Last Call!

This Sunday, Jewish Currents, The Workmen's Circle and The Shalom Center are cosponsoring "Jews Uniting to End the War and Heal America," a day-long conference featuring a remarkable list of speakers and representation from a broad, liberal Jewish spectrum.

Central Synagogue, 123 East 55th Street (between Park and Lexington Avenues), NYC, 9:30-5:15 (registration pens at 8:30)

Room is limited; preregistration is recommended! Visit http://www.circle.org/jewsuniting/ for information and access to online registration.

If we think of each human life as an entire world, as the Jewish tradition urges us to do, then the war in Iraq is a black hole swallowing galaxies. Yes, the war has moved to the backburner of public consciousness because of all the other ways in which our country is suffering from the radically ideological, and radically incompetent, Bush government. Nevertheless, ending the Iraq war and reckoning with the damages it has caused is a critical foundationstone of the “change” that Barack Obama urged throughout his campaign. Few public voices are saying so, however, and few voices are challenging the "preemptive war" doctrine or other military policies that have held sway since 9/11.

Seventy-eight percent of American Jews voted for Obama, despite all the predictions of Jewish liberal "slippage" and all of the lies and rumor-mongering that tried to provoke that slippage. Now is the time for the Jewish community to follow up its vote by breaking its silence about this war. One key purpose of the conference is to explore the complex reasons for that silence and finally release our community from its grip. We have weighed and largely withheld our words for more than five years; it’s time, now, to lift our voices and direct our resources towards the healing of America.