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Archive for the ‘Human Rights’ Category

Reps from eighty countries met at the UN last week to discuss religious tolerance at a conference sponsored by Saudi Arabia. Now I’m sure many will immediately claim there is no small measure of hypocrisy when a Wahabi Islamic regime that outlaws all other forms of religion in its country convenes a conference on religious [...]

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In the midst of a largely trivial news barrage, I’m betting this one will pass under our country’s media radar:
The South Asian country of the Maldives has held their first multi-party election and has elected political activist (and former Amnesty International prisoner of conscience) Mohamed Nasheed (right) to be their new president. This effectively ends [...]

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Rabbi Akiva says: “‘Love your fellow as yourself’” (Leviticus 19:18), is the greatest principle of the Torah.
Ben Azzai says, “‘When God created man, He made him in the likeness of God’ (Genesis 5:1) is the greatest principle in the Torah. You should not say: Because I have been dishonored, let my fellow be dishonored along [...]

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Here in Chicago, a decades-long shandeh may finally be coming to an end: US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald announced today that former Police Commander Jon Burge (above) has been arrested and charged with two counts of obstruction of justice and one count of perjury for denying his department tortured suspects in their custody.
According to witness allegations, Burge led [...]

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One important way to understand the critical human stakes of the immigration crisis in this country is to take the time to hear the stories of families that are literally being ripped apart by mass deportations. Here is one such story, featured in yesterday’s Chicago Tribune, with an interesting Jewish twist. (Tribune photo by Oscar Avila, [...]

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Just enjoyed a wonderful potluck dinner at JRC with the Khatiwodas - a refugee family from Bhutan who recently resettled in Chicago. (There they are in the pic above with congregation members Edie Canter and Elaine Waxman). JRC is sponsoring the Khatiwodas through the Interfaith Refugee and Immigration Ministries, an NGO that partners with congregations [...]

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From this week’s Torah portion, Parashat Shoftim:
A person shall be put to death only on the testimony of two or more witnesses; no one shall be put to death on the testimony of a single witness.
(Deuteronomy 16:6)
Taking its cue from Torah verses such as this, Jewish law places a powerfully high value on the importance [...]

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But if you do not dispossess the inhabitants of the land, those whom you allow to remain shall be stings in your eyes and thorns in your sides, and they shall harrass you in the land in which you live; so that I will do to you what I planned to do to them. (Numbers [...]

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On Shabbat we began our day with a study and discussion of the Torah portion - the central themes of Parshat Pinchas (zealous violence and its complex aftermath) were uncannily appropriate to our experiences of the past few days.
The central experience of our Saturday was a visit to CHABHA (Children Affected By HIV/AIDS) - an [...]

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In my previous post I mentioned an emotional visit to Kigali’s public hospital - that actually doesn’t even begin to do justice to the intensity of our experience. Mardge Cohen arranged the visit for us, to give us a better sense of the Rwandan health care system. Until this visit, we had only seen privately [...]

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