that from my white peers was one thing – they and I often viewed race through different lenses, with mine being one shade darker than rose. But last month, one of our greatest civil rights leaders also sang the same cacophonous tune in an attempt to peg African Americans’ morals and opinions to our socio-historical identities.

“Black people, of all people, should not oppose equality,” Julian Bond, the chairman of the NAACP, declared at the National Equality March in Washington.

To be clear, Bond had used this line several times, and when he says “equality,” he isn’t talking about the right to vote, the right to eat at a public restaurant, the right to attend an integrated school or the right to a fair trial. He is talking about the right to change the definition of marriage to include same-sex couples.

With all due respect, which Bond certainly deserves, this black person doesn’t agree. And neither do two-thirds of black Protestants, according to an Oct. 9 Pew Research Center poll. Echoing President Lyndon Johnson’s words at the signing of the Voting Rights Act, Bond said, gay marriage “must come; it is right that it should come. And when it has, you will find that a burden has been lifted from your shoulders.”

He is right about that last point. If gay marriage is legalized, as it will be in the District this year barring congressional interference, blacks who have a moral aversion to same-sex marriage will not longer be tethered to expectations that don’t bind any other racial or ethnic group.

Perhaps Bond fails to realize that he is unfairly requiring another form of “two-ness” among African Americans. Already, being both an American and black is difficult, as W.E.B. DuBois wrote. But so is being an African American and a Christian. Asking those 66 percent of black Protestants to look at religion through the veil of race is not the place even of Martin Luther King Jr.’s comrade.

Plus, the “black guilt” tactic doesn’t work. If gay marriage were put to a popular vote in the District (where 55 percent of residents are African American) and failed, blacks would again take the brunt of criticism from gay activists. Yet no one is talking about blacks’ “understanding” since same-sex marriage was voted down this month in Maine, because no one is even sure whether black people live there.

Maine is the 31st state in which a majority of voters have chosen to uphold the traditional definition of marriage. There aren’t enough black people in America to hold responsible for all of those outcomes – we’re only 12.8 percent of the population.

The refrain will eventually have to change to pinpoint white evangelicals, 77 percent of whom oppose same-sex marriage. And here is the crux of the problem, the point at which we can’t deny the separate and unequal treatment of blacks: What race-based fire can activists put under white Americans who refuse a new definition of marriage? None.

At best, the message to black Americans in one of skewed motivation: You were once treated as second-class citizens. You should feel flattered by the two movements’ similarities and compelled to join our fight. At worse, the message is insulting. In a recent column on same-sex marriage and those who would play the race card, the Boston Globe’s Jeff Jacoby summed up the linkage as “For if opposing the same-sex marriage is like opposing civil rights, then voters who backed Proposition 8 are not better than racists, the moral equivalent of those who turned the fire hoses on blacks in Birmingham in 1963.”

Harris, Taylor. “Racial Pawns in the Battle for Same-Sex Marriage.” The Washington Post. 28 November 2009. Permission for use granted by the author.

Discussion Questions - "Racial Pawns in the Battle for Same-Sex Marriage"

  1. Who wrote this article? When was it written?
  2. For what audience do you think this article was meant? How might this have influenced the content?
  3. According to the article, many white liberal students have asked the question, "Shouldn't blacks, more than any other group, support gay rights?" What do you think is the basis for this question?
  4. Do you think Harris considers same-sex marriage to be a civil rights issue? What issues do you think Harris would consider to be civil rights issues?
  5. Why doesn't Harris think blacks need to necessarily support gay rights? What arguments does she make in her article?

Reflection Questions

  1. In Harris' article, she writes that being both African American and a Christian can at times be difficult, and suggests that her beliefs as a Christian are part of what leads her to oppose same-sex marriage. She continues, "Asking those 66 percent of black Protestants [who oppose same-sex marriage] to look at religion through the veil of race is not the place even of Martin Luther King Jr.'s comrade [NAACP chairman Julian Bond]." What is your take on her comments? What parallels do you see between this issue and other issues related to identity and action? How difficult is it, in your experience, to separate different parts of our identities? Do you agree with Harris that it is sometimes necessary to do so? (Think back to other Living the Legacy lesson plans you may have studied.)
  2. How are the Lewis interview and the Harris article similar and/or different? How does each use the Civil Rights Movement in his arguments?
  3. To what extent do you think same-sex marriage is a civil rights issue? What kind of criteria would you use to determine if this issue or others are really civil rights issues?
  4. Based on what you've learned by studying Jews in the Civil Rights Movement, and on the material presented in these documents, do you think a group's experience with persecution/oppression in the past should make us expect more from them in support of another group's fight for justice in the present/future? If possible, support your argument using material from this class and/or other classes.

"Not Only for Ourselves": What are the Goals of Service Projects?

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"Not Only for Ourselves," Editorial, The Forward

The story was heart-warming, but instructive in an unexpected way. Jewish families gathered on a Sunday in a warehouse to pack boxes of pasta, canned vegetables and other food supplies and deliver them to needy residents in their region. Parents brought their children to reinforce the message of helping others. A brief dvar Torah was offered, to reinforce another message, that this was not just charity, it was tzedekah, a Jewish expression of communal commitment.

