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Kenosha congregation catches passion for social action

By Andrea Waxman
of The Chronicle staff

March 17th, 2006

Harriet Lavin has not been the same since she created a photo exhibit last winter on the genocide in the Darfur region of the African nation of Sudan for Beth Hillel Temple’s Darfur Shabbat, she said.

“[Putting that exhibit together] really changed me on the inside. I spent about two weeks looking through these pictures. It became a truth [for me] that a terrible genocide is going on and rape is being used as a weapon of war. It is not acceptable,” she said in a telephone interview last weekend with The Chronicle.

And according to Rabbi Dena Feingold, spiritual leader of Beth Hillel Temple, and Esther Letven, the Kenosha congregation’s still active immediate past president, Lavin has in turn transformed Beth Hillel congregation.

Her passion was also instrumental in altering the position of U.S. Congressman (Republican) Paul Ryan, whose district includes Racine and Kenosha.

Getting ‘fired up’

When then-president Letven first got to know Lavin, a registered nurse who lives with her husband, Barney, on his family’s farm in Kansasville, she could see that Lavin’s passion was social action.

“We are a small congregation [of just over 107 families] that has always voiced concern for social action, but has done little, other than serving at a soup kitchen once a month, collecting food for the hungry and volunteering at a local hospital on Christmas,” Letven said.

Feingold herself has a strong personal commitment to social action. But, she said, “I am torn in so many directions that I was not successful in building a truly meaningful social action program in our congregation until Harriet came along and made it her focus.”

“A real breakthrough occurred,” Feingold said, after Lavin and Letven attended the Religious Action Center of the Union for Reform Judaism’s “Consultation on Conscience” in Washington, D.C., last March.

It was “an eye-opening experience to be with so many Reform Jews” involved in social action, Lavin said. Among other interesting speakers, one woman spoke passionately about Darfur.

“I hadn’t been aware of how desperate the situation was [there]. She motivated me to find out more,” Lavin said.

“Fired up after the consultation,” according to Feingold, Letven suggested that they make social action the theme of the congregation’s biennial retreat the following fall.

“I was skeptical that it would be a good theme for a retreat. “I was concerned that people would come back from the retreat overwhelmed and demoralized that there are so many problems in the world and we are so helpless to solve them. I could not have been more wrong,” Feingold said in an e-mail interview.

“The retreat energized and mobilized people and we have managed to keep all of the issues we dealt with [there] on the radar screen at our congregation ever since, in a variety of ways,” Feingold said.

Those issues include Hurricane Katrina relief, stem cell research, homelessness in Kenosha, issues of separation of church and state, sending medical supplies to third-world countries, the proposed “gay marriage” amendment in Wisconsin and more.

Social action affects the kitchen, also. The synagogue now uses only fair trade coffee and chocolate.

“Honestly, if you had asked me last summer if we could have successfully dealt with all of these issues simultaneously and grown our social action committee to 12 people, I would have said no,” Feingold said.

“But, we named our retreat ‘We CAN make a difference,’ and now people really believe we can.”

“One of the things I’ve discovered,” Letven said, “is that people really do care and they want to make a difference but they don’t know how. And what Harriet has done is give them some ways they can really do something.”

Acting on Darfur

Feingold said that “the most dramatic example” of making a difference can be seen in the congregation’s actions on behalf of the Darfur Peace and Accountability Act (H.R. 3127), a legislative bill that, when passed, will activate sanctions against the perpetrators of the genocide in Sudan, among other things.

As a result of their work, Rep. Ryan became a co-sponsor of the act, which passed from the International Relations Committee to the full House of Representatives last week, he told The Chronicle in a telephone interview.

Previously unaware of the bill and not knowledgeable about the issue, Ryan said that he became interested in the Darfur genocide when a delegation of seven from Beth Hillel Temple called and arranged a visit with an aide.

“I usually have to hear from 200-300 constituents before an issue surfaces on my radar screen, but I responded to this small group, I think, because they were more effective in getting their message across and because they called me directly,” Ryan said.

“We had all done our homework. We really knew what we were talking about,” said Lavin. “And we had specific requests of the congressman, not just general ones. We asked him to co-sponsor the act and help move it out of committee so it will come to a vote. And we asked him to get back to us.”

A week and a half after a follow-up call to Ryan’s office, he called the synagogue and told Feingold that he had come to agree with the Beth Hillel delegation. At a town hall meeting in late February, a small group went to publicly thank him for his action.

He told The Chronicle that he expects the bill will come to a vote in early April.