There Shall Be No Needy Teacher's Guide

By Rabbi Jill Jacobs

Insights, Ideas, and Thoughtful Questions for Discussing
Jewish Approaches to Social Justice with Students

A step-by-step guide to creative use of There Shall Be No Needy: Pursing Social Justice through Jewish Law & Tradition in adult education, college, and advanced high school classes. Each lesson includes:

• Clearly stated goals
• Trigger exercises to draw out participants' own experiences
• Intriguing discussion questions that facilitate the use of There Shall Be No Needy in the classroom
• Text studies that engage students in a personal exploration of classical and contemporary Jewish approaches to the most important social justice issues of our time
• A glossary of important terms

This comprehensive teaching tool will help students to gain a deeper understanding of Jewish perspectives on key social justice issues, and to explore what we can do to make a difference in our communities.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jewish Lights
• Release date: Mar 1, 2010
• ISBN: 9781683367178

Rabbi Jill Jacobs

Rabbi Jill Jacobs is executive director of T'ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights. . Widely acknowledged as one of the leading voices in Jewish social justice, Rabbi Jacobs is also the author of There Shall Be No Needy: Pursuing Social Justice through Jewish Law and Tradition and Where Justice Dwells: A Hands-On Guide to Doing Social Justice in Your Jewish Community (both Jewish Lights). She has been voted to the Forward newspaper's list of fifty influential Jews, to Newsweek's list of the fifty most influential rabbis in America and to the Jewish Week's list of "thirty-six under thirty-six." Rabbi Jill Jacobs is available to speak on the following topics: Social Justice in Judaism: Historical, Textual and Political Roots, and Their Meaning for Jews Today Synagogue Social Justice That Works In the Image: A Jewish Take on Human Rights Torah in the Workplace: Ethical Business Practices for the Synagogue, School, Home and Business A Jewish Approach to Combating Human TraffickingClick here to contact the author.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

The Search for an Integrated Judaism

Goals

• Participants will be able to identify the source(s) of their own connections to social justice work.

• Participants will understand some of the different reasons that Jews give for their own social justice work.

Trigger Exercise

1. Below, you will find ten statements that describe why some Jews feel compelled to do social justice work. Photocopy each statement on a separate piece of paper, enlarging each as much as possible. Alternatively, you may write each statement on a poster board or other large piece of paper. Hang these pieces of paper around the room.

2. Ask participants to walk around the room, read each statement, and then stand next to the statement that they find most compelling. You should acknowledge that it will be difficult to choose only one statement, but that for the sake of the conversation, participants should commit to only one.

3. Give participants a few minutes to walk around and choose their statement. When everyone has chosen a statement, go around the room and ask one volunteer from each statement group to read the first line of their selected statement, and then to explain why he or she finds this statement compelling.

4. Ask participants to find a partner who chose a different statement. Once every participant has found a partner, ask the pairs to talk about the following questions:

a. Why did you find this statement compelling? Does this statement reflect your own approach to social justice work? How or how not?

b. Were there other statements to which you also felt drawn? Why?

c. Were there other statements that you found entirely uncompelling or even offensive? Why?

5. Bring the group back together and ask a few volunteers to share any insights or questions that emerged from their conversations. Did they learn anything from their partners? Did anything in the conversation surprise them? Do they have additional questions about why Jews might choose to do social justice work?

Statements

1. The Jewish people have suffered injustice. In our lifetimes and those of our parents and grandparents, we have been the victims of individual and institutional anti-Semitism. We have forgotten neither the atrocities of the Holocaust nor the exclusionary policies of the early twentieth century nor the individual acts of anti-Semitism that continue today. We know that discrimination against any minority threatens all minorities.

2. We share a communal narrative that reminds us of our enslavement to Pharaoh, and of our liberation from Egypt. Rather than use this memory as an excuse to oppress others, we have learned from the experience of oppression an obligation to protect the most vulnerable. Time and again, the Torah reminds us that our personal experience of being strangers instills in us a responsibility toward those in our own society who are at risk for discrimination and oppression.

3. We have been leaders in the major justice battles of the last century. We were among the leaders of the American labor movement, the civil rights movement, and the feminist movement, and we were disproportionately represented among the leaders of the Russian revolution and the early communist and socialist movements. Our revolutionary history has taught us to aspire to be leaders in creating long-term