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Earlier this month, 44 Senators wrote a letter to President Obama threatening to filibuster any nominee to head the newly created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). ...
A number of balanced budget amendments (BBA) are currently working their way through the legislative process and pose enormous economic justice challenges. When the House of Representatives returns...
UPDATE: Keep those calls coming! You can also send an email.Medicaid is a vital component of our country's social safety net, providing health coverage to 60 million Americans, including low-income...
In Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Cassius stiffens Brutus's resolve to carry out the assassination of Caesar by saying, "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, / But in ourselves that we are...
This summer I am fortunate enough to be a Machon Kaplan intern for the Religious Action Center. Prior to these last several days, I rarely followed the news and I only knew about the hot issues in...
It is often said that states are the "laboratories of democracy" because innovative ideas take shape at the state level before being adapted by the country as a whole. Teddy Roosevelt, however,...
Among the basic essentials for life are air, water, shelter, and food. However, we tend to undervalue the importance of food in this country, not on a basis of how much we consume, but on what we...
Jonathan Backer is an Eisendrath Legislative Assistant. He is a graduate of Columbia University.Remember when you were in school, and there was a big paper deadline? If you are like me, you...
Jonathan Backer is and Eisendrath Legislative Assistant. He is a graduate of Columbia University.Who can forget the opening lines of Annie Hall, when Woody Allen sums up his attitude towards life?...
Diversity is a potent agent of growth and change in nearly any field. Achieving diversity, however, is no simple undertaking; we must, as Secretary Clinton articulated in a commencement speech at...
Harri Plotnick is an intern at the Religious Action Center. She belongs to Congregration Keneseth Israel, where she also teaches religious school.The product of 40 years of feminist work since...
"I am involved with the work that I do because I'm a Muslim and because I'm an American."...
Follow our specially tagged blog posts throughout the week for more on how the proposed budget affects many of the priority issues for our Movement.A week after the Food Research and Action Center...
As aid flows to the victims of Tuesday's earthquake in Haiti, we cannot forget that those suffering the effects of this disaster will not be affected equally. Some will be shaken from lives of...
In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, it's been common practice for the First Lady to champion a cause: Lady Bird Johnson was a staunch environmentalist. Barbara Bush was a strong advocate...
Imagine my surprise when, comfy on my couch and enjoying the Super Bowl, I saw a commercial - aired not once, but twice - featuring a classroom full of children reciting the following mock pledge...
It seems we've been here before: unemployment hovering around 10%, restlessness about the economy, gridlock in Congress on issues that affect a broad range of people agree on, and, most tragically,...
Scroll down a little bit on the Bureau of Labor Statistics' January unemployment report, and you'll see two statistics that, while less discussed than the overall unemployment rate, may give a...
Last night, Senator Lieberman filed an amendment to a job creation bill in the Senate that has little if nothing to do with jobs, but instead would extend the DC school voucher program that has not...
Believe it or not, the impetus for the creation of the National School Lunch Program in 1946 was that malnourishment was rendering large numbers of young men ineligible to join the military. When...
At our L'taken seminars, I do an activity with participants in which they take on the identity of a new person and attempt to find enough food to feed them and those for whom they are responsible...
This piece first appeared in the Jewish Council for Public Affairs' Confronting Poverty e-newsletter and is republished with permission....
It's not often that a politician admits he or she made a mistake, but recently, none other than former President Bill Clinton did just that. For what did he recant? As the Washington Post reports,...
Pesach is fast approaching, and as we've regularly reminded you here on the RACblog, the holiday is a great time to draw parallels between our history and the present. We've provided you some ways...
Why has obesity in the U.S. doubled in the last 25 years, and how will solving this epidemic build democracy? Those are the questions that Dr. Marion Nestle grappled with at Georgetown University...
Yesterday's Social Action Briefing was attended by people from all over the country! Thanks for joining in - but we know that many of you were unable to listen in, so we've got the audio available...
Last week was a busy week for health care reform. But this week will be busier.While President Obama steps up his campaign in support of comprehensive health care reform, the three relevant...
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Summer is heating up, and so is the debate over health care reform. Yesterday, a group of nearly 30 religious leaders rolled up their sleeves, put on their sunscreen (figuratively, of course), and...
Samantha Hordes is a participant in the Religious Action Center's Machon Kaplan summer program for college students. She is a student at American University and an intern at the National Coalition...
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Every day, congregations serve individuals in need within our communities. We run soup kitchens, partner with the Interfaith Housing Network to provide shelter for the homeless in our...
As we get closer and closer to the fiscal cliff and our elected officials begin to contemplate the tax and spending reforms that will probably come up in the 113th congress, there is...
And they’re off! Like the gunshot sending the horses into their races, Congress returned this week poised to tackle the multi-trillion dollar problem that is the fiscal cliff. Coincidentally (or...
Yesterday morning I had the privilege of attending an interfaith home blessing for the SeVerna Apartments, an affordable housing project near the Capitol Building. The event started off with an...
In 2010 President Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) into law. This act contained a number of provisions aimed at providing better access to health insurance and...
We read about labor in this week’s parsha in more than one way. In the short span of Vayetze, a total of twelve children come into the world. Not to mention the fourteen years of labor Jacob...
New York should follow in the footsteps of Washington, Connecticut and Massachusetts, who have raised their minimum wages to $9.04, $8.25 and $8.00 an hour, respectively.
Rabbi David Saperstein spoke this morning alongside religious leaders from across the country urging Congress: “Don’t push the poor and most vulnerable off the ‘fiscal cliff.’” Joined by...
I am attending the Gamaiel Foundation‘s International Leadership Assembly in Washington DC. We are 100 leaders from across 17 states in our network in relationship with 1,000,000 members of...
Yesterday the Religious Action Center sent a letter to all Members of Congress urging them to protect the poor in any deficit reduction agreement. As the end of year approaches and we near the ...
Earlier this month, I joined many in the Jewish community in St. Louis and across the country in a Food Stamp Challenge. The Challenge was sponsored by the Jewish Council for Public Affairs,...
A nun, a priest and a rabbi walk out on the pulpit of a Presbyterian church… What sounds like the opening line of a bad joke, was in fact the description of an event that took place last month at...
As the House and the Senate release and mark up their budgets this week, there’s a lot of jargon being tossed around. You may have heard that the House-proposed budget include “block grants” for...
[Editor's Note: Rabbi Jacobs gave the following address on Saturday, August 24, 2013, at the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.]
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Just over 50 years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., stood in front of the Lincoln Memorial and gave one of the most remembered speeches of all time. In his address, Dr. King reminded every...
One of the biggest challenges facing new olim (immigrants) in Israel is finding employment. Jobs, especially for non-Hebrew speakers, are few and far between. Finding a meaningful job is nothing...
Today, on the 103rd anniversary of the fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City, we recall how in 18 minutes, a fire took the lives of 146 Jewish and Italian immigrants. This...
