we'll see you next time. (upbeat action music) (upbeat music) good morning, and welcome

to mosaic. i'm honored to be your host this morning. across our community faiths are dealing with things that happen in life currently, in the world, our synagogues and the political sphere. would like to welcome you to a conversation to look at how as a faith community we respond to how the world is going these days. would like to introduce you to rabbi julie with the religious action center of reformed duties. and karen, the middle east project director for the jewish community relations council based in san francisco. welcome. why don't we jump in and talk a little bit about what your organizations do and we can funnel that into the conversation in the ways in which you respond to these

kinds of events happening in the world around us. >> the religious action center is the social justice, you could say, department or manifestation of the reformed judaism and it is a national organization . it has been around for a very long time and people may be familiar with it. in 2012 rabbis and some leaders in california decided that we needed organized in california , specifically to impact statewide policy. so it is under the umbrella and completely integrated into the national organization but we are also a statewide network of reformed congregations putting together the justice work of each congregation to be much more powerful at a statewide level. >> the reform movement in american jewish life is a part of the theological left branch

of jewish life in the united states. >> the jewish community relations council represents over 60 jewish institutions in the bay area on a wide range of issues that the community deeply cares about. and we build consensus on those issues, we take those issues, mobilize the community and turn it into action. we are trying to amplify our communities voice on issues we deeply care about. we are one of about 100 in the country that were formed in the wake of the holocaust when the community got together and realized we need to be more effective in advocating for issues that impact our community. so we came together to bring the community together to increase that effectiveness. >> is it fair to let folks know that in the broader jewish landscape the council is a

community-based organizational structure not attached to any particular branch of judaism. it is more community-based. >> we represent across the different streams of judaism. >> from your perspectives can you talk about how you even understand, what is jewish response to an event in general? is that a way to ask and focus on how we understand these events? how do do your organizations think of jewish response to what happens in the world around us? >> you are referring to a number of events that happened recently and it really depends if we think of it as a jewish event. if there is a synagogue shooting and we have more of a response that is public but also internal. when there is a shooting at a mosque or a natural disaster, there are other kinds of responses and there is lots of overlap. we care about human beings. there

is a response when we feel like we are personally under attack or when we have to do both thinking on a policy level and how we care for our communities. >> and from your perspective, karen? >> i think we are amplifying the needs of the community and the voice of the community in responding to these challenges. when something happens, it is not just to our community but too many other communities. our community wants to do something and our jewish values tell us that we have an imperative and we see everybody in god's image. so when a tragedy happens or an issue happens we look at it and say, what can our community uniquely provide in this situation to help out? >> we will take a quick break and come back to continue this conversation in just a moment.

good morning, welcome back to mosaic. honored to be your host. we are in the middle of a wonderful conversation with the middle east project director for the community relations council and rabbi julie, the senior organizer with the religion action center of reformed judaism.

welcome back. we were talking a little bit about how your organizations view response in general to events and talked about the current events that have happened in the world of late . i was thinking as we were ending that segment that both of your organizations consistently respond to the world around us all the time. issues that sometimes in the media we see a particular community responding to a particular event and we don't realize all the work they do otherwise. i'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about the nature of your ongoing response to the world in an ongoing way. >> i really appreciate that question. as it happened just now in the past several weeks, the network of reformed congregations in california has chosen as the top priority campaign, a gun violence

prevention campaign. they are local programs that are proven to be effective at reducing gun violence in the communities, drastically reducing gun violence by 40% to 50% in oakland, stockton and also in a couple of other states. we are looking for full funding for those all over the state because of how effective they are. that was the campaign we were in the midst of and this is what we were in the midst of when the shooting happened. it is not usually such a confluence but in that moment we were able to do what we would most want to do, which is to mourn that attack and also have something for people to do right here and now about gun violence. >> what is vip ? >> extensor violence intervention programs that are operating in individual cities. we are looking for statewide funding to bring those to cities. ones that don't allow

them to fully operate yet. and distinguish between those programs and the source of the shooting because they are not the same. these are operating in the communities where gun violence is a part of everyday life and where people are most at risk for committing and being injured or killed by gun violence. that is where these programs are most needed and effective. >> and from the jcrc perspective? >> let me step back a little. with the way we approach these issues, we try to be as proactive as possible. when we look at many of the challenges, whether to our democracy, gun violence, which is an issue we worked on as well, whether it is poverty or any host of challenges, we take what we call a community relations approach and built relationships and start proactively building those relationships and working with other communities. we think

that is really critical to advance any of the issues or concerns we have. it is critically important to build coalitions with other faith organizations and other organizations of interest on the same issues that we do. we build these relationships herein, day in and day out. when something like this happens, not only do we have somebody to call but we have been working with all along on advocating toward these ends. and that allows us to be much more effective. whether it is getting legislation passed or just bringing the community together to address the needs of the particular community response. >> and that is sometimes where we have a lot of overlap in our perspective. it is about those relationships. working with the synagogues for as long as we know that social justice communities and congregations can do. you can do endless

drives and clothing drives and food drives. at a certain point, in addition to helping people you need to look up stream and say, why are people hungry? or why are we having shootings in our everyday lives of people? so looking at how we can affect policy . that takes building relationships. >> that is a lovely point. we will take a quick break and when we come back maybe we can talk about what is the state response and had you also get to the deeper roots of just an event that happens in the moment. we will be right back here on mosaic.

welcome back to mosaic.

