It warms my heart when the Jewish Community joins forces to work on issues important to all of us. 

 

This week, JCRC was proud to be a co-sponsor of a program on the Citizen Initiative Petition, originally conceived by members at Central Reform Congregation and Congregation Shaare Emeth. Eleven Jewish and Jewish-led organizations came together to learn about the Jewish Values that inform our passion for Voting Rights for all and to learn how the process of the Citizen Initiative Petition is at grave risk in Missouri. Importantly, we learned concrete actions we can take to fight this legislative effort. You can view the recording of the meeting and the actions steps are included in our review below.

 

Also this week we concluded the third year of JCRC’s Winter Outreach campaign. Through the participation of nine Jewish organizations, we collected hundreds of pounds of donations to support the unhoused population in the St. Louis area. On Tuesday, volunteers delivered the last of the donations. The program is now closed for the year.

 

And we are excited to partner with our friends at Cultural Leadership to host a Town Hall on the Impacts of Controlling K-12 Curriculum on February 28, in preparation for a Lobby Day on March 3 sponsored by the Missouri Education Equity Project. See below for all of the details.

 

The JCRC provides us with opportunities to live out our Jewish Values through Education, Collaboration, and Advocacy. Thank you for your participation and support.

 

Shabbat Shalom,

JCRC was a co-host of this week's program on the Citizen Initiative Petition process in Missouri and why it’s under attack. You can view the meeting here. JCRC provides weekly Advocacy Alerts to keep you informed on these issues. We encourage you to subscribe to our Advocacy List. In addition, Missouri Jobs with Justice offers several opportunities to take action to protect the Initiative Petition:

The final delivery of this year's Winter Outreach Donation Drive is complete. Special thanks to this month's donation drivers: Paul Stroble, Dianna Fine, Lauren Abraham, Cheryl Adelstein, and Rabbi Randy Fleisher. All in all, 9 Jewish organizations collected over 240 bags of clothing to donate to the unhoused in St. Louis! Shoutouts to Jack Seigel for helping to coordinate the program and State Representative Kimberly Ann Collins for delivering the donations directly to pop-up shelters in North County. If you want to continue to stay involved with the homeless community, check out the work of St. Louis Winter Outreach to volunteer for street outreach.

JCRC is actively participating in over 10 coalitions to monitor and respond to legislation being proposed in Jefferson City. Our weekly involvement includes: Let Them Learn Coalition (education equity), Missouri Voter Protection Coalition, the Citizen Initiative Petition Coalition, and the Missouri Immigration Policy Coalition.

In addition to taking action on the weekly Advocacy Updates, we are encouraging you to sign a petition created by the Missouri Immigration Policy Coalition to ensure Higher Education is available to all.

The Student to Student program was busy this week at three different area schools: Mehlville High School, Priory, and Lutheran South High School. Meeting with the students face to face was an important opportunity and allowed everyone to be engaged in learning about our lives as Jewish teens.

Our presenters met with a new senior World Religions class at Mehlville and chanted Torah verses from Deuteronomy (along with a general presentation)!

58 Priory School sophomores all came together to hear the Holocaust survivor stories of our presenters' families and to learn more about antisemitism and Judaism in general from three of our leaders. This was a special session conducted in their auditorium.

Finally, at Lutheran South High School, our student leaders presented to two Comparative Religions junior classes and in addition to our general topics, we utilized the whiteboard to teach the students Hebrew and show them how their English names translate into Hebrew writing. We look forward to more invigorating presentations in the coming weeks.

JCRC is partnering with Cultural Leadership to host a Town Hall on the Impact of Controlling K-12 Curriculum. The Missouri General Assembly is debating a number of bills that would ban certain types of curriculum and also provide parents broad rights to opt their children out of lessons that don’t align to their political views or are controversial”, “divisive”, or cause “discomfort”. Here is a link to the bill that has been voted out of a House committee and will soon be considered by the full Missouri House of Representatives.

At the Town Hall there will be time to have questions answered, to express your views, and learn how to become more engaged in this issue in Missouri.

This simple, safe quiz was created by local high school students from the Asian American Civic Scholars group, mentored and led by Min Liu.

This came about due to these students’ observations and experiences within their respective schools. In light of the ongoing misunderstanding, lack of knowledge, and hatred regarding the AAPI Communities, ongoing AAPI education remains important. This quiz by no means covers the entire rich diversity of our AAPI community, but it is a start to broaden awareness of AAPI history in St. Louis and Missouri.