Rabbi Donna Kirshbaum will lead three study sessions on issues of global justice.
Photo by Marilyn Silverstein
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March 17, 2009
The region’s only Reconstructionist congregation has been tapped by the American Jewish World Service to participate in a pilot program designed to inspire Jewish engagement with issues of global justice.
String of Pearls, the Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation of Princeton, is one of three organizations selected for the program, the AJWS Global Justice Book and Film Forum.
The others are Congregation Netivot Shalom in Berkeley, Calif., and Hillel at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass.
The 65-family String of Pearls congregation launched its participation in the adult education program in mid-February with a screening of Darwin’s Nightmare, a 2004 documentary film about the devastating social effects of the fishing industry in Mwanza on the edge of Tanzania’s Lake Victoria.
The program will continue with a series of three study sessions on issues of global justice. The 90-minute sessions, which are open to the community, are scheduled for three Thursdays — March 19, April 16, and May 14 at 7:30 p.m. — at private homes in the Princeton area. The sessions will peer through a Jewish lens at such issues as poverty, ethical consumerism, refugee rights, globalization, trade, development, and the pursuit of justice.
The invitation to become part of the pilot program grew out of Rabbi Donna Kirshbaum’s participation in an AJWS delegation of rabbinical students to Ghana before her graduation from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College this past spring. Kirshbaum has been serving in the String of Pearls pulpit since last July.
“I like to describe the American Jewish World Service as a Jewish peace corps,” the rabbi said during a recent phone interview. “They encourage American Jews to think about our responsibilities beyond the Jewish community.”
‘Productive discomfort’
The AJWS approach calls for study as the preamble to action, she said.
“The Global Justice Forum is intended to create both texts and films that the Jewish community can have in common and study together — much as we would study Torah,” she said. “Then, following a very well-thought-out series of steps, we will work together to find action and advocacy that’s appropriate for our own group.”
Among her reasons for using this Global Justice Forum as a basis for study, Kirshbaum noted that the current economic crisis has made for a lot of loss in the community — loss not only of financial security, but also of confidence.
“I think we have to make sure as a congregation that we don’t lose our humanity,” she said. “I’m constantly looking for things as a congregation that reaffirm our humanity.”
The goal of the study sessions, Kirshbaum said, will be to bring participants to a state of what she describes as “productive discomfort” — discomfort that will serve as an impetus to community action.
The three study sessions, she wrote in an e-mail message, “will focus on reclaiming the language of tzedek — distributive justice — as an essential part of our Jewish heritage and on sharing our desire to work for economic and environmental justice with similar-minded Americans of all backgrounds. We’ll all be richer for it, I have no doubt.”
One of the things contemporary Jews are in exile from is the use of such language, Kirshbaum added.
“We’ve lost the knack of talking helpfully about what our core values are,” she said. “At the very least, this project will help us to take back that language.”
A copy of Darwin’s Nightmare will be available for private screenings for those who missed the introductory session. To reserve a place at the Global Justice Book and Film Forum study sessions, contact String of Pearls at 609-497-1360.
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