Hazon, J-HUB and The Heschel Center, the lead partners in the Siach Network have issued the following statement regarding the Israel trip planned by Pursue. We invite you to share with others and to respond
Siach, An Environment and Social Justice Conversation, is a cooperative, pluralistic multi-lateral initiative to create and strengthen a network of social-environmental activists across the Jewish world. Supported by the UJA Federation of New York, with anchors in the US, Israel and Great Britain, and scores of member organizations, Siach works to strengthen values of social justice and sustainability in and between the Diaspora and Israel.
Siach applauds the decision of the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation, Pursue: Action for a Just World, and the bodies served by Pursue, alumni of Avodah and the American Jewish World Service (AJWS), to offer an educational service tour to Israel for its members. As Jewish social justice activists, we warmly encourage these organizations to explore and embrace the range of all social and environmental issues that the Israeli public in general, and their colleagues and allies, the social-environmental activists of Israel, are dealing with in their work to make Israel a more democratic, just and inclusive society, inspired and informed by prophetic Jewish values.
We invite you to fully and sincerely engage the wide range of controversial and compelling social, environmental and political challenges here that are the life’s work of our Israeli affiliates, and we offer Siach and its Israeli member organizations as partners to help facilitate this trip and its content.
Siach believes that Jews around the world should strengthen their connection to Israel by expressing and striving to fulfill their most cherished social values for Israeli society and all its citizens, together with like-minded allies in Israel working to help Israel live up to universal and Jewish standards of justice and equity, and to the democratic Jewish ideals expressed in its Declaration of Independence.
Dr. Jeremy Benstein, The Heschel Center, Tel Aviv, Israel
Nigel Savage, Hazon, New York, NY
Shoshana Boyd Gelfand, J-HUB, London, England
