URGENT: Help Protect Affordable Housing!  Whether or not you live in Langley Park, we need you to speak out to protect this vital community!  Go here to write a letter.  For more information, see below.

On Tuesday June 23rd, more than sixty people came out to demand protections for existing affordable housing and local small business in the Prince George's County Sector Plan for development in Langley Park, where the planned Purple Line light rail project is expected to spur development and revitalization.

Copies of There Shall be No Needy will be available for sale at the event. 

It was great to see so much excitement in the room.  It's a reflection of all the important efforts JUFJ members are involved in.  Whether you came or not, there are lots of great events coming up:

Shira has also served on the board for the UMD Help Center, a peer-counseling and crisis intervention hot line at the University of Maryland, taught a freshman honors course for two years, and taught at Shaare Tfilah Hebrew School. She volunteered at a homeless shelter in Los Angeles, rehabilitated a homeless shelter for African refugees in Israel, and has recently studied sustainable agriculture by volunteering on a Jewish organic farm in Maryland.

Elizabeth brings a wealth of experience as an educator and organizer in the Jewish community, and we're thrilled to welcome her to JUFJ. She was just ordained as a rabbi by the Jewish Theological Seminary and returns to JUFJ after having been active in our early years.  While at JTS, Elizabeth was the co-chair of KeshetJTS, which advocated for the full inclusion of LGBTQ Jews in the Conservative Movement.  

A trained community organizer, she is also a member of the Jewish Funds for Justice Clergy Taskforce and is a board member of the National Havurah Committee. Before rabbinical school, Elizabeth worked in the field of international development in Africa and the Middle East, and as an educator and project manager in the Jewish community. 

Join us for JUFJ's Spring membership meeting on Wednesday, June 17th, with a light dinner at 6:30 pm; the meeting begins at 7 pm.

It wil be at Mount Pleasant Neighborhood Library: 3160 16th Street, NW in DC. The closest Metro Station is Columbia Heights.

At the membership meeting, you can: take in a puppet show about wage theft; take action to protect affordable housing in Langley Park's "International Corridor"; learn how your congregation can honor workers this Labor Day; hear about upcoming JUFJ programs, from a book launch all about Jewish Justice to a fellowship that will build your activist credentials; get a first glimpse of JUFJ's newly-posted antiracism resources; and schmooze over a light dinner with departing and incoming JUFJ program staff, and the entire JUFJ community.

Labor on the Bimah is coming!  Every Labor Day weekend JUFJ puts the Labor back in Labor Day by highlighting a local issue that affects the most vulnerable members of the community.  Every year thousands of area Jews in dozens of congregations take action and make a crucial difference.

This year we will be highlighting wage theft -- when people work but are not paid by their employers.  This is a crime that robs from those with the least -- the working poor, many of whom either do not know their rights or are afraid or unable to assert them. Day laborers and other contingent workers are more vulnerable to this type of exploitation because they have less formal working arrangements and therefore less recourse when they are not paid. 

Once again, local rabbis, JUFJ volunteers and other community leaders will be educating congregations and giving them the tools they need to take action.

For 12 weeks, young professionals in the Washington, D.C. area met in each others' homes for Justice and Jewish Thought, an innovative dialogue on justice and Judaism. The course was piloted in 2008, and this latest round was developed jointly by the AJWS-AVODAH alumni partnership and JUFJ . Both JUFJ and the AJWS-AVODAH partnership work to grow vibrant communities of Jewish justice activists in Washington, D.C. and across the U.S.

"I came into the class to explore the Jewish roots of social justice," says Daniel Michelson-Horowitz, project assistant at King & Spalding LLP. "I came out with an appreciation of the great work that has been and continues to be done on social justice across the Jewish community."

You can see the syllabus here .

On May 12th, people from all faiths and backgrounds gathered at the "Justice in Times of Crisis" Luncheon sponsored by Interfaith Worker Justice and JUFJ.  The group talked about how faith communities truly are at the center of the economic crisis, as people turn to their faith for support when they lose their jobs and struggle economically, and as faith communities feel the pinch of decreased donations in this economic time.  Speakers talked about unemployment insurance, wage theft, and how faith communities are making a difference on both a local and a national scale.

Many of you reached out to us to tell us that you could not attend, but were interested in any resources that came out of the luncheon.  We are providing some here:

An estimated 2,000 people marched from Malcolm X Park and other locations to the White House.  JUFJ was there!

The JUFJ contingent