Tablet Magazine » AJWS

The Fast and the Furious

Dan Klein — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 20:00:11 +0000

American Jewish World Services, as many will tell you, is one of the better justifications for humanity’s existence—which will come in handy when our benevolent alien overlords arrive. Right now its President Ruth Messinger (along with 4000 others) is fasting for a week in protest of impending congressional cutbacks to food aid. Now, Messinger is in ridiculously good shape (it is hard to imagine most Jewish community leaders making it), but it is still a beautiful gesture for what should really be a non-partisan cause—that money doesn’t just feed people in places where food is scarce, but also allows them to actually grow their own.

Meanwhile, my stomach hurts because I overate from a publicity sample of mints—Rabbi Mints Classic Kosher Mints to be exact, which according to the best superlative press release I’ve ever seen, is “a breakthrough in the branded kosher mint category,” and—and this does cause me physical pain—“meets the “cool Jew” trend that has become an urban phenomenon.”

On the other hand, the mints ($2.50 a tin) are pretty good, they’re kosher, and I’ve noticed an uptick in the amount of time my coworkers are willing to linger by my desk—but more importantly 15 percent of the profits go to AJWS. So those incapable of fasting for more then 25 hours can do their part too.

Why We’re Fasting [NYT]
Related: Jews Biking For the Environment

Daybreak: Turkey Tension Defused

Marc Tracy — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 14:00:55 +0000

• Turkey’s prime minister accepted a senior Israeli diplomat’s formal apology for humiliating Turkey’s ambassador, tentatively concluding the once-escalating tension between the countries. [NYT]
• The Iranian government explicitly blamed the United States for the death of the nuclear scientist slain in a Tehran bomb blast earlier this week. The White House press secretary called the charge “absurd.” [WP]
• Five Poles have already been arrested in connection with the recent theft of Auschwitz’s “Arbeit Macht Frei” sign, and now Polish authorities say they have figured out who the Swedish mastermind of the operation was. [AP/Vos Iz Neias?]
• Murray Saltzman, a Baltimore-based Reform rabbi who was prominent in the civil-rights movement since the early 1960s, died at 80. [JTA]
• The Israeli Foreign Ministry made contact with four Israelis, including the daughter of late peace activist Abie Nathan, who were in Haiti when the massive earthquake struck. [JPost]

Please consider giving to the American Jewish World Service’s Haiti Earthquake Relief Fund, here. Alternatively, you can text “Haiti” to 90999 to automatically donate $10 to the American Red Cross’s relief efforts.

Messinger: Jewish Service Must Be Real Service

Allison Hoffman — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 19:00:07 +0000

Ruth Messinger, the former Manhattan borough president and Democratic mayoral challenger to Rudy Giuliani, had the good fortune of going to an elite private school (Brearley) and an even more elite college (Radcliffe) but she credits a much humbler venue with giving her the earthy edge she needed to become a New York City pol: the back of a garbage truck. “I was the only girl willing to go on the garbage run every day,” Messinger recalled last night at the Woolworth Building, where she was speaking at a ceremony celebrating the opening of the new Berman Jewish Policy Archive at NYU’s Wagner School, of her experience volunteering as a teenager at a settlement house in Beacon, New York. “It was really good training for my career in politics.”

Messinger, who now heads the American Jewish World Service—a kind of Jewish peace corps that runs humanitarian projects in developing countries—went on to argue that the ever-expanding array of volunteer programs designed to build Jewish identity through community service can only succeed if they provide concrete benefits to needy people. In other words, they have to be authentic service programs, and not make-work designed to foster a fuzzy tikkun olam experience. “I want, as Jewish service grows, to be sure that it pays respect to the Jewish notion that we have responsibility to others,” Messinger told the audience. “We have to focus on beneficiaries’ needs, not on the need of the volunteers to feel Jewish, or to get something on their college applications.”

Berman Jewish Policy Archive [BJPA]