At age 16, a girl named Anabella emigrated with her parents from Argentina to Israel.
Looking for social connections, Anabella found her way to a Progressive congregation in Ra’anana. There she learned how to integrate into Israeli life and became a youth leader.
After graduating from high school, Anabella took a year of pre-army service to participate in a Progressive movement social action program called Mechina in Jaffa.
Anabella’s life — her assimilation into Israeli culture and her subsequent involvement in social action — took shape in a talk by Gusti Braverman of the Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism last Friday at the combined Midwest Federation of Temple Sisterhoods and Union of Reform Judaism Great Lakes Council Regional Biennial Convention at the Pfister Hotel.
Speaking to an overflow crowd of some 80 people, mostly women, in a breakout session, Braverman showed how the Progressive movement is taking on social action in Israel in a serious way by describing Anabella’s activities and those of her fellow volunteers in Mechina.
The young adults live, work, study and volunteer in Jaffa with Holocaust survivors, in kindergartens, youth clubhouses, alternative schools, a daycare center for the blind and other places that help the less fortunate. In so doing, Braverman said, they grow in maturity, wisdom and appreciation for their fellow Israelis.
This experience in the diverse community of Jaffa — home to Arabs, Jews, foreign workers, rich and poor, religious and secular, immigrants and natives — helps prepare its participants for the moral dilemmas they will face as soldiers in the Israel Defense Forces.
Social action priorities
Israel is just one of the social action priorities the MFTS is emphasizing, according to speakers at “Lights, Cameras, (Social) Action,” its Friday morning session.
Rabbi Bonnie Margulis of Madison is director of the Clergy for Choice Network of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice. She spoke about the politics of reproductive rights and the recently legalized emergency contraceptive commonly known as the “morning after pill.”
“If Roe v. Wade is overturned, it is estimated that many states would ban abortions,” she said. She encouraged members to study the laws of their state and keep in touch with their state legislators.
Rabbi Richard Address, director of the URJ Department of Family Concerns discussed the importance of serving children and people of all ages with special needs. His office “is getting an overwhelming number of requests for help” with this, he said.
While the Reform movement is woefully behind the Conservative movement on this issue, he said, he and his staff are trying to get it included in the curriculum at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute for religion in Cincinnati.
One of his office’s current projects is surveying Reform congregations and organizations about the ways they are addressing special needs. “We think there’s a lot happening that we don’t know about,” he said.
Finally Laura Horn, assistant regional director of the URJ offered the sisterhood representatives ideas and tools for researching the most pressing social issues of the day, including the 60 issues being addressed by the Religious Action Center of the Reform movement.
Biennial milestones
The biennial is special for several reasons, according to MFTS President Susan Pittelman, of Milwaukee’s Congregation Shalom. For one, it’s being held in Milwaukee.
“This is the first time in a long time that UJR has not held its biennial convention at the Reform Movement’s Olin Sang Ruby Union Institute in Oconomowoc,” she said.
“It’s wonderful to have hosts with pride in their city and community.”
And it’s only the second time the regional sisterhoods have partnered with the URJ regional group for a joint convention, Pittelman added.
Pittelman, who served as first vice president of the URJ Great Lakes Council and at the biennial completed her two-year term as president of the MFTS, explained that the convention’s theme, Shira Chadasha, (a new song), is appropriate for many reasons.
First, the MFTS reorganized its districts and adopted a new name at this convention. What had been called Midwest Federation of Temple Sisterhoods-Women of Reform Judaism District 18 will henceforth be known as Women of Reform Judaism Midwest District.
Second, the district welcomed three new affiliates, Agudas Achim Congregation in Iowa City, Iowa; Congregation Am Echod in Lindenhurst, Ill.; and Congregation Or Shalom in Vernon Hills, Ill., Pittelman said.
Third, the district expanded to include three new states — Iowa, Nebraska and South Dakota — which brought in six additional synagogue sisterhoods, she said.
In addition, the district installed a new president, Terri Argentar, of B’nai Jehoshua Beth Elohim in Glenview, Ill., and a new board, as well as celebrating its 50th anniversary and honoring its past presidents.
Loading ...