Detroit Jews For Justice

On Monday, October 29th, just a few days after the Pittsburgh massacre, I attended a conversation with other members of the Jewish Social Justice Roundtable on Class, the Jewish Community, and anti-Semitism. 

Image source: Jews for Racial and Economic Justice Facebook

Dear friends,

T’chiyah, our amazing host synagogue, recently brought renowned eco-feminist, anti-war activist, and poet Marge Piercy to town for a poetry reading. One of my favorite Piercy excerpts is from “The Low Road”:

Find links to press coverage of the Pittsburgh vigil below.

Imam Dawud Walid and DJJ Executive Director Rabbi Alana Alpert wrote an op-ed in The Detroit News titled, "Intolerance lies below the surface in America." 

Three leaders of the water justice team -- Barry Rubin, Rondi Brower, and Lori Lutz -- completed an awesome project in service of our work with People's Water Board Coalition, surveying candidates in the November election about their stances on water issues and providing a resource with the results. PWB has talked about this idea for the past couple years and we were so excited to help make it happen! 

At right: Rondi Brower, a leader of the candidate survey project and member of the DJJ water team, tabling with People's Water Board at a candidate forum, distributing survey info.

Now that we've seen the election results, this tool will help PWB find new allies and strengthen relationships in the Michigan legislature; and we saw that the project significantly informed the candidates about water issues as well. We got a huge positive response from PWB and we're excited to learn from our experience and repeat this survey process for future elections. You can find the questions we asked and the tabulated results below!

In October, we welcomed a new Steering Committee! Barry Rubin, Emma Wine, Marni Falk, and Allie Zeff joined the team and incumbent Susannah Goodman will stay on Steering for another term. Other members include Syma Echeandia and Mary Ellen Gurewitz, standing representatives of our host congregation and fiscal sponsor Congregation T'chiyah. We express our deepest appreciation for the members of the team who are moving on - fundraising chair Lori Lutz, workers rights liaison Hannah Miller, long-time leader Oren Brandvain, and Andy Levin, who we are excited will be busy as a new member of US Congress! They served two incredible years on Steering Committee and their contributions were enormous in the growth of DJJ as a new organization. The new Steering Committee convened for their first meeting last month to hear from the old members, and are preparing for a full-day annual retreat in 2019. We are so excited about this talented team and its next chapter in steering DJJ. Check out the bios of the team below!

Rabbi Alana and Rev. Wylie-Kellerman's joint Rosh Hashanah sermon at Congregation T'chiyah was published in Tikkun. Rabbi Alana spoke about what our tradition brings to our activism. The Reverend spoke about his decision to fight for water justice through civil disobedience and go to trial. 

Last month, Rabbi Silverman from the Isaac Agree Downtown Synagogue spoke at a water justice press conference, organized by the Faith Action Committee of the People's Water Board. Before the press conference, faith leaders and congregants gathered by the riverfront, where Rabbi Silverman lead us in a hand-washing ritual, passing the washing cup through the crowd. You can watch her remarks below and read the transcript here. 

Eleanor, along with Jewish leaders from Hazon, Downtown Synagogue, and Repair the World, were featured in this article about Jewish Millennials in Detroit.