Aly Raisman on Abuse: ‘Society Is in Desperate Need of Change’
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TOL’DOT, GENESIS 25:19−28:9
D’VAR TORAH BY: RABBI STEPHEN S. PEARCE, PH.D.
Many hands hold up a sign saying Forgive
“When the boys grew up, Esau became a skillful hunter [yodei-a tzayid], a man of the outdoors, and Jacob was a homespun [tam] man, keeping to the tents” (Genesis 25:27). The Hebrew word tam, translated here as “homespun,” can also mean “gentle,” “mild-mannered,” or “blameless.”1 Whereas the Bible portrays Esau as “a skillful hunter,” further reading of the text reveals that Jacob, the “homespun man,” was the wilier of the two. Nevertheless, many prophetic, Rabbinic, and modern commentators view Esau pejoratively and Jacob, the man with serious character flaws, is portrayed affectionately.
Despite unfavorable depictions of Esau, the biblical author views him not as evil, but rather as an impetuous, brash, live-for-the-moment individual who willingly sold his birthright without regard for the consequences. This skilled hunter, described as a “wild beast” by the Rabbis, offered a plaintive plea to his father after giving up his birthright for a bowl of gruel and upon learning that Jacob deceived Isaac in order to steal Isaac’s blessing: “Did you not reserve a blessing for me” (Genesis 27:36)? His palpable pain elicits sympathy from any objective reader of this week’s Torah portion, Tol’dot.
The haftarah that accompanies Tol’dot offers a derisive portrayal of Esau: “… I have loved Jacob and hated Esau … People shall call them [Esau’s descendants] the Evil Territory, the people whom God has cursed forever (Malachi 1:2,4). Centuries later, the Rabbis further disparaged Esau by associating him with Rome, the unmistakable enemy of the Jewish people of that era. In one fictional Rabbinical conversation, Jacob acknowledged that Esau’s progeny would inflict suffering upon Jacob’s offspring. However, the Messiah would spring from Jacob’s lineage and evict Esau’s progeny from the rightful place of Jacob’s descendants.
A comparable parable of the Talmudic Sage, Rabbi Levi, describes a preeminent Jacob as a blacksmith who once saw bundles of thorns, the metaphor for Esau, being brought into the city. Understanding this to be a sign of pending ruination, a wise man, seeing the smith’s concern, said to him, “Are you afraid of these thorns? One spark from your forge, and the thorns will be afire.” Rabbi Levi extended this metaphor to mean that when Jacob was afraid of Esau and his entourage, God would reassure Jacob: “Are you afraid of them? One spark from you, and you will consume all of them.” To strengthen this case, Rabbi Levi cited a verse from the prophet Obadiah (1:18): “The house of Jacob shall be a fire, and the house of Joseph a flame, with Esau’s house like straw to be kindled and consumed” (B’reishit Rabbah 84:5). Thus, this parable was designed to counter the people’s suffering under cruel oppressors by associating the oppressors with the skilled hunter who would ultimately be defeated.
Medieval commentator Rashi interpreted the biblical term skilled hunter to mean a smooth talker who deceives others, especially his father Isaac (Rashi on Genesis 25:27). He suggested that the real reason that Isaac gave his blessing to Esau was because Esau duped Isaac and not because as the firstborn he was entitled to it, thereby justifying Jacob’s theft of Esau’s birthright and blessing. To strengthen the case for Jacob’s innocence and Esau’s guilt, Jacob is treated with respect in Rabbinic sources, whereas Esau is accused of the sins of sexual immorality with a betrothed woman, murder, idolatry, and denying the existence of God (Targum Yonatan to Genesis 25:29; B’reishit Rabbah 63.12-13).
The legacy of enduring hatred toward Esau carries over into the modern period where he symbolizes anyone who is crude, uncultured, and anti-Semitic. A folk song, penned by 20th century poet Hayyim Nahman Bialik2, unflatteringly compares Esau and Jacob:
Esau rises and runs for a drink
Like a barrel of booze his mouth does stink […]
Jacob rises and runs to pray
And gives his Maker praise upon praise […]
Nevertheless, there is an important lesson to be learned from Esau’s conduct. The end of the biblical account provides a reader with access to Esau’s soul. Years after the purchase of the birthright and the theft of the blessing by Jacob, the brothers meet. Jacob’s trepidation reveals that he believed Esau might seek vengeance for the wrong he suffered at Jacob’s hand. Instead, Esau hugged Jacob, who then commented to Esau: “… to see your face is like seeing the face of God” (Genesis 33:10). Esau’s humanity shines through because he bore no malice or hatred for the loss of the two valuable gifts — the birthright and the blessing that he was deprived of so many years previous. When he met the brother who had cheated and deceived him, Esau demonstrated genuine forgiveness.
