TIKKUN D'Var Torah
QS 1/31/14
Shabbat shalom! My name is Mike Fishbein, and I am the Director of Teen
Education here at TI. This week's
parashah, Terumah, is one that is familiar to our Teen Ed community. Every fall, the 10th grade Confirmation
students study this text during their Confirmation Kallah, as part of their
exploration of the concept of Covenant. In
the first few lines, we learn that the materials for the construction of the
tabernacle will be gifts from anyone in the community whose heart is moved to
contribute, and we learn that God's purpose for having the tabernacle built is
so that God may dwell among the people.
Further, we read that the actual place where God will sit is just above
the tablets of the law. Now, in this
narrative, we know that the people in general cannot enter the holy of holies,
but nevertheless, our tradition is giving us a powerful image, one in which the
ultimate seat of power is a place where the people and the law come together, in
a structure built by the people's investment, and to which the people therefore
feel some connection, perhaps even some ownership. The Reform Movement works to ensure that our
youth feel ownership over America's houses of law through the Religious Action
Center's L'Taken Social Justice Seminar in Washington, D.C. One week from today, 18 of our teens will
travel down to Washington to participate in L'Taken, as groups of TI teens have
done for many years.
The L’Taken seminar provides teens with opportunities to learn about
major public policy issues, to get familiar with the lobbying process, and to explore
the Jewish values that underlie the Reform Movement's positions on social
issues. L'Taken groups study together, tour major sites in the nation's
capital, and most importantly, they spend a Monday morning on Capitol Hill,
lobbying their own senators and representatives. L'Taken is wonderfully effective at inspiring
interest in political advocacy, anchored in Jewish identity. This year, here at TI, we created a new
learning opportunity, inspired by L'Taken, designed to offer a more in-depth
experience than can be achieved in one weekend.
We named this opportunity, "TIKKUN: To Take on the
World." TIKKUN had two components.
The first was a semester-long elective class in our Monday Night School
program, developed and taught by Rabbi Matt Soffer and 2003-2004 RYFTI
Co-President Celia Segel. The class ran this fall, and had 14 students. TIKKUN's
second component was an intensive experience, comprising a day of research and
preparation, and a day spent on Beacon Hill during which eight students, all
Juniors and Seniors, lobbied their own Massachusetts State legislators. Three
of our TIKKUN participants are here to share their experiences with you.
My name is Mariel Ehrlich. I'm a Junior, and I'm also the RYFTI Vice
President of Social Programming. The
TIKKUN Class at Monday Night School was 11 sessions long. The course began with a sharing of the
students' own social justice stories - the roots of our interests in politics,
organizing, advocacy, service, or in the class itself. Over our 11 sessions, we learned about the
legislative process, about politics and political power, and about
advocacy. Our class had three guest
speakers. In order, they were Rabbi
Jonah Pesner, Senior Vice President of the URJ, Fran Godine, former Vice
President of GBIO and a leader of Ohel Tzedek here at TI, and State Senator
Sonia Chang-Diaz, who happens to be my own Senator. From each speaker, we heard about his or her
own social justice story, and by listening to all three, we were able to
compare a variety of ways in which people can participate in civic engagement
at a high level. As the course went on,
we had a series of discussions in which we shared the public issues that
concern each of us individually, and as it concluded, we identified those
issues that were most strongly shared among the group, the issues of gun
control and of the minimum wage.
My name is Gabe Hodgkin. I'm a
Senior, and I'm RYFTI's Vice President of Social Justice. As Social Justice
VP, I worked with Mike, with Rabbi Soffer, and with Aaron in the
visioning of TIKKUN, and especially in the planning of the TIKKUN Prep Day,
which we held on Sunday, January 12th. On
that day, we spend over five hours here at TI.
We began by sharing, over bagels, our personal goals for the following
day's lobbying trip to Beacon Hill. We
talked about wanting to have a greater sense of what happens in the offices of
our state legislators, and about wanting to feel engaged in the political
process. We wanted to be prepared and to
be taken seriously. We moved into a
study of Moses's negotiation with God over the destruction of Sodom as an
exploration of lobby strategy and of political power, and to anchor our work in
our tradition. We then reviewed the
legislative process and split into issue teams.
Our respective teams researched the debates over gun control and over
the minimum wage, using resources from Massachusetts, from around the country,
and from Jewish advocacy organizations.
We then prepared for our respective lobby visits, and practiced in
simulated meetings. Based on advice from
Senator Chang-Diaz, we focused on being ready to engage in genuine discussion
on these issues, rather than reading prepared statements. We left Sunday feeling
ready to do just that, and feeling excited for the day ahead. On Monday, we met at TI and travelled
together to Beacon Hill. We began with a
State House tour, which got us familiar with the building, and felt like a
great way to start the day. Our group of
eight RYFTI Juniors and Seniors then moved through a total of five legislative
meetings.
I'm Aaron Sege, one of RYFTI's two Senior Co-Presidents. In our meetings, we asked our legislators to
support bills that would raise the minimum wage and improve gun safety. We are
happy to report that our legislators generally agreed with us. I'll offer examples from two of our meetings. Senator Cynthia Creem had actually sponsored
two of the gun safety bills we were lobbying for, so when meeting with her
chief of staff, Richard Powell, we didn’t need to sell him on those
measures. After thanking him for her
support, we were able to go further, and talked with him about ways of changing
the public debate around guns. Specifically, he was interested in our
recommendation that Massachusetts law enforcement to compile and publish data
on the sources of guns used in crimes. The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco,
and Firearms already collects that data but is forbidden from releasing it to
the public. He wrote down the name of that federal gag rule, the Tiahrt
Amendment. It was an incredibly empowering for me to see that even though we
are only teenagers, we could add new information to the discussion and be taken
seriously by such an experienced and influential person.
On the issue of the minimum wage, Brookline Representative Frank Smizik
said he liked the
idea of an increase with no strings attached, in theory. However, he
said that as a rank-and-file
member of the House, he would probably have to support the Speaker’s
version of the bill,
which ties a wage boost to cuts in unemployment insurance. Gabe and the
minimum wage group
listened to Representative Smizik’s description of the politics of the
issue, and still encouraged
and gently prodded him to take a stand.
Gabe quoted Deuteronomy, saying that as Jews, we should take seriously
the mitzvah to treat workers fairly. It
was great for us to learn about the politics of the issue, and to be able to
offer Representative Smizik a fresh perspective.
Two years ago, Gabe and I attended the L'Taken seminar in DC, and
Mariel is part of the group headed there in one week. I loved going on L'Taken. It got me very excited about getting involved
in politics. With TIKKUN, we took the
basic format of L'Taken and pushed it to the next level, with the a more
detailed back-and-forth. The experience
of meeting with power-brokers was very satisfying. It was great to be able to have a
conversation with the legislators and staffers and to press them a bit with
questions. I felt like I was able both to speak my mind and to have an impact
on them. They took us seriously and
treated us with respect. TIKKUN showed
us that state politics are really compelling. In Massachusetts, a policy can be
more creative and more energetic than it can be on the national level, and we can
have a much bigger impact on it. Celia,
our teacher, said that civic groups are the "special sauce of American
democracy," and that hit home for me. I think that our tight-knit teen
community at TI, coupled with a set of values and traditions that transcend one
historical moment or problem, give us the strength to make a difference at the
State House, which we now call, "Our House." Shabbat shalom.
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