What JFREJ Does
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Email to friendJFREJ’s membership has strengthened a progressive Jewish voice in debates over our city’s future and has activated the established Jewish community as a partner in citywide struggles for justice. Through educational fora, workshops, grassroots political campaigns, and a weekly radio program, JFREJ is committed to revitalizing a Jewish ethic of social justice, cooperation and mutual struggle for human dignity. In coalition with communities of color and labor organizations, JFREJ works to achieve economic equality and an end to all forms of racism by organizing for social programs, housing, education, fair labor practices, accountable policing, and immigrants’ rights. JFREJ’s educational programs and activism make connections between anti-Semitism and racism, and between Jewish and other radical histories and contemporary movements for justice.
Campaigns
JFREJ currently has two primary campaigns: Shalom Bayit: Justice for Domestic Workers Campaign and our Housing Justice Campaign. JFREJ organizes to advance systemic changes that result in concrete improvements in people’s daily lives. We work on campaigns where Jewish support can have a strategic role in winning decisive victories. Our campaigns forge alliances across race and class lines, fostering solidarity and trust in our communities. Through our campaigns, JFREJ develops the leadership skills of our membership and creates educational tools that link the history of Jewish social justice efforts to today’s active struggles.
Arts and Culture
Since 1990, Jews for Racial and Economic Justice has been essential in revitalizing a Jewish ethic of social justice, growing the culture of creativity, cooperation and mutual struggle for human dignity. In partnership with our members and allies who are artists and cultural workers, JFREJ strives to bring art and culture to the center of our work. We see cultural work as a focal point for engaging and developing our membership. JFREJ organizes Jewish holiday and political celebrations that link the rich history of Jewish and radical activism to our cultural traditions. Our Purim, Seder in the Streets, and Tashlikh events bring together a diverse inter-generational crowd of Jewish artists, activists and our friends. Through our cultural programming, JFREJ strengthens both the New York City radical Jewish community and the political campaigns in which we are engaging. Through the creative planning process, these programs are vehicles for leadership development and are a forum for JFREJ members develop a political and artistic community—learning, art-making and fighting for justice together.
Trainings
JFREJ builds the skills, political analysis, and cultural knowledge of our members to develop their capacity to take on leadership roles. Through our political education trainings, we address the intersections between racism, anti-Semitism, and other forms of oppression. JFREJ offers a unique perspective that incorporates historical, political, religious and secular analysis into our workshops and educational forums.
Meyer Awards
JFREJ established the Rabbi Marshall T. Meyer Risk-Taker Award in 1995 to honor those who have taken extraordinary risks in the pursuit of justice. Every year in the fall we find a new risk taker and honor them at a fundraising gala. The Meyer Awards are JFREJ's main fundraising event.
When Rabbi Marshall T. Meyer (1930-1993) hosted one of the earliest planning meetings of Jews for Racial & Economic Justice at his home in 1990, he offered more than a space to gather. He lent his energy, his wisdom, his nitty-gritty activism, his powerful sense of urgency, his vision, his colossal sense of commitment, his willingness to put acceptance and safety at risk to fight for what is just.
Rabbi Meyer, rabbi of Congregation B'nai Jeshurun in New York City, was a fighter for social justice who spoke out against the military dictatorship in Argentina, fought for Israeli-Palestinian peace and opposed racism, homophobia, and economic inequality wherever he encountered them. (Jacobo Timerman dedicated Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number to him.) He was a man of energy, vision and commitment who was willing to put acceptance and safety at risk to struggle for a better world. Teacher, comrade, friend, rabbi, Marshall was an inspiration for JFREJ, for countless others, and for generations of activists to come.
Join us at this year's Meyer Awards!
Jews Against Islamaphobia
Jews Against Islamophobia (JAI) is a coalition of Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, Jewish Voice for Peace, Jews Say No!, and individuals committed to challenging anti-Muslim bigotry and anti-Arab racism. We formed in immediate response to the Islamophobic right-wing opposition to the building of Park51/Cordoba House, the proposed lower Manhattan mosque and Islamic center. We formed a network for the purposes of making our voices heard and offering a Jewish voice that is part of the larger community effort(s) to challenge Islamophobia and anti-Arab racism. We are committed to challenge Jewish institutions and organizations that promote Islamophobia through their words or action. We respond to other forms of Islamophobia and anti-Arab racism as they arise and are also proactive in speaking out about the issues and making the connections as they need to be made. Find out more at www.jewsagainstislamophobia.org.
Beyond the Pale: The Progressive Jewish Radio Hour
JFREJ's show, Beyond the Pale: The Progressive Jewish Radio Hour, airs weekly on WBAI, 99.5 FM. Show themes have included Jewish women's history, the Jewish stake in the fate of our public schools and universities, connections between Jewish spiritual practice and social action, the Middle East peace process, and anti-Semitism on the Christian Right.
Beyond the Pale airs on Sundays on WBAI: noon - 1pm
www.beyondthepale.org (listener-supported community radio).
Archives of Beyond the Pale are now available online.
Hosts: Marilyn Kleinberg Neimark and Esther Kaplan
Produced By: Jews for Racial and Economic Justice
Beyond the Pale is the only Jewish program on radio or television devoted to bringing a progressive Jewish perspective to political and cultural debates. In politically reactionary times like these, when the public voices of the Jewish community align themselves with the conservative forces that currently dominate local and national politics and political discourse, Beyond the Pale brings audiences the critical perspectives, and visions for social change that are the proud legacy of Jewish radicalism.
Doykayt
JFREJ is a NYC-based organization that works on local New York issues. However, we recognize that local, national, and international issues are inextricably linked. In 2002, JFREJ adopted the following statement:
Adopted by the Board of Directors, November 28th, 2002
1. JFREJ reaffirms its mission to fight racial and economic injustice in New York City.
2. Our public activist, advocacy and educational programming will remain focused on this mission. Still, JFREJ values the growth of the Jewish left broadly speaking, as well as the diverse activist commitments of our members, and we encourage the exchange of ideas and information among them--on issues that fall inside and outside of this mission.
3. We believe in collaborating with organizations with whom we have common cause. We abhor the "litmus test" syndrome that prevails in the organized Jewish community, and do not choose our allies based on their having cleared a set of political hurdles irrelevant to the issues on which we are making common cause.
4. JFREJ will begin to take positions on foreign affairs in limited situations only: when the issue relates directly to our local work and taking a position facilitates that work, or when there is a clear and compelling need to present an alternative Jewish voice that is not being presented by other visible Jewish groups.
Specifically at this time, on the issues of the Israel/Palestine conflict and the war in Afghanistan, we take the following positions: JFREJ opposes the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem and supports a negotiated, just and secure peace for Israelis and Palestinians. JFREJ opposes collective punishment and attacks on civilians. We take these positions while reaffirming that JFREJ is a community of Jews with diverse political and ideological relationships to this situation- JFREJ members are Zionists and post-Zionists, non-Zionists, anti-Zionists and those with no identification with these framings.
At the same time, we reiterate our belief in the Bundist tradition of doykayt ("hereness")-the idea that Jews, in coalition with others, should focus their struggle for universal equality and justice in the place where they live. In this spirit, JFREJ rejects the notion that as a Jewish American organization we are required to take a position on the Israel/Palestine conflict, nor do we believe that our identity or priorities as a Jewish organization should be determined by the actions of Jews in another country. We do believe that, in these instances, as residents of the United States, we have cause to speak out on matters related to our own government's foreign policies.