Despite the poor treatment Esau has received throughout Jewish history, his life can also serve as a positive source of inspiration that motivates others to follow suit by taking the bold step of making peace with parents, siblings, and friends, whether or not they deserve it. So important is such forgiveness that it is later concretized in the Levitical Holiness Code that specifies the mitzvah that all would do well to remember: “You shall not hate your kinsfolk in your heart …You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against members of your people. Love your fellow as yourself: I am the Eternal” (Leviticus 19:17-18).
“Jacob was a homespun man …,” W. Gunther Plaut, gen ed., The Torah: A Modern Commentary, rev. ed., (NY: URJ Press, 2005), p. 174; see also, “Jacob was a mild man…,” JPS Tanakh (Philadelphia: JPS, 1999), p. 49
Hayyim Nahman Bialik, Kol Kithebe H. N. Bialik (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1938) 69
Rabbi Stephen S. Pearce, Ph.D. is senior rabbi emeritus of Congregation Emanu-El of San Francisco, and a faculty member of the Fromm Institute for Lifelong Learning at the University of San Francisco and the Beyond The Walls: Spiritual Writing Program at Kenyon College. He is the author of Flash of Insight: Metaphor and Narrative in Therapy and other articles, poems, and books.
A Conversation with Clinical Psychologist Yael Danieli
BY ARON HIRT-MANHEIMER , 11/09/2017
Photograph of entrance to Birkenau concentration camp taken from the level of the train tracks leading into the camp
Dr. Yael Danieli, a clinical psychologist, victimologist, traumatologist, author, and lecturer is director of the Group Project for Holocaust Survivors and their Children, which she co-founded in 1975. She served as a founding director of the United Nations of The International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies and as distinguished professor of international psychology at the Chicago School of Professional Psychology. I sat down with her to learn more about her pioneering work in understanding and treating victims of genocide and their children.
ReformJudaism.org: What led you to specialize in preventing the long-term and multi-generational effects of trauma?
Dr. Danieli: During the 1960s, while working on my doctoral dissertation on the psychology of hope, I realized that Holocaust survivors and their children suffered from what I would later term the “conspiracy of silence”—most people they tried to speak to about their experiences, including psychotherapists and other professionals, would not listen to or believe them.
Survivors’ war accounts were too horrifying for most people to hear. Compounding their psychic pain, survivors also encountered the pervasively held myth that they had participated in their own destiny by “going like sheep to the slaughter” and the suspicion that they had performed immoral acts to survive.
The conspiracy of silence intensified their sense of isolation, loneliness, and mistrust of society. In bitterness and despair, many decided there was no one they could talk to about their trauma except, perhaps, other survivors.
Survivor families tended to exhibit at least four adaptational identity styles: victim families, fighter families, numb families, and families of “those who made it.”
In numb families, little or nothing was said about their Holocaust experiences. The children of such families were often too frightened to imagine what could have led to such constriction and lifelessness in their parents. The parents protected each other, and the children protected the parents.
Victim families were characterized by pervasive depression, worry, and mistrust. Joy, self-fulfillment, and existential questions were viewed as frivolous luxuries. Fear of the outside world – of the inevitable next Holocaust – led to clinging within the family. Children were taught to distrust people, especially authority figures, outside the family circle.
Fighter families displayed an intense drive to build and achieve. Parents forbade any behavior that might signify victimization, weakness, or self-pity. Pride was fiercely held as a virtue, relaxation and pleasure were deemed superfluous, and defiance toward outside authorities was sometimes encouraged to the point of peril.
Families “who made it” sought higher education, social and political status, fame, and/or wealth. Some in this group devoted their resources to public acknowledgement and commemoration of the Holocaust, to prevent its recurrence, to ensure that Holocaust victims were treated with dignity, and to aid victimized populations in general.
So many years after the fact, can Holocaust survivors and their children be helped?
Yes. Over time, a fuller understanding of victimization experiences can lead to their gaining the ability to develop a realistic perspective of what happened. That includes no longer viewing themselves and humanity solely based on what happened to them personally during the war.