we are in the middle of a wonderful conversation with rabbi julie, the organizer for the religious action center of reform judaism and karen, the middle east project director of the middle east project counsel. karen, we were moving in our conversation toward this deeper understanding of what i think of as and what i think other people think of as, what is a sustained response when there is an issue at work . and you bring up issues of what are the underlying currents of something for example like poverty. where gun violence issues. is there an education issue or advocacy issue? maybe you could deepen and broaden the conversation about how you understand what those elements are in terms of

sustaining response, maintaining response and even building toward response that is part of the larger picture of an event in the moment. >> racked california at this point has six issues we work on but all work toward our mission which is to stand with vulnerable communities to build the state of california we want to live in. and we ask, what is the california of our dreams and what is the next step to take us there. so to sustain our work after giving campaign we go back to that question and go back to the issues that we build our teams to work on. we have an issue team on each of the six issues. climate change, immigrants rights, gun violence prevention . each of our teams is looking at the campaigns we can potentially work with our partners on during a given season. so we are doing that research and building those relationships. so when one campaign ends we

look at what will rise to the top with our next priority. we build relationships by thinking of that. >> and how does that function ? >> we have court issues we always have to work on. when things come up in the community it is kind of all hands on deck and drop everything to respond . we also try to focus on key issues that are really relevant and the community really cares about. over the last number of years we have taken up issues of immigration, racial and economic justice and democracy. we feel that many of these core issues come from a democracy under threat. the model we use is that we study the issue. we take a year, we bring together our committees and groups, bringing experts and host town halls. we give a chance for the community to hear from experts, give their feedback and craft our position

statements and come up with a list of action items we will do to follow up on those particular issues we've taken a consensus on. >> i'm curious to know within each of your perspectives, we all know that when groups come together, just a group coming together in and of itself is a accomplishment and paying attention to what each individual is seen in a group and they'll -- how that process yields a consensus. how do you even decide that it is immigration or democracy or education, or whatever it is . how do you even come to those teams to begin with? >> we look at what is coming -- going on in the community and we step back and say what are the core issues? that is how we came around economic justice and racial justice. it is not just an issue of looking at incarceration rates, it is an issue around racial justice

. same thing for democracy. we take the committees that are structured together and they come up with a consensus to look at this particular issue and then it is a whole process of building consensus around that. around very detailed policy statements that layout positions and put together an action plan of mobilization around those issues. >> similarly we work with each congregation. when we are building a statewide network i also have the opportunity to work with justice teams from each congregation and for them to think about, what we care about, what is happening and where is the congregation on different issues and where can we work as a congregation that won't divide the congregation but bring people together. sometimes it is something very local and sometimes that local issue will bridge to something larger. but also coming back to him and like you said, root causes. in addition to the direct service work that congregations do, we want to help our aggregations be part

of addressing root causes. >> we need to take another quick break. i think part of both what you are both sort of alluding to is that it makes people feel that this enhances their jewish identity by being involved in these topics. please join us in just a moment on mosaic.

good morning, and welcome back to mosaic . we are in the middle of a wonderful conversation with karen and rabbi julie. welcome back. we were talking as we ended the last segment about this notion that this work for a lot of people in the jewish community like people of every faith community, is actually something that animates their religious identity. in this case, jewish identity. i wonder if you could talk a little bit about that aspect of the work. >> i think a lot of people really relate to the aspect of social action and social

justice. data for them is their expression of judaism. it is kind of a fun place because we have so many different and unique organizations. so many niches that people can go into to express their jewish values. in this kind of work , mobilizing the community and working on issues you care about deeply is something that will really bring people in where perhaps other parts of the jewish community they don't necessarily find a home. >> would you say that is true from the jewish relations community council perspective. whether you are jewish bicolor, jewish and the sex -- secular view, is that across the board from your perspective? >> at these issues bring us all together. all the research shows that people are most proud of this sort of commitment of justice. when we get the opportunity to act for

justice as the jewish people and not just individuals, there is a coming together of who we want to be. sometimes say that our lobby day , which is coming up on august 20, people can come together with us and lobby and we call it our high holy days sometimes because it is a way we are expressing what it means to us to be jewish by acting on the world around us and trying to impact policy. >> from a jewish perspective, the notions of justice in the world and sort of the two biblical stories where we are created uniquely in god's image. where it is not just me but also every person , we were freed from slavery. we come out of a place of oppression and moved into a place of freedom and those two core biblical stories yield these values that animate us to do good and justice in the world. and i

wonder how those notions define even the term justice. it really would justice actually is. because the word justice in other realms takes on different meanings but for us it is a particular way of seeing that term. can you talk about how that sort of animates us when we decide what to do on immigration, gun control, poverty, education. >> certainly on immigration but on the other issues, we look to our history and the way justice is ranked in the torah on something we are connected to in our own history. the biblical history and our more recent history, knowing what it is like to be persecuted and be on the outside and be vulnerable. all of those things, we can feel in our bones and we organize based on that history and knowing what is right. >> on the issue of immigration, so many people came to this

work because of their own personal family story , whether they were refugees or their grandparents were survivors of the holocaust. it really infused them with the need to have a different way of looking at people who come into this country than just the popular discourse right now. >> we have just a minute left together. we've kind of come full circle with how do we respond to a world event , whether it is a natural disaster that needs an immediate response and/or a violent incident like a shooting at a synagogue or mosque. not to put you on the spot in such a big way, but can you make a comment about what is hope out there for how we have an actual impact ? >> when we respond to a scary event, we need to both come

together so we can find comfort in each other and actually listen to each other and then get together and say, what are we going to do so that we don't act from fear? >> i would say something similar. in these times of increasing partisanship and instability we need to stand together. we have a choice to make. we can respond together or we can respond separately. >> thank you so much for joining us on mosaic. we encourage you to continue this conversation to do good in the world. we thank you for being here with us on mosaic.

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