One problem: Deep into the story, as it was written in a community newspaper, we learned that when a certain family tried to deliver their boxes to residents of a federation-owned housing project, almost no one was at home to receive them.

The fact that the mission was not accomplished, that the needy were not served, was an afterthought in this classic presentation of a Jewish service activity.

Obviously, it is difficult to criticize these well-intentioned behaviors. All of us who have ever dragged our children to food warehouses and soup kitchens, park clean-ups and nursing home visits, try to model a kind of citizenship that is essential to maintaining American civic life. More and more, service activities are also regarded as a powerful tool to shore up Jewish identity and values, especially for a generation accustomed to bar mitzvah projects, high school service programs and the kavod they receive for trying to do good in the world.

But elevating Jewish identity to a goal of such efforts undermines their very purpose. “Service programs that exist and are being created will be successful if, first and foremost, they are about service to others and not about strengthening ourselves,” said Ruth Messinger, who as president of American Jewish World Service is considered a doyenne of well-run service programs. She said this in a recent talk at the opening of the Berman Jewish Policy Archive at New York University, and her important remarks deserve a greater audience.

“Service to others,” she reminded, “is built into Jewish tradition, but it has always been focused on the needs of the beneficiaries, not the volunteers.”

The misguided tendency to conflate the two aims is not only a problem in the Jewish world. For years, the broader national service community has sought to balance the welcome desire of Americans to serve with the most efficient, thoughtful and respectful way of channeling those energies so that they are not wasted, or worse. Because it must be acknowledged that service, if done poorly, can result in more harm than good. It can denigrate or ignore the real needs of the served, and leave the server demoralized and cynical. This is already happening in places where “service learning” is organized cheaply and haphazardly, leaving students to conclude they are wasting their time while polishing their resumes.

Messinger’s remonstrations contained a second, equally important point, that acts of service must be linked to learning about and working to change the conditions that brought about the need in the first place. She calls it social justice. Others may call it active citizenship. Whatever the nomenclature, the point is direct: It’s not enough to serve food in the soup kitchen. We must confront the root causes of hunger and work toward addressing the greater need.

This is not a partisan observation. The volunteer in a deprived public school may be of great help in the classroom, but just as importantly, she is likely witnessing, first-hand, the breakdown in public education in America. Her solution may be to advocate for more government funding, or it may be to push for school vouchers. The essential act here is understanding that even though individual children are aided by her volunteer efforts, the system will not improve unless the underlying conditions are addressed by government and society.

“Service has to be about making change in communities, not about making changes in me,” noted David Rosenn, executive director of Avodah, another well-regarded service program. “The last thing we want the Jewish community to do is use communities in distress as a vehicle to build identity.”

CLARIFICATION: Last week’s editorial, “Not Only for Ourselves,” left the wrong impression about an agency that delivers food supplies to hungry and needy people in its region. Although, as reported, many families were not home to receive the food contributions on a certain day, the agency ensures that the provisions are, in fact, delivered shortly afterward. The Forward apologizes.

"Not Only for Ourselves." Forward.com, December 1, 2009. Permission for use granted by The Forward.

Vocabulary

Literacy Test

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A test given to people to prove that they can read and write. During the first part of the 20th century, passing such tests were often a criteria for voter registration in the South. African Americans were often told they had not passed the test in order to prevent them from voting. Such tests were later ruled to be unconstitutional.

Community Service

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Performing services that meet a communal need (e.g. feeding hungry people at a soup kitchen).

Social Justice work

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Pursuing structural changes that would eliminate the conditions that caused a given need (e.g. targeting the social causes of poverty and hunger).

Teacher resources

Non-Zero Sum: Helping Others and Ourselves

Jacobs, Rabbi Jill. "Non-Zero Sum: Helping Others and Ourselves," The Forward. March 10, 2010.

There Shall Be No Needy by Rabbi Jill Jacobs, 2009

Jacobs, Rabbi Jill. There Shall Be No Needy: Pursuing Social Justice through Jewish Law and Tradition. Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights Publishing, 2009. See also: Teachers Guide.

Keshet

Keshet, an organization working for the full inclusion of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender Jews in Jewish life.

Resources for Jewish Service Learning

Resources for Jewish Service Learning:

Just Action and Panim

American Jewish World Service and On One Foot (an online database of Jewish texts on social justice)

Jewish Funds for Justice

Jews for Racial and Economic Justice

The Center for Jewish Service Learning

Repair the World (includes a list of organizations doing immersive Jewish service learning)

Uri L'Tzedek

Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism

Jewish Council on Urban Affairs

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Rally in support of marriage equality at the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention at Boston City Hall, June 14, 2007.

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How to cite this page

Jewish Women's Archive. "Civil Rights and Social Justice Today." (Viewed on March 28, 2024) <http://jwa.org/teach/livingthelegacy/civilrights/civil-rights-and-social-justice-today>.