Recovery also involves a continuous and consistent unraveling and transcending of an individual’s or a family’s adaptation style. Many survivors and their offspring found participating in groups helpful because they could share with others concerns and feelings that would be very difficult to confront alone. Children of survivors have also benefitted from researching the factual events of their parents’ experiences, especially if their parents didn’t speak about the Holocaust or passed on only selective, fragmented accounts.
Is this pathway to recovery unique to Holocaust survivor families?
No. It has been found to be beneficial for victims of other genocides, for children of perpetrators, and for war veterans. Of crucial importance is the empathetic reception of their communities and societies in the aftermath of trauma and tragedy. Societies need to commit to providing measures of acknowledgement, apology, and reparative justice so the trauma becomes a shared rather than a stigmatizing history. The mourning, too, needs to be shared by all, rather than by the survivors alone.
How can we better understand and relate to survivors of trauma and their families?
Listen to them, despite your fear of the terrible things you might hear. To forsake this opportunity is not only to perpetuate the conspiracy of silence and thereby re-victimize the survivors, but to deprive yourself of historic memory that connects you with your own and your people’s history, and allows you to learn from it.
Take the time. You will be forever enriched and grateful for it.
Aron Hirt-Manheimer is the Union for Reform Judaism’s editor-at-large.
Photo credit: Rose Eichenbaum
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BY COURTNEY NALIBOFF , 10/31/2017
Growing up Jewish in central Maine, I had few opportunities to connect with my religion and culture. While I had Jewish friends from music camp, few of my public-school classmates had any sense of what being Jewish meant, beyond knowing that it somehow made me different from them.
And I lacked the tools to be a cultural ambassador.
That changed when my grandmother, who lived in San Diego, sent me a cassette tape of the Second Avenue Klezmer Ensemble. Suddenly, our minivan was filled with wailing clarinets, the startling sound of the ahava raba scale (the almost minor scale used in most klezmer music), and the beautiful voice of a woman singing in Yiddish.
I yearned to sing in that language and thought it might be a way to introduce something of my Jewishness to my peers.
I had read works by Isaac Bashevis Singer and Sholom Aleichem in translation, but longed to read their writings in the original Yiddish. I wanted to understand the colloquialisms, read in the cadence of Yiddish, incorporate the language into my life beyond “oy gevalt” and “tuchus.”
I began by learning to play and sing some of the songs from the Second Avenue Klezmer Ensemble album. Another resource was a Dover collection of Yiddish songs, with piano music, guitar chords, and Yiddish lyrics transliterated into English characters. My favorite song was Abi Gezunt (If You Have Your Health). I played some of these songs for the fiddle ensemble and in concert at my school.
This was my cultural ambassador moment, my way of sharing a Jewish cultural aspect with my broader community.
I didn’t know at the time that I had Aaron Lansky to thank for the ease of access I had to the Yiddish language and music. He was 24 and a grad student of Yiddish literature when he founded the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, MA, in 1980.
Lansky says he realized that untold numbers of irreplaceable Yiddish books – the legacy of a thousand years of Jewish life in Eastern Europe – were being discarded by American-born Jews unable to read the language of their Yiddish-speaking parents and grandparents. So, he organized a nationwide network of zamlers (volunteer book collectors) and launched a concerted campaign to save the world’s remaining Yiddish books before it was too late.
In only six months, they recovered more than a million volumes, many of them donated lovingly by the books’ owners, others rescued from demolition sites and dumpsters.
Lansky’s memoir, Outwitting History: The Amazing Story of a Man Who Rescued a Million Yiddish Books, reads at times like an adventure novel, as the rescuers encounter all kinds of weather as they race to save these cultural treasures. In his search for funding and logistical support, Lansky describes how he appealed to Jews in Catskill resorts, reminding me of how, as a teen, I became hooked on an Allan Sherman comedy album sprinkled with Yiddishisms that embodied to me the social aspects of Judaism that were missing in my life. I made my parents play it again and again when taking long car rides.
Lansky says he never envisioned the Center as a “static storehouse for old books,” but rather “to place old volumes into the hands of new readers.” Since 1997, its 12,000 digitalized books have been downloaded 1.6 million times.
Singing in Yiddish, even appreciating Yiddish makes me feel like I’m a member of a wonderful club, with its expressive speech, soulful music, deeply philosophical literature, and living connection to a faraway place and long-ago time.
