Launch of the second annual global Jewish Social Action Month

Joint Session of the Knesset Committees for Education & Aliya, Klita and Diaspora Affairs

24 October 2006 2 Cheshvan 5767
Yosef Israel Abramowitz
Kol Dor Member, Kibbutz Ketura
Editor, SocialAction.com

Speaker Dalia Itzik, Minister Jacob Edry, Chairman Michael Melchior, Chairman Michael Nudelman, Former chair Collete Avital, who chaired the first committee hearing on this idea in June, 2005.
Members of Knesset
Kol dor members
Guests, family and friends

Mazal tov! Today is a glorious day. Last year we began a process of taking the bitterness, the mar, out of Cheshvan. The global launch was in the United States Congress and activities were held in over a dozen countries, including in the House of Commons and at Beit Hanasi.

Today, your gathering opens a new and positive chapter for the Jewish people worldwide and for all people of good will who believe that collective action can help change the world. We are joined with support from the World Jewish Congress, United Jewish Communities, Hadassah, Hillel, the American Jewish Committee, UJA/Federations of New York and Chicago, WUJS and dozens of other organizations. Jewish children throughout North America in 3,500 classrooms are celebrating Cheshvan through the BabagaNewz program, which is sponsored by the AVI CHAI Foundation; and 10,000 Jewish teens, through JVibe Magazine (underwritten by the Marcus Foundation, Circle of Service and the Shulman Fund), are commemorating Cheshvan.

Today, we are turning to you in the Knesset to add Jewish Social Action Month—Cheshvan l’reacha kamocha—into the official State calendar.

Taking this step would be an affirmative, uniting act of leadership by the Knesset and government, at a time when, let’s face it, people are having less moral regard for the leadership within Israel.

Making Cheshvan officially Jewish Social Action Month would:

• help unite Jews around the world;
• strengthen the global integrity of the Jewish people;
• highlight positive Jewish values;
• Strengthen the Knesset’s and government’s moral standing among Jews;
• and, of course, catalyze the performance of countless acts of hesed and tzedek, of social action and social justice. We at Kol Dor recognize that there are multiple points of entry into Jewish peoplehood, especially for the under-affiliated of the next generation who are not joining through traditionally prescribed ways.

The prophetic call to repair the world, which resonates clearly in Israel’s Declaration of Independence, clearly speaks to young Jews around the world, across the religious and political spectrum. We seek to harness this idealism, unfortunately often cast in a universal rather than particularly Jewish frame. We seek to join a strong social justice stream found in Jewish teachings with the growing tide of alienated young Jews, and create a powerful current of Peoplehood with Purpose.

The idea is quite simple:

The Jewish people, who have contributed so much to the moral advancement of civilization, will focus our energies and attention on the month of Cheshvan and transforming it internationally into Jewish Social Action Month. Following the Yamim Noraim, when world Jewry is mobilized to celebrate the High Holy Days, Jews will be invited to express our people’s universal hopes for humanity and civilization by actions—local, national, international—that express our values of aryevut, and tzedek.

I am a child of the Soviet Jewry and anti-apartheid movements, which attracted Jews from all kinds of backgrounds, including the unaffiliated. (I served as the elected chair of the World Union of Jewish Students 20 years ago) We have seen history bend to our will when collective action became normalized among so many. In Cheshvan/JSAM, we are recreating some of the factors leading to collective action among all kinds of Jews worldwide. Through an act of empowerment we transform Jewish time. When time is marked or celebrated globally and intersects with Jewish values and actions, then the Jewish people are only limited in what we can accomplish by our imagination—or our pettiness.

Officially taking the mar/bitterness out of Cheshvan is also an affirmative act of Jewish peoplehood. The rabbis traditionally called Cheshvan mar/bitter because it was devoid of Jewish holidays. But those of us involved in the aliya and klita of Ethiopian Jews know that for two thousand years their central holiday is the Sigd festival, which continues to be celebrated today, which celebrates their longing for Jerusalem and takes place on the last day of Cheshvan each year.

As Jews, we know the power of symbols. In an era of Jewish history when we live with so many internal divisions, our communities want to rally around positive ideas and actions that unite Jews worldwide. JSAM, as Cheshvan is often called now, is about Jewish peoplehood, about the future, about idealism, about moral action, about Zionism and humanism—traits that the Jewish people seek in themselves, and, if I may add, in Jewish leadership, including the Presidency.

Cheshvan L’rayacha Kamocha is not just about declarations. I want to commend Rabbi Melchior, who last year celebrated Cheshvan when he went into a poor neighborhood in Jerusalem with the Prime Minister’s security force and together they fixed up old apartments.

We at Kol dor also believe in dogma isheet, personal example. My guess is that I was asked to speak today because last Cheshvan when my family lived in Boston, my wife and I agreed to adopt an AIDS orphan from Ethiopia. Today, Zamir Gidon, four years old, is part of our family of seven and we are now living in the Arava on Kibbutz Ketura. Small steps lead to big steps, mitzvah goreret mitzvah.

We hope that in addition to making the transformation of Cheshvan official in the Israeli state calendar, that your respective committees will then look into how to inspire actions and celebrations throughout the Israeli educational system and throughout the Jewish world. Notices need to be sent out to all rabbis and congregations to remove the “mar” before Cheshvan.

We, Kol Dor members from twenty three countries, respectfully offer your committees, the Knesset and the government the opportunity to provide not just leadership to Medinat Yisrael, but to Am Yisrael.

Thank you for your positive consideration of declaring Cheshvan Global Jewish Social Action Month in the official State calendar.