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Twitter Updates for 2009-04-30
- @KindleCulture My apologies for not responding sooner. I was delinquent. But I just emailed you. Keep in touch & good luck w/ ur project. in reply to KindleCulture #
Twitter Updates for 2009-04-29
- Oops I hit enter before I realized the link didn’t make it in - Israel and Swine Flu ridiculousness - http://twurl.nl/w42a7q #
- Israel Health Minister says reference to pigs is offensive so should call it Mexican Flu instead of Swine Flu- that’s ridiculous http: … #
- @BillComar Welcome to Twitter. Following Huggs? Really?! in reply to BillComar #
Back from the RAC’s Consultation on Conscience
Last week, I attended the Religious Action Center’s Consultation on Conscience in Washington DC. The best speaker was definitely Cory Booker – see my last blog.
What follows might very well be my most boring blog entry ever. But, since I went to a 2+ day conference, I thought you should all hear about it. There were some excellent speakers, and some, um, well, not so excellent speakers.
Perhaps the biggest disappointment was a lunch-time session that was supposed to be about great congregation social action programs. I figured I would take some “best practices” back to Congregation Beth Adam. They had a suggestion for livening up High Holiday food drives, so I listened with great enthusiasm… until they shared the idea: have people only bring items that start with the same letter as their last name. That’s the best congregations have to offer for social action?! I know it’s not, because I have heard about and seen wonderful activities throughout the country.
Here’s a run down of some of the speakers. Scott Morris (of Church Health Center in Memphis, TN) spoke on healthcare. Take-away message: the answer to better health care is not technology; it’s (drum roll please…..) prevention!
Anat Hoffman spoke from the Israel Religious Action Center (IRAC – a great organization with a horrible acronym). She was entertaining – although quite serious when she expressed several concerns (including some about Avigdor Lieberman). Her most compelling point: Israeli Jews would like Judaism more if they knew (more) about liberal Judaism. I agree – send them to our virtual synagogue!
Eboo Patel (Interfaith Youth Chorps) spoke passionately; he is the author of Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation
The final day of the conference involved hearing from a variety of elected officials. They were good, but here’s the problem… When you get high-up officials like the RAC attracts to speak at its conferences, they can say very little that they haven’t already said publicly. And given that the RAC gives them fewer than 20 minutes to talk, they really can’t say much. So, nobody really said anything bold or new or shocking or terribly interesting – but since I sat through a day of it, allow me to share some of it with you.
The one person who spoke who was not an elected official was Seymour Hersh – Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist and author. But, that talk was off the record, so my lips are sealed (or rather, my keyboard is not clicking).
Representative Nita Lowey spoke about the importance of a US-Israeli partnership. Her main points: the budget Obama sees should have $2.75 million in security assistance for Israel. She’s worried about Iran as a threat to Israeli security – not just global security. Obama’s plan for dealing with the Middle East has carrots – but big sticks as well. Lots of speakers quoted lots of other speakers at the conference. I liked Lowey’s quote from Winston Churchill: “A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”
Senator Susan Collins spoke, and she was pretty cool. She is one of only three Republicans who voted for the economic stimulus bill. While she has received a lot of criticism for that from others, this group of Jewish leaders at the Consultation on Conscience gave her a standing ovation. After she spoke for a bit on antisemitism (it was Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, after all), she then turned her focus to the environment.
Senator Barbara Boxer pointed out that most of our problems connect to the environment. Most astounding was that she said there was a report emailed to the Bush White House from the EPA about the dangers of the environmental situation. Lawyers told Bush’s people not to open the email because if they did, they would have had to do something about it. So they didn’t. Oy vay!
So, overall, I think I should stop writing this – the world’s longest blog. But, hey, it was a long conference. Good news is – lots of cool people were there. So, if you saw the full agenda for the Consultation on Conscience, you might notice I didn’t write about all of the speakers. Like all good politicians, I will neither confirm nor deny whether I might have skipped a session (or two) to hang out with some friends and colleagues in the bar.
Twitter Updates for 2009-04-28
- Humanism makes the front page of the NYT! http://tinyurl.com/dfknmu #
Twitter Updates for 2009-04-27
- Fabulous short video about how technology is changing sooooo fast. http://www.birdville.k12.tx.us/videos/Didyouknow.wvx #
Twitter Updates for 2009-04-24
- @KindleCulture Let me know if I can be helpful with your rabbi/kindle questions. in reply to KindleCulture #
Twitter Updates for 2009-04-23
- Great WSJ article “Our Selective Moral Outrage” compares murder in Chechnya 2 murder of Palestinians. Doesn’t compute. http://bit.ly/haXqQ #
- Happy Earth Day! How do u help the environment? Do religious &/or human values inform ur thinking or does it just make scientific sense? #
Twitter Updates for 2009-04-22
- @kinneret I think one was thinking green and the other blue so they wanted to settle the debate. #
- Listening to chair of RNC about Republican agenda for the 111th congress. But it is off the record so I can’t tweet more about it. #
- Going 2 Capitol offc bldg 2 cops stopped me. They had a Q. They asked what color my jacket is. I said blue-green. They were satisfied. Weird #
Twitter Updates for 2009-04-21
- http://twitpic.com/3o8dy This guy just cut David Axelrod’s talk short even tho Axelrod was willing to keep answering questions. I want more! #
- Just heard Mayor Cory Booker speak. Incredible. Poetic speaker & inspirational. We need moral imagination about who we r & what we r about. #
I was Inspired by Mayor Cory Booker’s Speech at the RAC Conference
Today I attended the Consultation on Conscience sponsored by the RAC (Religious Action Center). Unfortunately, I missed the first speaker – Marian Wright Edelman (Children’s Defense Fund). Fortunately, I heard the second speaker – Mayor Cory Booker from Newark, NJ. Mayor Booker was an AMAZING speaker. And to top it off, he’s got a sense of humor about his identity- describing himself as the only “bald black Christian who has led a Chabad House.”
Throwing in some random Hebrew, Booker spoke of the history of America – and the history of Judaism – being about struggle. He quoted from many wonderful people, including Martin Luther King: “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
Booker said that he once asked Colin Powell what our greatest national security threat was. Powell’s answer was that we have not used one of our natural resources efficiently enough, and that resource is: education. Booker presented several disturbing statistics – including the fact that the average white 8th grader has the same reading level as the average black 12th grader.
Booker is clearly a guy who reminds us we cannot be complacent. He is concerned (and so am I) that people think democracy is a spectator sport: we watch the news, get angry, and go to bed. While Mayor Booker says we may not have to be as courageous as those who came before us (like Freedom Riders during the Civil War), Booker also says we cannot dare to have such small minds to think that we cannot stop murders and other injustices in our neighborhoods.
Mayor Booker says that while individuals can be impotent, joining together in community can lead to transformation. He’s concerned about the lack of moral imagination about who we are – and what our country is about. I hope that we find our moral imaginations – and then act on what we envision for the world as it could be.
One more thing – Mayor Booker began his speech by saying that when he graduated from college he wanted to be Marian Wright Edelman and when he graduated from law school, he wanted to be Geoffery Canada from the Harlem Children’s Zone. I have to say – there’s a small part of me that wants to be Cory Booker when I grow up. Dynamic. Poetic. Accomplished. Intelligent. Inspirational.
Oh – and then I heard a bunch of other speakers – but I’m too tired to write about them now. Stay tuned for more tomorrow!
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- — Passover page is up!
- — Baum's Blog on Chelsea Clinton and a Possible Jewish Wedding
- — Join us for Streaming Shabbat 6 PM ET Friday
- — Barr's Banter on International Women's Day