The Center for Yiddish Books has done a valuable service in preserving a language about which it could be quipped, “reports of its death are greatly exaggerated.”
Outwitting History is an inspiring account of Lansky’s ambitious vision and the network he created to save millions of books and keep alive a precious language and culture of the Jewish people.
Courtney Naliboff lives, writes, teaches, and parents on North Haven, an island off the coast of Maine. She is a columnist for Working Waterfront, and writes about rural Jewish parenting for Kveller.com.
VAYEIRA, GENESIS 18:1–22:24
D’VAR TORAH BY: RABBI STEPHEN S. PEARCE, PH.D.
A couple is served dinner
To live in a period when public officials and private citizens demonize “the other” — immigrants, foreigners, strangers, women, individuals of different sexual orientation, and the poor — is to live in a tragic times. Whereas welcoming the outsider is the biblical underpinnning of so many Genesis narratives, this sacred principle is not always preeminent because the Bible is a human book that not only promotes ideals, but also notes the failure to live up to them. Vayeira provides such a contrast between depravity and disregard for outsiders on one hand, and kindness, generosity, and hospitality to strangers on the other.
In the account of Sodom and Gomorrah, the Torah comments: “The outcry of [za’akat] Sodom and Gomorrah — how great it is, and their crime [chatatam] — how grave it is!” (Genesis 18:20). However, this text offers no further elucidation of sins committed by the citizens of these doomed cities. In contrast, the Torah is clear that a previous society of evildoers, the generation of the flood, was destroyed because “the earth was filled withlawlessness [chamas]” (Genesis 6:11).
The remembrance of the merciless and cruel behavior of the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah who were hardened to kindness and compassion is echoed in the words of the Prophet Ezekiel:
Only this was the sin of your sister Sodom: arrogance! She and her daughters had plenty of bread and untroubled tranquility; yet she did not support the poor and the needy. In their haughtiness, they committed abomination before Me … (Ezekiel 16:49-50)
With no detailed information about the sins of the people of Sodom and Gomorrah in the Torah, Sages and scholars visualized sins of lust and sexual depravity because this opportunistic and inhospitable people treated strangers as fair game, subject to any imaginable violation, abuse, or whim. This interpretation is based on an incident in which Lot extended hospitality to two strangers, whereupon the townspeople demanded that Lot turn them over in order that “we may be intimate with them” (Genesis 19:5). However, mindful of the ancient hospitality code that demands that a guest in an individual’s home has the absolute protection of the host, Lot tried to shield the men from harm’s way by offering the Sodomites his young virgin daughters instead of his guests:
He said, “Please, brothers, do no evil! Look — I have two daughters who have never been intimate with a man: let me bring them out for you, and do to them as you please. But do nothing to these men, for they have come under the shelter of my roof. (Genesis 19:7-8)
Thus Lot was portrayed as both a solid citizen and a flawed human being. He not only offered his virgin daughters to the rabble-rousers in order to protect his two guests, but also two further accounts document father-daughter incest, unholy unions with his daughters that resulted in the birth of Moab (meaning “from father”) — “he is the father of the Moabites of today” and Ben-ammi (meaning, “son of my kin”) — “he is the father of the Ammonites of today” (Genesis 19:33-38). It is no wonder that the name of the ancient city of Sodom becomes synonynous with sexual perversion. Nevertheless, the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah must have been appreciably more heinous than Lot’s contemptable behavior, because he and his family were exempted from the punishment that befell all the other denizens of those wicked cities.
A further moral failure read into the limited available textual information was the refusal to extend a helping hand to those in need. The Talmud imagined that the citizens of Sodom decreed death to anyone who fed the poor:
A certain maiden gave some bread to a poor man, [hiding it] in a pitcher. On the matter becoming known, they daubed her with honey and placed her on the parapet of the wall, and the bees came and consumed her. Thus it is written, (in Genesis 18:20), “The “outrage” [za-akah] of Sodom and Gomorrah is so great, and their sin so grave! (Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 109b)
The Talmud further tells how the people of Sodom offered the appearance, but not the actuality, of hospitality to strangers:
Whenever a pauper happened to come to them, each and every Sodomite would give him a dinar, and before doing so would write his name on [the coin] And, as per a prior agreement, [the Sodomites] would not offer [the pauper] bread. When [the pauper] eventually died of hunger, each and every Sodomite came and took back his coin. (Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 109b)
A second text in Vayeira (Genesis 18:1ff) offers a distinct contrast to the behavior of the Sodomites. It describes God’s appearance before Abraham as Abraham sat at the entrance of his tent when three men seemed to appear out of nowhere. Abraham terminated communication with God in order to offer hospitality to these strangers. He prepared a feast and offered them an opportunity to refresh themselves. So important was hospitality to Abraham that he allowed this moment of religious ecstasy to be interrupted. He affirmed the important lesson that social responsibility must supercede religious belief and practice, later articulated in the Talmud: hachnasat orchim — “Welcoming guests is greater than welcoming the Divine Presence” (Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 127a).
