{"id":351168,"date":"2010-02-22T15:17:05","date_gmt":"2010-02-22T20:17:05","guid":{"rendered":"tag:blogs.rj.org,2010:\/rac\/\/2.2486"},"modified":"2010-02-22T15:51:12","modified_gmt":"2010-02-22T20:51:12","slug":"for-nftyites-social-justice-simply-feels-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/351168","title":{"rendered":"For NFTYites, Social Justice &#8220;Simply Feels Right&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>        <span class=\"mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image\" style=\"display: inline;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"TobyCook.jpg\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.rj.org\/rac\/TobyCook.jpg\" class=\"mt-image-right\" style=\"margin: 0pt 0pt 20px 20px; float: right;\" width=\"115\" height=\"135\" \/><\/span><i>Toby Cook is the Social Action Vice President of NFTY-OV, the Ohio Valley region of the North American Federation of Temple Youth.<\/i><\/p>\n<p>You are walking in a forest path or<br \/>\nat a family gathering and suddenly you pause.<span style=\"\">&nbsp;<br \/>\n<\/span>You are overtaken by a feeling, you can&#8217;t describe it, but it feels<br \/>\nright; it feels holy. You don&#8217;t know why this moment in your life is holy, it <i style=\"\">just is<\/i>.<span style=\"\"><\/p>\n<p><\/span>Everyone<br \/>\ndescribes Social Action and <i>Tikkun Olam<\/i> (one of the 13 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nfty.org\/about\/13principles\/\">guiding principles<\/a> of NFTY)<br \/>\ndifferently.<span style=\"\"> <\/span>Some individuals find<br \/>\nholiness in volunteering at local organizations, while others pursue justice in<br \/>\nadvocacy campaigns, writing letters to pass legislation that promotes their progressive<br \/>\nideals.<span style=\"\"> <\/span>In <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nfty.org\/ov\/\">NFTY-Ohio Valley<\/a>, a region encompassing the<br \/>\nstates of Kentucky, Tennessee, Indiana, Ohio, and Western West Virginia, we have<br \/>\na simple definition:<span style=\"\"> <\/span>Social Action is<br \/>\nsomething we come together to do because we know, we feel, that it is a<br \/>\nunifying and holy experience.<span style=\"\">&nbsp; <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-indent: 0.5in;\"><span style=\"\"><br \/><\/span>Ohio Valley<br \/>\nhas social action projects at almost all of our regional gatherings, and at the<br \/>\nlocal Temple Youth Group (TYG) level we are blessed to have dedicated Social Action Vice<br \/>\nPresidents (SAVPs) who keep the tradition active throughout the year.<span style=\"\"> <\/span>Ohio Valley takes great pride in the<br \/>\nuniqueness of each TYG and it reflects on our community service.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>At the regional level, we have worked with<br \/>\nNFTY&#8217;s Missouri Valley region at our first event to organize and supply a Children&#8217;s Bureau office so<br \/>\nthat they could more effectively help children in trouble and also created care<br \/>\npackages for the elderly in need of basic necessities they could not afford. <\/li>\n<li>The<br \/>\nNFTY Ohio Valley&#8217;s network of TYG Social Action Vice Presidents successfully ran several fundraisers during the High Holy Days that<br \/>\nbenefited the URJ&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/urj.org\/socialaction\/issues\/nets\/\"><i>Nothing<br \/>\nBut Nets<\/i> initiative<\/a>. <\/li>\n<li>At our sub-regional events, we looked at hunger and what<br \/>\ngoes in to feeding families healthily while on strict budgets as well as<br \/>\ncollected goods at a Predator&#8217;s hockey game.&nbsp;<\/li>\n<li>At our Study <i>Kallah <\/i>in conjunction with Hebrew<br \/>\nUnion College-Cincinnati, we learned about what it takes to support <a href=\"http:\/\/www.stjude.org\/%5D\">St. Jude<br \/>\nChildren&#8217;s Research Hospital<\/a> and continued our multi-year project to help them heal the<br \/>\nsick. <\/li>\n<li>This year we added a special twist! At our end of the year regional event,<br \/>\nthe Ohio Valley Regional Board and Regional Adviser will be dyeing our hair to<br \/>\nraise money; at one event alone, we raised more than $200.