CHANGE MAKERS/INCUBATORS

Honest Seth
Successful Entrepreneur Steeped In Jewish Values

Seth Goldman is more than your average successful business man. Although the 42-year-old co-founder of Honest Tea focuses on the bottom line at his 10-year-old company, he also seeks to build communities and create an environmentally healthful product. Honest Tea is certified organic and kosher and makes working with fair-trade farms that practice sustainable farming and demonstrate respect to their workers an essential part of its operations. Avodah (The Jewish Service Corps) named Goldman its 2007 Partner in Justice honoree, lauding him for rejecting “conventional wisdom that business exists in a moral vacuum.” Read more about this remarkable entrepreneur, who works in an eco-friendly building he helped design and who has infused Honest Tea with Jewish social action values.

News Update! Coca-Cola takes stake in Honest Tea

The Coca-Cola Company said Tuesday, February 5 it will buy a 40% stake in Honest Tea, a 10-year-old organic bottled tea upstart that grew its sales 70% last year. While Goldman acknowledged that some customers will be concerned to see a small, ethically-run company sell a stake in its business to a multinational, he believes that the deal will have a net positive effect in expanding the organic market. “You partner with the whole organization, but we’re marketing the part that’s the solution. This isn’t us selling out—this is them buying into what we’re doing.”—Seth Goldman

Black Rabbi Bridges Racial Divide

Rabbi Funnye loves lox, gefilte fish, and borscht. Not the usual fare for his congregants, who are mostly African Americans from the South Side of Chicago. Black Jewish congregations have existed in America for about a century but mostly have remained apart from the broader Jewish community. Rabbi Capers Funnye, spiritual leader of Beth Shalom B'nai Zaken Ethiopian Congregation in Chicago, and believed to be the only black rabbi in the country to serve on his local board of rabbis, is trying to change that. Many of his congregants were raised as Christians but felt disconnected from their faith until stumbling upon Judaism. Read more about this daring rabbi, who combines Torah with Gospel music.

Thumbs Up! One Woman’s Journey to Create a Jewish-Sponsored Village for Impoverished Rwandan Orphans

Anne Heyman, a lawyer and mother of three from New York, contacted the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) after learning that 15 percent of Rwandan children (1.2 million) are orphans because of the 1994 genocide that murdered 800,000 people. Thanks to Heyman’s extraordinary Tikkun Olam efforts and a long-term commitment from the JDC, the Agahozo Shalom Youth Village, a residential high school which will serve 500 Rwandan orphans, is well on its way to welcoming its first students.

Forging New Ground: Bringing Together Muslims and Jews

The inspiring goal of NewGround, an initiative of the Progressive Jewish Alliance (PJA) and the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) launched a few months ago in Los Angeles, is to bring together Jews and Muslims in a community-building dialogue on global and local issues. "We're going from old ground in the Middle East, where we're shackled by fear and bloodshed," said Salam Al-Mayarati, MPAC's executive director, "to new ground in Los Angeles, where we can develop mutual respect and mutual trust..." Read what NewGround co-coordinators Malka Haya Fenyvesi and Aziza Hasan have to say about this ground-breaking attempt to bridge differences and to forge partnerships for change.

Creative Zionism

Eighteen talented young innovators named Fellows at Israel's PresenTense Institute for Creative Zionism. An example of an innovative idea: Eli Winkelman, a college student from California transformed her weekly grassroots challah sale into "Challah for Hunger," raising substantial funds for Sudanese refugees.

Cornerstone Award by Jewish Funds for Justice

Four "leading lights in the social change landscape" awarded the first-ever Cornerstone Award by Jewish Funds for Justice, for work that forms the cornerstone of a more just society and exemplifies strong Jewish leadership and values.

Japanese "Schindler" Honored by Japan's Emperor

Chiune Siughiara, who saved 6,000 Lithuanian Jews from the Nazis during World War II, is a hero whose bravery is not that well known in his own country. But all that changed when the Emperor and Empress of Japan visited Lithuania and a monument erected to honor Siugihara.

Take Action. Sign Petition Honoring Heroic Israeli Virginia Tech Professor

Please consider signing the petition to honor Liviu Librescu with the Presidential Medal of Honor. Professor Librescu is the Holocaust survivor murdered while saving his students from the massacre at Virginia Tech.

