By Leyna Krow, Assistant Editor, JTNews
Noah Leavitt is the first to admit that for the tiny Congregation Beth Israel in Walla Walla, just putting on regular Shabbat services can sometimes be a challenge.
With just 35 member families, some of whom come from more than 60 miles away, and no permanent location or full-time rabbi, it would be easiest for the congregation to meet only for holidays, lifecycle events and the occasional Friday night gathering. But in recent years, a crop of new members, many with young families, have taken it upon themselves to work some social justice programming into the mix.
“We’re fortunate to have a number of people who come from an activist Jewish background who have assumed responsibility and are sharing that interest in engaging in human rights and social justice work through their commitment to Judaism,” said Leavitt, Beth Israel’s president.
And for their efforts, Beth Israel will be rewarded this spring with the Union for Reform Judaism’s Irving J. Fain Award for Outstanding Social Action Programming.
The Fain Award is given every two years to 20 URJ congregations that “have displayed exemplary work in the pursuit of justice, have successfully involved large numbers of congregants in their programs and have developed genuinely innovative and/or particularly effective projects,” according to the organization’s Web site.
The program for which Beth Israel is receiving the award is a panel discussion that took place in the fall of 2007 at the Walla Walla public library, called “Genocide In The Human Heart: From The Holocaust To Darfur.” The event featured Rabbi Stanley Yedwab and Bruce Magnusson, a Whitman College associate professor of politics.
“The purpose of the event was to make a community, both Jewish and non-Jewish, aware of the terrible things that are happening in Darfur and to motivate everyone to think in terms of social action and to see that as a component for religious life,” said Yedwab, who is retired from the pulpit and resides in the Seattle area, but makes the occasional trip to Walla Walla to act as rabbi for Beth Israel. Rabbi Yedwab spent much of his rabbinical career focused on human rights and anti-poverty action.
According to Leavitt, the event drew a large crowd of Walla Walla residents from all walks of life.
Following the panel discussion, Beth Israel continued its advocacy for Darfur by hosting a letter-writing workshop where congregants were encouraged to contact various elected officials about the crisis.
“It gave us a chance to engage people who want to know how we, as a distant rural community, are connected to atrocities taking place halfway around the world,” he said.
Leavitt noted that the Darfur event gained the attention of a number of other religious organizations in Walla Walla and has since become a catalyst for two different interfaith programs focused on more local concerns, specifically an interfaith poverty network and a coalition on sustainability.
He added that receiving the Fain Award will provide a positive incentive for the congregation to keep up its social justice commitment. Beth Israel is the only synagogue in the Pacific Northwest to win this year.
“I’m sure this isn’t the only social justice action that went on in the Northwest in the last two years,” Leavitt said. “But we’re so tiny and I think this has been a great start to show our congregation that we can be involved in this kind of work — that Judaism can be more than just worship in a synagogue.”