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"\"><\/span>At local events, participants have learned<br \/>\nabout mental illness, supported Haiti fundraisers, and are busy planning<br \/>\ndifferent Purim carnivals with Social Action aspects. These are just a few of<br \/>\nthe projects our region has done, but the question is why?<span style=\"\"> <\/span>Why volunteer our time?<span style=\"\"> <\/span>How does this impact us?<\/p>\n<p>At our<br \/>\nfirst event, NFTY Institute, I stood before our region and asked what issues<br \/>\nthey cared about.<span style=\"\"> <\/span>While I only intended<br \/>\nthe question to provoke a short and simple conversation, it led to an intense<br \/>\nseries of questions and answers in which I saw people from all backgrounds<br \/>\nbecome excited to talk about issues they feel are important to them and to our<br \/>\nregion.<span style=\"\">&nbsp; <\/span>This was one of the most holy<br \/>\nmoments of my life: seeing people come alive talking about how we can make a<br \/>\ndifference. Our conversation at NFTY Institute has served as a foundation for<br \/>\nour Region&#8217;s ever growing commitment to social action. As a senior, it is my<br \/>\nhope that future NFTYites partake in similar conversations and moreover feel<br \/>\nmobilized to take on the multi-faceted challenge of<i> Tikkun Olam<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>I am so<br \/>\nexcited for the upcoming year&#8217;s youth leaders of NFTY to take on our new Action<br \/>\nTheme, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nfty.org\/_kd\/Items\/actions.cfm?action=Show&amp;item_id=10578&amp;destination=ShowItem\"><i>&#8220;Anavah<\/i>:<span style=\"\"> <\/span>Humility &#8211; What Do We Really Need? NFTY Addresses Overconsumption&#8221;<\/a> What do we really need? NFTY<br \/>\nAddresses Overconsumption. A NFTY Action Theme is voted on by the NFTY General<br \/>\nBoard for the next year.<span style=\"\">&nbsp; <\/span>It guides our<br \/>\ndirect action projects and limudim (educational programming) on social action.<br \/>\nEvery generation has an issue that will define it in history and ours is the<br \/>\nenvironment.<span style=\"\">&nbsp; <\/span>NFTY takes an active role<br \/>\nin this for a simple reason, because for NFTYites around North America, it<br \/>\nsimply feels right.&nbsp; <span style=\"\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p>To quote NFTY President Aliza Gazek, &#8220;I will<br \/>\nforever be a NFTYite.&#8221;<span style=\"\"> <\/span>I will forever be<br \/>\nconnected to the Reform Movement because they have awakened in me a love of<br \/>\nsocial justice that is one of the most beautiful parts of my region. Rebbe Nachman&#8217;s prayer for peace reads, &#8220;Let love<br \/>\nand justice flow like a mighty stream. Let peace fill the earth as the waters<br \/>\nfill the sea.&#8221; As NFTY works this year to conserve our natural resources and<br \/>\nreduce consumption, I know my regional along with the other 18 amazing regions<br \/>\nof Reform Jewish Youth will join me in saying, &#8220;Let love and justice flow like<br \/>\na mighty stream. NFTY can and will be that mighty stream; and let us say to<br \/>\nthat: Amen.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Toby Cook is the Social Action Vice President of NFTY-OV, the Ohio Valley region of the North American Federation of Temple Youth. You are walking in a forest path or at a family gathering and suddenly you pause.&nbsp; You are overtaken by a feeling, you can&#8217;t describe it, but it feels right; it feels holy. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4316,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-351168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4316"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=351168"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351168\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=351168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=351168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=351168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}