T'ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights

Where things stand with federal law enforcement in Chicago and Portland Illinois has followed California and Oregon in filing lawsuits to stop President Donald Trump from sending in hundreds of National Guard troops to Democrat-led big cities.

Portland and Chicago, we're standing with you. We reject Trump's attacks on Democrat-led cities, his deployment of federal troops, and his violent and cruel ICE raids, which tear families apart.

Tell your Senator to Fight for all of us now

(2/2) Congress: Cancel the cuts. Extend healthcare premium credits. Save lives.

We need lawmakers to fight for all of us.

Email your reps here:
buff.ly/f9sUXUm

Tell your Senator to Fight for all of us now

"Woe to those who make unjust laws… to deprive the poor of their rights.” (Isaiah 10:1–2)

This shutdown is an example of our electeds using political tactics to dismantle our gov't - and abandon those who are vulnerable including immigrants, disabled people, the elderly, people of color. (1/2)

Chag Sukkot sameach from all of us at T'ruah.

FBI Agents now spend 1/3 of their time on immigration cases, while white-collar crime and violent crime investigations take a backseat.

FACT SHEET: Trump's Immigration Enforcement Dragnet Is Undermining Public Safety Across America - America's Voice The Trump administration is gutting real public safety efforts to fund their mass deportation agenda. Rather than focusing on drug traffickers, terrorist plots, and child predators endangering our…

This fact sheet from @americasvoice.bsky.social underscores how this administration’s mass deportation obsession harms public safety - including diverting money and staff time away from disaster preparedness and active federal investigations and toward terrorizing our communities.

Join the Progressive Israel Network for two webinars, commemorating the second anniversary of October 7.

Remembering the Victims. Fighting for the Hostages.
🗓️ Thursday, Oct. 9 at 1 PM ET
📍 buff.ly/kI8gMqu

Life and Death in Gaza Since October 7
🗓️ Friday, Oct. 10 at 1 PM ET
📍 buff.ly/CIqJPj1

Baruch Dayan HaEmet. Our hearts go out to the loved ones of the two people killed in a horrible antisemitic attack at Yom Kippur services in Manchester. We pray for refuah shleimah for the wounded.

We stand with the Manchester Jewish community. No one should fear violence when they gather to pray.

G'mar chatimah tovah from all of us at T'ruah.

Read Rabbi Jonah Winer's (M)oral Torah for Yom Kippur here: buff.ly/AElzCjy

James Comey case jeopardizes Americans' free speech rights, retired judges warn A group of retired judges said Trump "continues to corruptly abuse the power of his office" by directing the Justice Department to target "his critics and his perceived political enemies."

Yes. This is authoritarianism in action.

Trump is wielding his Department of Justice against his perceived political enemies.

The phrase "rule of law" can sound abstract and theoretical, but it's anything but - a president using the courts to attack his enemies is a clear threat to our democracy.

A MULTI-ROOTED MOVEMENT: Sephardic Activists and Horizontal Alliances in the Early 20th Century | T'ruah Professor Devin E. Naar, PhD

(2/2) Read more about Hasson in an article written by Professor Devin E. Naar for "Fragments III: Democracy," a journal from T'ruah:

In 1912, Jewish activist Raphael Hasson fled the Balkan Wars and arrived in the U.S. In Chicago, he built cross-cultural alliances with Puerto Ricans and Greeks, offering a powerful model for multiracial democracy today. (1/2)

Raids, Rights and Reckonings: America's Immigration Crossroads
🗓️ Oct. 9 at 8 PM ET
📍 buff.ly/xvyPLD5
🤝 Jews United for Democracy & Justice

Join T'ruah CEO Rabbi Jill Jacobs and other panelists for a conversation on the sweeping immigration raids across the U.S., and the fight for accountability.