NIF-Produced Talk Show Draws Strong Ratings

Against All Odds, an innovative 12-part weekly talk show about Israel’s social change leaders initiated and produced by the New Israel fund, is now airing on Israel’s most popular television channel. NIF conceived and produced this unique look into the world of social change.

A Father’s Search for Jewish Family Service

Steve August, a Boston attorney, couldn’t find a Jewish group that he and his thirteen-year-old son could join to go build houses for poor people. So he created one himself.

“Just Congregations” no longer “Just in Boston”

When four congregations embarked on the Greater Boston Synagogue Organizing Project, their goal was to engage large numbers at their synagogues to work on social justice issues from a Jewish perspective, and to broaden those efforts to include work on the root causes of social problems. What they did not know then was that the Union for Reform Judaism would decide to use faith-based community organizing as a way to transform congregations all across the country into agents of social change—using the organized synagogues of Boston as a model. This July, the URJ will launch Just Congregations, a new initiative seeking to bring the Boston organizing model to cities nationwide.

Business for Social Responsibility

Since 1992, Business for Social Responsibility (BSR) has been a leading provider of innovative business solutions to many of the world's largest corporations. Headquartered in San Francisco and with offices in Europe and China, BSR is a nonprofit business association that serves about 250 member companies, including BP, General Motors, HP, Nike, Pfizer, Starbucks and Sony. Through world-class advisory services, training, convenings, and practical, forward-looking research, BSR works with its members, other Global 1000 enterprises and concerned stakeholders of all types to create a more just and sustainable global economy.

Timberland provides financial incentive for innovative community service programs

Timberland believes in strengthening communities through service and is willing to support community partners through monetary investments and product donations. If you feel your organization may be able to benefit from Timberland’s Community Investment program, read though the corporation’s giving guidelines carefully and submit an application.

Chesed and Tzedek

In a four-way conversation, four keen minds discuss Jewish hands-on chesed (lovingkindness). One topic: Should Jews have a universal service obligation? “The Jewish and the service are like a braided Challah, completing each other,” one participant states in Sh’ma: A Journal of Jewish Responsibility.

Social Action of Another Kind

The Israel Free Loan Association (IFLA) in Jerusalem has extended over $54 million in interest-free loans to more than 28,000 new immigrants and their families from the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and Ethiopia, and to Israeli families in need.

Stock is “Up” in Sustainable and Socially Responsible Investing

Kayema Investments is an independent investment research firm that evaluates and monitors the environmental, social and governance performance of securities traded on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange and worldwide. Check out The Sustainable Investment Opportunity in Israel, written by Kayema Investments’s founder, Daniel Schwab.

Shefa Fund’s Shareholder Activism

The Shefa Fund’s Jewish Shareholder Engagement Network is the first-ever organized Jewish effort to use stock ownership to promote corporate responsibility. Representing more than $1.3 billion in assets, the network recently distributed its 2005 proxy voting recommendations.

Reebok International, Ltd

For over a decade, Reebok International, Ltd., has integrated human rights principles into its business practices.

Burma and human rights

In the June 7, 2005 edition of the Wall Street Journal, Paul Fireman, chairman and CEO of Reebok, writes about Burma and human rights.

A Peaceful Brew

By SUE FISHKOFF

In Uganda, a new cooperative unites religions to grow coffee.

Journalism as Activism: Nicholas D. Kristof & the Genocide in Darfur

Or N. Rose, a teacher at the Rabbinical School of Hebrew College in Boston, interviews Nicholas D. Kristof, an op-ed columnist for The New York Times, who has emerged as a unique voice in the mainstream media, using his column as a vehicle for social justice. Over the last two years Kristof has been a steadfast public advocate for the people of Darfur, Sudan, holding accountable the Bush administration and the American media for largely ignoring the first genocide of the twenty-first century.

Believe in the power of healing through humor?

View MAGIC(S), an American film shot in Israel which follows a medical magician as he penetrates cultural and political tensions within the country through his work of administering laughter and humor to Palestinian and Israeli kids hospitalized together due to injury and disease. Since its release, the film, directed and produced by Todd Felderstein, has won two awards and has just garnered Canadian TV distribution.

Bigger is Better and Smaller is Not More Beautiful

Excerpts from an interview by KEN BRESLER

Two Jewish anti-poverty organizations merge to counter the boutiquing of Jewish and American life. Ken Bresler, SocialAction.com’s assistant editor, interviews Simon Greer and Jeffrey Dekro, the executive director of the Jewish Fund for Justice, and the President of the Shefa Fund, respectively.