By Simon Greer, President and CEO, Nathan Cummings Foundation
Seven years ago, when I was beginning my first job at a Jewish organization, a prominent rabbi shared an insight that stuck with me. He said that the network of social service agencies established by the Jewish community was the gold standard in the field, but we lagged far behind others when it came to our institutional commitment to systemic social change.
The vision I have pursued since then is of a Jewish community that excels at both. Without senior centers and soup kitchens and health clinics, we would fail to meet our basic obligations to society’s most vulnerable.
Yet services alone are insufficient.
We must be engaged in pushing public and private institutions to take the steps necessary to eliminate homelessness and hunger, ensure access to quality health care and education, and protect our planet from all forms of unnecessary degradation.
The past twenty years has seen a significant shift. More and more Jewish communal institutions are providing opportunities for Jews to advocate strengthening these and other strands of our social contract. Synagogues have joined congregation-based community organizing networks and begun to act independently, helping to pass health care reform in Massachusetts and marriage equality legislation in New York. Organizations that engage Jews in social justice advocacy have proliferated and grown.
A young woman recently shared with me her own insight. She came of age experiencing a Jewish community where Jewish civic engagement is normative, from service trips with American Jewish World Service to organizing with Progressive Jewish Alliance and Jewish Funds for Justice to environmental education with Hazon.
Our communal commitment remains insufficient to address the root causes of the very problems whose symptoms we treat so successfully. But we are making progress. At a time of profound challenges facing the world, it’s worth remembering how far we have come.