T’ruah CEO Rabbi Jill Jacobs: What to make of Trump’s new peace plan | T'ruah

"In a world of hot takes and of insistence on ideological purity, it takes humility to say that we don’t know what is going to happen — that we don’t know whether the Trump plan will bring an end to the suffering, or usher in an even more dangerous time."

buff.ly/Aa6Y8eN

Trump and Netanyahu Meet to Discuss Gaza Plans: Live Updates Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived at the White House for talks on Gaza’s postwar future and as Israel’s international isolation has deepened. Several European countries recently announced…

"You handfuls of men who have the ability, make this end. Right now."
-Rachel Goldberg-Polin

T'ruah was proud to co-host an event with Aziz Abu Sarah and Maoz Inon last night in NYC, where they spoke about reconciliation, atonement, and peace-building. We're so grateful to them for their moral courage, their heart, and for sharing their vision with a packed house. (Photos by Gili Getz)

‼️ ACTION ALERT ‼️
North American Jews Call For End to Atrocities in Gaza

There is no solution to this conflict that depends on one group subjugating the other through violence and control. The only future for Israelis and Palestinians is a shared future.

Add your name now: buff.ly/bAxDWXq

The Jewish calendar is full of opportunities to begin again. This Rosh Hashanah, may we find the compassion, inner strength, and hope we need to choose the path of repentance and pursue justice in 5786. Shanah tovah from all of us at T'ruah.

(M)oral Torah: For Rosh Hashanah, Rabbi Jill Jacobs reminds us that tears are not weaknesses, but power, that awaken our compassion.

"Tears need not be sacrificed on the altar," she writes. "Tears can also save lives."

Full text: buff.ly/ZzzpLKQ

Wherever he goes, Netanyahu should be haunted by the faces of civilians killed in Gaza and the hostages he abandoned.

Fri, 9/26, 8:30am
Meet at Place of the Rose, 46th St & 2nd Ave

ICE is instilling fear in communities across Chicago - we join with Chicagoans calling for an end to this federal crackdown. (3/3)

They claim that he tried to strike an officer with his vehicle.

Silverio was a valued member of the community and left behind loving family and friends. This unnecessary cruelty must stop and ICE must come forward with information about the shooting. (2/3)

Last week, amid escalated ICE raids in the Chicago area, agents shot and killed Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez in a suburb of Chicago.

Despite requests from a Congress member and the Governor, ICE has refused to release more public information about the circumstances that led up to his killing. (1/3)

The Future is Peace: Aziz Abu-Sarah and Maoz Inon in Conversation
🗓️ Sept. 28, 2-3:30 PM
📍 NYC (location upon registering)
🔗 buff.ly/94jH1oE
🤝 @partners4israel.bsky.social

Hostage families continue to protest their loved ones' abandonment by the Israeli government. Palestinian civilians, including women and children, continue to die -- all in the name of Netanyahu's political career and a supremacist, messianic dream of Jews resettling Gaza.

Busha. Shame. (2/2)

Palestinians flee Gaza City as Israel launches major ground offensive - follow latest Gaza residents tell the BBC of a night of "hell" under a wave of heavy Israeli air strikes.

Israel's ground incursion into Gaza City is a disaster.

Palestinians are fleeing the bombing in desperation, many on foot, without any assurance of their safety elsewhere.

For what?

Past and present IDF brass admit there is no meaningful military goal that can be achieved this way. (1/2)

Israel deprives Palestinian prisoners of food, Israeli Supreme Court says in rare ruling The three-judge panel ruled unanimously that the Israeli government had a legal duty to provide Palestinian prisoners with three meals a day to ensure "a basic level of existence" and ordered…

"In an unexpected 2-1 decision, the court accepted the petition filed last year by ACRI & Gisha, siding with their allegations that the govt's deliberate restriction of prisoners' food in detention facilities has caused Palestinians to suffer malnutrition & starvation during the Israel-Hamas war."

Ki Tavo: Fear Is the Barrier to Peace | T'ruah Rabbi Richard Ettelson, Ph.D

(M)oral Torah: Rabbi Dr. Richard Ettelson discusses what fuels the fear of "strangers," and the shifts in perspective that can dismantle it.

Full text:

"Antisemitism in schools is serious... Unfortunately Congress and this administration are taking a dangerous and wrong-headed approach that subordinates the needs of Jewish students to a political agenda."

- @rabbijilljacobs.bsky.social, CEO of @truahrabbis.bsky.social

We mourn the lives of everyone killed by guns in our country. May we strengthen the democratic institutions that make us all safer and work for an end to gun violence, for everyone. (2/2)