UPCOMING SCHEDULED LOTTE MEYERSON TIKKUN OLAM PROJECTS:

• 1st Friday each month from 1-3 PM @ MANNA– CBHT volunteer team.
            Contact Wendy Capelouto at tkmanna@bethhatephila.org to help.
• 3rd Friday each month @ noon – CBHT Vets shelter meal serving.
            Contact Hilary Paradise at tkmonthlymeals@bethhatephila.org to help.

RAC Launches Reform Movement’s Racial Justice Campaign

(adapted from RAC.org)

The Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism (RAC) campaign will address systemic racism by advocating policy change on the national level to ensure the U.S. federal Freedom to Vote and to advocate for racially just policies. It will also focus on asking members of the Reform Jewish community to do essential Racial Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (REDI) and antiracism work within our communities and ourselves. This fits in well with the LMTO Racial Justice efforts over the last year.

Racial Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (REDI):

REDI and antiracism is one of main components of the Racial Justice Campaign. RAC, the Reform Movement’s social justice hub, emerged as a result of the Civil Rights Movement. This campaign comes at a critical and urgent moment. The racial reckoning rooted in 400 years of oppression and dehumanization that emerged during the tragic events of summer 2020 revealed with clarity to many white people in the United States that BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) experience systemic racism on a daily basis.

To make real and impactful change, we must turn our gaze inward to do the essential REDI work within our communities and ourselves. Deep-rooted transformation cannot be achieved until we commit to this internal antiracist work on both the community and individual levels. LMTO members will participate in a series of REDI trainings in the end of May and then work with other CBHT members to participate in a series on How to Create a DEI Working Group in early August.

The LMTO Committee hopes to involve more congregants in our Racial Justice work during the coming year, based on what we learn from our RAC trainings, and improve our congregation’s open arms to diverse Jews and their families. We hope you can participate!

Freedom to Vote:

Last November, despite the pandemic and a patchwork of barriers to the ballot box across the country, more than 159 million Americans voted in the 2020 elections, the highest rates seen in over a century. However, some elected officials want to roll back this progress by creating more barriers to voting. Free, safe, and accessible elections are a central aspect of a healthy democracy. We must ensure that all Americans can safely and freely cast their ballots so that every voice is heard and our elections reflect the will of the people.

The Reform Movement’s U.S. federal legislative priorities are the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. The Reform Movement has the biggest impact when we bring the collective power of the Jewish community together to advocate for legislation and policy changes. Join in this essential work to strengthen democracy and help dismantle a system that has created roadblocks for People of Color at the voting booth. We will be asking congregants to support this work through contacting their members of Congress to pass these non-partisan efforts to ensure the right to vote. See RAC.org for more information on how to contact your members of Congress.