Sacred Encounters: The Power of Relationships
Mike Sims – Temple Emanu-El, Dallas, TX
Social Action and Social Justice
Jama L. Purser, PT, PhD – Chapel Hill Kehillah Synagogue, Chapel Hill, NC
Sustainable Social Action: Reflections on Congregation-Based Community Organizing
Ken Arfa – Temple Beth Torah, Wellington, FL
Sacred Encounters: The Power of Relationships
Mike Sims – Temple Emanu-El, Dallas, TX
It all began humbly enough. About four years ago, two of us from Temple Emanu-El in Dallas flew to Los Angeles to attend the second Jewish Funds for Justice Conference on Congregation-Based Community Organizing. Once there, we discovered more than 100 rabbis and lay leaders – from different denominations, from all over the United States – all of whom wanted to learn more about this "new" way of working for social justice.
We did not go to Los Angeles because social justice was not working at Temple Emanu-El. In fact, our congregation has led many social justice efforts in Dallas. Over the years, Temple Emanu-El’s members have opened pre-schools, helped create community health clinics, run food pantries, and worked closely with parents and children of a nearby elementary school. This work continues today.
We went to Los Angeles because we were intrigued by the idea of using the power of relationships to expand our social justice work. To put it another way, we wondered what would happen if we could move from doing things for people who needed help to doing things with people who needed help - empowering them to work with us for real and lasting change.
We have been amazed at what has happened since then.
Twice last year Temple Emanu-El hosted meetings of Dallas Area Interfaith, our local IAF (Industrial Areas Foundation) affiliate. Each meeting included more than 60 people – of differing faiths, of disparate economic backgrounds, and of varying political viewpoints – all sharing their stories about the economic pressures they face each day in their lives. Through their conversations each participant learned that they had more in common than they ever believed. On the way home from the first meeting, one participant, a low-wage worker who had a translator with her because she only spoke Spanish, remarked, "I did not know that people in North Dallas had problems like we do in South Dallas."
The conversations continued on Yom Kippur when 200 Temple members ranging in age from 14 to 92 came together for an afternoon study session and house meeting. Over the course of two powerful hours, we studied text and then broke up into ten-person house meeting groups to share our stories and discover the issues that are deeply and widely felt in our congregation. Almost all of the participants felt it was one of the more meaningful study sessions they had ever attended.
Today, after nearly 400 conversations in house meetings and one-to-one meetings, we have a core team of more than 25 members – including a number who have not previously been involved in social justice – working together with members of Dallas Area Interfaith around issues of health care and education.
Temple Emanu-El’s core values statement says that our congregation "strives to be a place of sacred encounter." Our involvement with congregational-based community organizing has given us a new way to combine the sacred encounters of relationships with our long-standing commitment to social justice.
Mike Sims is a member of Temple Emanu-El in Dallas, Texas. Temple Emanu-El is a member of Dallas Area Interfaith, an affiliate of the Industrial Areas Foundation.
Social Action and Social Justice
Jama L. Purser, PT, PhD – Chapel Hill Kehillah Synagogue, Chapel Hill, NC
Personally and philosophically, I have been wrestling with the overlapping boundaries between the social actions that we as Jewish people profess to undertake because they are helpful and good (acts of loving-kindness) and those undertaken because they are the right thing to do (acts of justice). How will we make decisions about where and how to dedicate our time, money, and physical and intellectual efforts toward tikkun olam?
These questions, and this struggle, have emerged from my experiences organizing with the Orange County Organizing Committee (OCOC). A few years ago, under the leadership of Rabbi Jen Feldman and the synagogue’s social action committee, The Chapel Hill Kehillah Synagogue in Chapel Hill, NC partnered with a core team of local interfaith clergy to establish a community organization. The collective purpose was to build relational power for the good in our county, Orange County, NC. Initially, we held house meetings with each participating faith-based organization to identify central themes around which to focus our work: environmental justice, living wages, affordable housing, access to health care, education, and immigrant families. Participating congregations then agreed to meet together at a joint community assembly and pledged to bring a specific number of fellow congregants to the meeting.
Through this work, and the research on these issues that has followed, we are learning together how to build power and establish a recognizable political presence in the community. We are already experiencing some degree of success in building a presence in Orange County politics. A local waste transfer station was to be placed in a small, historically minority community, which has borne the burdens of the county’s waste for many years under terms the community has long felt unjust. OCOC’s Environmental Justice team led the organization’s partnership with local civic and neighborhood organizations to publicly and successfully advocate for re-siting the waste transfer station. We also actively engaged in Chapel Hill, pursuing increasing the available units of affordable housing and preserving existing historical affordable housing. We are also examining and requesting changes to existing living-wage policies in Chapel Hill and Carrboro.
