Rabbi Pesner brings his social justice message to R.I.

Rabbi Jonah Pesner has a cause and a message that should resonate with Jews everywhere.

As Jews finish the Pesach season, and the refugee crisis in Europe continues, Pesner, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, in Washington, D.C., reminds us that we were once refugees from Egypt, among other places. That’s the story we read at Passover. And were it not for our refugee parents, grandparents and great-grandparents, we might not be in the United States at all.

“We are admonished to watch out for the widow, the orphan, the stranger. This is rooted deeply in our religious tradition,” he said. “I tell people we have been marching for 5,000 years. [We] came out of Egypt because we were slaves in Egypt.”

As Pesner points out, the moral injunction to welcome all has its roots in the exodus from Egypt. But he says he understands people’s fears about the newest wave of refugees.

“Let’s put the safeguards in place and welcome the stranger because we were strangers in Egypt,” he said about allowing refugees into the United States.

Pesner is coming to Rhode Island May 11 as the keynote speaker for the Rhode Island Interfaith Coalition to Reduce Poverty’s annual Interfaith Poverty Conference. This year’s conference, to be held at Rhode Island College, will focus on “Tikkun Olam/Repairing Rhode Island.”  

While this is no easy subject, it’s a topic with tremendous possibilities, according to Pesner, whose Religious Action Center has been at the forefront of Jewish social justice activity for more than 50 years.   

We need to find shared solutions to the problems of discrimination and racism, he said. Interfaith communities like the R.I. Interfaith Coalition are trying to find a shared religious imperative that would lead to a more just Rhode Island. 

“They are on the cusp,” he said. “Faith and a moral voice have the power to create a political voice.”  And that political voice, he said, can create powerful systemic change.

Pesner, who also serves as senior vice president of the Union for Reform Judaism, has a history of working across lines of race, faith and class for social justice. He has worked in community organizing in the Northeast and nationally. A longtime Boston area resident, he was a congregational rabbi at Temple Israel and spent 10 years organizing within the interfaith community in Massachusetts. One of his most important projects, he said, was his work on the universal health-care act in Massachusetts, which became a model for national health-care reform.

“When people of faith come together across lines and really reflect on Jewish tradition, we can make enormous change happen,” he says.

“Real tikkun olam is more than just feeding and housing,” he said, it’s fixing the “systemic brokenness.” To repair that brokenness, he says, we must first repair the state.  

On May 11, after hearing Pesner’s call to action, conference attendees will have a chance to attend workshops toward that end: Repairing the Race Gap: Racial/Ethnic Economic Disparities among R.I. Children and Youth; Repairing Senior Supports: How Congregations Can Support Aging Community Members; Repairing Community: Working with Mayors to Address Poverty; and Repairing Our Policies: Diving Deeper into Our 2016 Legislative Agenda. 

The conference runs from 8 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Breakfast begins at 8 and Pesner will speak at 8:30, with the workshops to follow.  To register, go to http://tinyurl.com/fightpoverty2016. 

For information, visit endpovertyri.org or contact  Emily Jones at riinterfaithcoalition@gmail.com.

FRAN OSTENDORF is the editor of The Jewish Voice.