Vayeira contrasts the the treatment of people at the margins of society — they can be ignored or welcomed, abused or protected. Everyone benefits when hospitality for outsiders is woven into the fabric of society, an important lesson that needs reinforcement in every age, especially during this modern age when the political climate demonizes “the other,” rather than honoring and uplifting the stranger in our midst.
Rabbi Stephen S. Pearce, Ph.D. is senior rabbi emeritus of Congregation Emanu-El of San Francisco, and a faculty member of the Fromm Institute for Lifelong Learning at the University of San Francisco and the Beyond The Walls: Spiritual Writing Program at Kenyon College. He is the author of Flash of Insight: Metaphor and Narrative in Therapy and other articles, poems, and books.
BY ELIZABETH LEFF , 10/24/2017
Lech L’cha, Genesis chapters 12:1-17:2, reveals the ancient promise from God of a new and greater land. In this Torah portion, we read, “The Eternal One said to Abram, ‘Go forth from your land and from your birthplace and from your father’s house, to the land that I will show you. And I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you, and I will glorify your name, and [you shall] be a blessing.’” (Genesis 12:1-3).
As an American Jew, I am familiar with this language. These words are the foundation of the American dream; they are how Lady Liberty welcomes newcomers to the American shore. These are the words of the promised land and the land of milk and honey. They live true in Micah and “Hamilton” alike, when we read “And they shall dwell each person under their vine and under their fig tree, and no one shall make them move, for the mouth of the Lord of Hosts has spoken” (Micah 4:4). They represent the bliss that comes from the certainty of tomorrow.
For me, the promise and certainty of tomorrow is often as simple as the confidence and excitement with which I approach my future, a privilege I may never fully appreciate. For 11 million undocumented people in the United States, this certainty is illusive – it hangs in the balance of a deeply complicated and intoxicatingly bureaucratic governmental system that is neither nimble nor quick.
On September 5, 2017, the Trump administration rescinded the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. DACA has allowed nearly 800,000 undocumented immigrant youth, brought to the United States as children, to obtain work permits, attend school, and contribute openly to our economy without fear of deportation. In many cases, these young people grew up in the United States and want to give back to society and raise their own families in the only nation they know as home. By ending DACA and its protections, the administration again made these DACA recipients, known as DREAMers, vulnerable to detention or deportation. It took away their certainty about tomorrow.
The first step on a long road of immigrant justice reform is the passage of a clean Dream Act of 2017 (“clean” means the legislation includes no additional funding for enforcement or a border wall). Passage of the bipartisan Dream Act (S.1615/H.R.3440) would permit conditional permanent residents to obtain lawful permanent residence status (known as “getting a green card”), and then provide a pathway to citizenship for DREAMers who attend college, work in the U.S., or serve in the military.
The message of Lech L’cha promotes a better land in a better place. For hundreds of thousands of immigrant youth living in fear and in danger of deportation, the United States is, nonetheless, still their better place. We have a responsibility as Jews to leverage the full power of our community and urge our representatives to pass the clean Dream Act, giving back to these people the certainty of their tomorrow.
Here are four ways to do so:
Attend an Immigrant Justice Shabbat Observance on November 3-4, 2017. Find a congregation near you and inquire if the community is participating in this initiative.
Sign up to participate in a call-in day on Monday, November 6. 2017, to push the Dream Act in Congress.
Urge your Congressional representatives to pass the clean Dream Act.
Amplify this effort on social media by following the RAC on Twitter, like the RAC on Facebook, and using the hashtag #Faith4Dream.
Elizabeth Leff is an Eisendrath Legislative Assistant at the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, where her portfolio includes immigration, among other issues. She grew up at Lake Placid Synagogue in Lake Placid, NY, and is a graduate of New York University.