On a personal level, my involvement has been a tremendous learning experience. Since the early stages of OCOC’s formation, I have struggled a lot about what it actually means to do social justice. This work is not easy. It requires long hours that nobody has and acting strategically when it seems that problems are too large to overcome. At times, frankly, the work has seemed too difficult and I have wanted to quit. It requires interacting with ethnically, religiously, educationally, and politically diverse individuals who often have vastly different ideas about community activism. Or how to most efficiently run a meeting. Or how to most strategically press for change in conversations with local officials and stakeholders. In order to be effective at advocating for change, we have learned that we must build relationships that are constructive, rather than purely adversarial. This type of work takes time and demands tactful and disciplined, yet direct, interactions with fellow congregants, politicians, and members of the media. All of this can be very challenging and frustrating at times.
Yet, as a Jewish person, I feel obligated to do this work and there have been particular moments of breakthrough that have been sustaining. For example, it is very powerful to see how energized people become by building relationships across their many cultural, racial, and religious divides to successfully advocate for an issue. It is intellectually stimulating when new types of conversations and ideas are made possible by unlikely collaborators working together to solve a problem. It is exciting when we can wade through our initial confusion to identify simple common goals for improving our day-to-day existence. And it is rewarding as we begin to see others paying attention to our collective voices – in the media and local government. I am also finding myself gradually paying more attention to a broader range of social issues in my community. I’m attending more community meetings, scouring the local newspapers, and paying closer attention to local government decisions.
As I struggle with the questions about how to devote my resources to make change in the world, I take pride in what OCOC has achieved thus far. As an organization we are beginning to see that we truly might be able to make a difference in the political landscape. We know that this change has occurred through persistence, and by actively, aggressively, and strategically building relationships and communities outside of those in which we operate on a day-to-day basis.
Jama Purser is a member of The Chapel Hill Kehillah Synagogue in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The Chapel Hill Kehillah Synagogue is an active member of the Orange County Organizing Committee, affiliated with the Industrial Areas Foundation.
Sustainable Social Action: Reflections on Congregation-Based Community Organizing
Ken Arfa – Temple Beth Torah, Wellington, FL
I am a Co-Chair for the Social Justice Committee at Temple Beth Torah in Wellington, Florida. We began a Social Justice Committee two years ago. It was challenging and there were times in the first year when we wondered if the committee would survive. Things began to take off for our committee when the synagogue joined our local congregation-based community organizing organization PEACE (People Engaged in Active Community Efforts) in Palm Beach County.
With support from a Jewish Funds for Justice grant toward our first year of dues, we became the only Jewish congregation out of twenty that belongs to PEACE. Since that time, our Social Justice Committee has grown from two to twenty people. The organizing efforts at PEACE have grown as well. Last year, PEACE had more than 800 people attend a large public action. We now are planning on 1,300 coming to our April 20th Nehemiah Action Assembly!
My work in PEACE is very different from other types of social action work I’ve been part of. There are two things in particular that make the organizing work so important to me. The first is effectively doing justice in our community and the second is developing relationships with people of other faiths.
We have had many victories in PEACE. For example, we worked with the Health District to provide almost five million additional dollars for health insurance for the uninsured. We encouraged local public officials to start an Affordable Housing Task Force that they had neglected to initiate. We are now seeking millions of dollars for affordable housing assistance from builder impact fees that have been sitting in the County’s fund pool.
Through PEACE our congregation has been able to participate in effectively working towards justice in Palm Beach County. As PEACE has grown, we have seen the power of our numbers influence our local legislators. Last year, one County Commissioner backed our efforts. This year, we have successfully negotiated with and gained the support of four County Commissioners. What difference strength in numbers has made!
We have also worked with faith communities that our synagogue does not often worked closely with. At last year’s PEACE Action assembly our Rabbi gave the opening prayer to the diverse interfaith group of 800 PEACE members. I gave a speech on health care in our community and another Beth Torah member, Howard Phillips, talked about affordable housing in Palm Beach County. We brought over thirty members of Temple Beth Torah to that action and this year we plan to turnout over 100!
It has not always been easy to be the only synagogue, but the PEACE leadership works to ensure PEACE is as inclusive of different faiths as possible. Recently, we worked to develop guidelines for how we pray as a group. PEACE leaders decided that all public prayers would be said as inclusively as possible. This meant a lot to both our synagogue and the Unitarian Universalist Church. It was a difficult conversation to have, but an important one. We were able to have this discussion because of the relationships we have with one another. We would not have that level of connection and respect without our work in PEACE.
Ken Arfa is Social Justice Co-Chair at Temple Beth Torah in Wellington, Florida. Temple Beth Torah is an active member of People Engaged in Active Community Efforts (PEACE) in Palm Beach County, Florida, an affiliate of the DART Network.
