Sukkat Shalom: Between Slavery and Liberation

By Miriam Grossman and Jill Zenoff

Take part in JCUA’s Sukkot Action for Justice, during Sukkot, on Oct. 11. At the Mortgage Bankers Association meeting, we’ll be calling attention to how the foreclosure crisis is affecting Chicago families. Learn more and register for the event.

At the beginning of their journey from slavery to liberation, the Israelites found themselves displaced from their homes with little to no forewarning. Scrounging what supplies that could be found and only enough food and water to last a few days, they constructed sukkot, temporary shelters made from sticks and twigs, in which they would dwell.

Unable to see beyond their past circumstance towards the promised land, when their food and water supplies ran out, many were ready to return to Egypt. The inhumanity and brutality of slavery seemed a fair exchange for what passed as food and housing security.

It wasn’t until the Israelites became a food-secure people with the miraculous appearance of mana at morning’s dew and water from Miriam’s well, were they ready to continue on their 40-year journey towards freedom.

Jewish Federations General Assembly Turns Spotlight on Social Justice

By Jane Ramsey
JCUA Executive Director

(NEW ORLEANS, LA. – Nov. 8, 2010) — On a national level, the organized Jewish community is turning a special spotlight on social justice this year.

Along with Brian Gladstein, JCUA’s program director, I’m one of thousands of Jews attending the Jewish Federations of North America 79th Annual General Assembly in New Orleans. (See Brian’s account here.)

This year, the federations made a special point of inviting JCUA and other members of the newly formed Jewish Social Justice Roundtable to lead service learning trips for GA attendees.

Alex Linetsky of Calgary volunteers for Second Harvest at the Jewish Federations General Assembly in New Orleans.

Today, I led a group of students and adults in an activity that involved boxing apples that are headed to food pantries via the Second Harvest Food Bank. This awesome organization feeds 42,000 hungry people per week.

It reminds us that one in four children go to bed hungry each night in America.

Tonight the Jewish Social Justice Roundtable is holding a reception for GA attendees from Jewish federations from around the country. It is a historic gathering of social justice activists and groups coming together with the federations. I see it as a leap toward engaging the broader Jewish community in social justice.

Members of the Jewish Social Justice Roundtable