Executive Director, Steven Gerber, Back from Recent Trip to Israel, Part 2

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On International Women's Day, RHR Announces a new pilot program - Sisters for Peace

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Executive Director Steven Gerber Just Back from Observing Rabbis for Human Rights in Israel

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A sad, but extremely accurate, assessment by Letty Cottin Pogrebin of the impact of the Goldstone Commission report. Instead of discussing the allegations raised in the report (many of them previously made by international human rights organizations), the discussion devolved into personal attacks on Justice Goldstone and claims of anti-Israel bias by anyone who had the temerity to call

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RHR-NA Board Member and President of Panim Rabbi Sid Schwarz wrote this opinion piece, which appeared in the June 3, 2009 edition of The New York Jewish Week, in response to an experience he had at an Israel Parade. » read more 

In this moving essay, Rabbi Arthur Waskow meditates on the recent Pew Forum survey showing that the more religious Americans are, the more likely they are to support acts of torture as a form of interrogation.

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RHR UK supporter Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg wrote this letter to his congregation, the New North London Masorti Synagogue, on the eve of Shabbat Vayikra in response to the recent allegations of abuse by IDF troops in the Gaza War.

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Last week we read parshat Lech Lecha. God tells Avraham, Go forth from your land, your birthplace and the home of your family to the land that I will show you.

This week Rabbi Tirzah Firestone and I led a group of 40 Americans on a Rabbis for Human Rights Mission to Israel. Our mission, Nurturing Justice, is a campaign in honor of Israel's 60th birthday and the 20th anniversary of the founding of Rabbis of Rabbis of Human Rights. We have come to Israel in solidarity with Rabbis for Human Rights and all Israelis working to fulfill the vision of Israel's Declaration of Independence to create a Jewish State based on the prophetic vision of justice, freedom and equality.

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Taxi to the Dark Side, an award-winning documentary about the murder of an innocent Afghani in U.S. detention, has been released on DVD. Jared Feldman, Senior Policy Associate at the Jewish Council on Public Affairs, wrote the following moving piece after the film's initial release. It was originally posted on the JCPA blog. The NRCAT Action Fund has developed a discussion guide with information about candidate voting records, which is available on their website.

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On September 11-12, a delegation from Rabbis for Human Rights North America attended the National Summit on Torture, an interfaith conference organized by Evangelicals for Human Rights and the National Religious Campaign Against Torture. Rabbi Brian Walt spoke on a panel, and Rabbi Charles Feinberg and Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Troster offered prayers. Read more about Rabbi Kahn-Troster's experience at the conference. Complete video of the Summit is available online now.

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In honor of Israel's 60th birthday and the Yamim Noraim (High Holidays), Rabbi Ellen Lippmann has shared some of her thoughts from her recent congregational trip to Israel. She writes, "What we did was grapple with the many issues and emotions that arose as we traveled and learned and cried and laughed and --maybe-- came to love a place that is unbearably beautiful and unbearably frustrating and unbearably complicated, the place God promised to our ancestors." We invite you to share her journey.

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Graduations can be soporific events. Speakers talk in platitudes and the formalities seem endless. But I bolted upright as Dean Harold Koh of the Yale Law School spoke after receiving an honorary degree at the graduation exercises of the Jewish Theological Seminary.

Dean Koh talked about human rights and how the influence of the United States had diminished round the world because of the American claim of exceptionalism regarding human rights. We should not have "law free zones" he said, and added that we should not have "law free courts called military courts."

He went on to quote Aharon Barak, the former Chief Justice of Israel's Supreme Court who reported that on his retirement from the Supreme Court the head of Israeli intelligence approached him and thanked him for the decision banning the use of torture, "You made us use our heads, not our hands." Listen to the speech.

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In 1969 David Ben Gurion, the first Prime Minister of Israel visited Cape Town. He was by far the most important Israeli visitor to our small town. I remember his visit vividly. He met with the the leaders of the Zionist youth groups. At that meeting he was asked by one of the counsellors whether any Palestinians were expelled from Israel during the War of Independence. He responded passionately and angrily that no Palestinians were expelled in 1948 and that the Zionist leadership encouraged them to stay. They chose to leave because the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem told them that they would get two houses once they had driven the Jews into the sea. This was his version of the history of 1948 and I believed him.

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This year is the first year that I hear Israelis remark that the State may be a temporary phenomenon: "I am happy to live in a Jewish state, to be alive at a time when Jews have a state. But the last state we had, the Maccabean one, two thousand years ago, lasted a hundred years, and this one will probably be shortlived, as well. We don't know how to be an autonomous people and live in a larger world. We are always overtaken by fanaticism," one Israeli told me.

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As much as the defense of human rights is contingent on the just administration of law and the proper protections that the law offers, it equally depends on the attitudes of populations. Whatever the law may be on the books, policemen and women, soldiers in the field, prosecutors and average citizens all become responsible for the protection or violation of human rights.

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I will never forget touring Silwan with Arik a few years ago when we went to Israel to rebuild the Dari home. We listened to a local Palestinian resident of Silwan talk about the harassment from those religious Israeli extremists who have occupied homes of Palestinians in Silwan.

They put fences and barricades around their homes, and have a security force to protect them, as their hostile takeover of these homes is not supported by their neighbors (big surprise!). One can see these houses by the huge Israeli flags that dot the neighborhood, also conveying a clear and powerful message.

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On March 8, as expected, President Bush vetoed the Intelligence Authorization Act, which would have restricted the CIA to interrogation methods found in the Military Field Manual and outlawed without exception the use of waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques. In his weekly radio address, the President defended his decision as a matter of national security, saying “We have no higher responsibility than stopping terrorist attacks. And this is no time for Congress to abandon practices that have a proven track record of keeping America safe.”

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It is natural that some people find the special reading on the coming Shabbat, March 15, of Deuteronomy 25:17-20 regarding the wiping out of the memory of Amalek dificult to understand, or even somewhat off-putting. The wiping out of a whole people feels too much like collective punishment, even genocide, and though we recognize that there is evil in the world which we must oppose, the absolute voice of the reading feels so harsh that it becomes a source of deep unease. Hasidic literature can be helpful in recovering some meaningfulness in reading about Amalek.

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We waited with baited breath to see what the Bush administration might accomplish at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis in the week following Thanksgiving. Now that our breath has been baited, it’s time to fish.

Of course, Israel and the Palestinians first have to negotiate a two-state solution and then Abu Mazen and Olmert have to find the political capital to sell the agreement (and not get killed or indicted).

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Rabbi Arthur Green has been a member of the advisory board of Rabbis for Human Rights-North America since its inception. He is one of America's most interesting and original Jewish thinkers and as Rector of the new Hebrew College Rabbinical School is training a new generation of American rabbis. To open our human rights forum, he has generously shared with us a portion of his forthcoming book on Jewish theology which deals with our responsibility to honor each human being as the image of God. Read Art Green's message and add your comment:

Judaism’s moral voice begins with Creation. Our most essential teaching, that for the sake of which Judaism still needs to exist, is our insistence that each human being is the unique image of God.

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