BY RABBI SHARON G. FORMAN , 10/20/2017
Two people in total shadow jumping on the beach with sunlight behind them
Before my dad ever put our Buick station wagon into gear – whether we were heading off on vacation, to take the SATs, or have wisdom teeth extracted – he would turn to face whomever was in the back seat. In a voice reminiscent of Ted Lewis, the 1920s jazz band leader (born Theodore Friedman in 1892), he would ask Lewis’ famous question: “Is everybody happy?” He wouldn’t budge until we had dutifully responded that we were.
A recent New York Times article about happiness and the immune system reminded me of my dad’s signature question, and confirmed that he was on to something. It appears that being in a positive state of mind when receiving a flu vaccine significantly boosts immune response. Happiness, then, not only offers pleasurable sensations to individuals and those around them, but also can be good for health.
Much writing and discussion in Jewish texts focuses on happiness and professionals in this field (yes, happiness experts do exist) might agree that we make our lives better (and ourselves happier) by striving to be good people, by helping others, and by creating and maintaining meaningful relationships. The Hebrew language – which is notoriously economical – boasts numerous, albeit subtly different, words for joy: simchah, gila, sasson, and rina. And finally, the Jewish calendar, too, offers us the recently-ended harvest festival of Sukkot, that not only ushers in Israel’s much needed rainy season, but also is known as z’man simchateinu – the season of our joy.
What follows this season of joy is the Hebrew month of Cheshvan, which begins this evening and sometimes is referred to as mar Cheshvan (bitter Cheshvan) because of its dearth of Jewish holidays other than Shabbat. With a harvest safely tucked in and our Torah scrolls returned to their everyday garb, it’s back to business as usual in the synagogue and in our lives. Today, that often means we worry about friends and family affected by hurricanes, earthquakes, and wildfires. We mourn for victims of senseless gun violence. We’re anxious about healthcare – for ourselves, the people we love, and those who lack it entirely. The list goes on.
Just as Ted Lewis, seeking to encourage positivity in audiences mired in the unemployment, poverty, uncertainty, and fear of the Great Depression asked if everyone was happy, so, too, has our Jewish tradition – winking, smiling, and prodding – just asked us the very same question. Even as my brother, sisters, and I sometimes rolled our eyes at the question, we always answered, “Yes, Dad, everybody’s happy,” forgetting, just for a moment, our worries and trepidations. “Yes, we’re happy, Dad. Let’s go.”
This Cheshvan – and throughout the year – we can learn a lot from the optimism of Ted Lewis, my dad, and our Jewish tradition. Doing so just might boost our immune systems, help us appreciate the joy of simple pleasures in our lives, and give us strength to oppose the ills that plague our world.
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October 13, 2017
WASHINGTON – In response to President Trump’s announcement that he will not certify Iran’s compliance with the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear agreement, Rabbi Jonah Dov Pesner, Director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, issued the following statement on behalf of the Union for Reform Judaism, the Central Conference of American Rabbis, and the wider Reform Movement.
“President Trump’s decision not to certify Iran’s compliance with the JCPOA is a poor and destabilizing choice that makes our world less, rather than more, secure. There is no question that when the Iran deal was initially presented, our Movement had serious concerns about the agreement’s ability to positively impact deterrence, Iran’s support of terror, inspections, human rights and religious freedom, and the United States’ standing in the world. However, at this point in the deal’s implementation, our shared global task is to ensure the JCPOA’s success. Unfortunately, President Trump’s decision undermines that effort.
“As an array of U.S. and Israeli national security experts, from former Prime Minister Ehud Barak to Defense Secretary James N. Mattis, have attested, to unravel or destabilize the deal and the verification that accompanies it is to make the world less safe. Such a step is confusing – something no nuclear agreement should ever be. At the same time, real concerns about Iran’s activities, from human rights violations to conventional weapons proliferation and beyond, should be addressed through other means, rather than opening up the delicate JCPOA.
“We urge Congress to act to promote the strength of the JCPOA and ensure the United States’, Israel’s, and the world’s safety from Iran’s nuclear program.”
The Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism is the Washington office of the Union for Reform Judaism, whose more than 900 congregations across North America encompass 1.5 million Reform Jews, and the Central Conference of American Rabbis, whose membership includes more than 2,000 Reform rabbis. Visit www.rac.org for more.
Media Contact:
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sarah@westendstrategy.com; Office: 202-776-7700; Cell: 202-765-4290