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Thoughts from volunteer leaders and supporters of Jews for a Secular Democracy. If you have something to share, please be in touch, we would welcome your contributions to the blog!

Supporting the Goals of the Women’s March

Saturday January 18, 2020, is the third annual Women’s March, with events taking place in Washington DC, New York, and elsewhere. Activists from Jews for a Secular Democracy will be participating, and if you would like to march with our sign, you can download and print the PDF here. (The dimensions match 11”x17” but can be printed larger or smaller at that ratio.) We’re participating because the goals of the Women’s March align with our own Jewish values, and there...
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Become a JFASD Volunteer Leader!

Are you concerned about threats from religious fundamentalists to reproductive freedom, LGBTQ rights, science-based policy, and secular education in America? Do you want to mobilize your community, congregation, and/or fellow Jews to protect the First Amendment and KEEP RELIGION OUT OF GOVERNMENT? We’re looking for Volunteer Leaders to help organize and shape our grassroots advocacy initiatives, focused on defending secular values at the local, state, and federal government levels, to keep our government neutral on religious matters, and to counter...
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Should The Public Fund Religious Schools?

The upcoming Supreme Court case of Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue In January, the United States Supreme Court will hear a case that could erode the separation of church and state and allow for state governments to increase support for religious private schools using public funding programs. The Montana State Legislature in 2015 enacted a law creating a tax credit for citizens and businesses who donate to fund scholarships for K-12 students in private schools. The credit is equal...
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Contextualizing Trump’s Executive Order on Judaism

On Tuesday, the New York Times reported that President Donald Trump was preparing to sign an executive order redefining Judaism in the eyes of the federal government as a race or a nationality, not just an religion, with the intent of providing additional ammunition for the Department of Education to withhold funding from colleges and universities that do not act sufficiently to combat anti-Semitism and critics of Israel, including the BDS movement. The text of the executive order, leaked on...
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What is Project Blitz and why should Jews care?

Project Blitz is a coordinated effort by Christian Nationalists to inject religion into public education, attack reproductive healthcare, and undermine LGBTQ equality using a distorted definition of “religious freedom.” Watch the state legislatures of more than twenty states and you’ll notice a nefarious trend: in Texas, Florida, Missouri, and more states, conservative, evangelical lawmakers have introduced nearly identical bills that would impose Christian theology and values on U.S. citizens. These bills are the product of Project Blitz, a well-organized and...
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“The Founding Myth” by Andrew Seidel: A Review

It is difficult to write a review of a book with which you mostly agree. The Founding Myth is one of those books for most secular non-Christians and those literate in American history and civics. While the conclusions that Andrew Seidel reaches in the book are common wisdom for those of us who value a secular government, its importance lies in the evidence he produces to demonstrate that the Christian nationalist position is founded on myth, erroneous assumptions, emotion, and...
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The Jewish Imperative for Church/State Separation

In a recent article for the Times of Israel, Paul Golin, the Executive Director of the Society for Humanistic Judaism (our parent organization!), celebrated Rosh Hashanah by explaining the need for American Jews to make clear our belief in science and opposition to religiously based government policy. “Almost all American Jews accept the scientific method as the way to uncover facts about our universe. So why would I bother advocating for us to be loud and proud about not taking...
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Why “Judeo-Christian” Values are Problematic

Listen to any religious-right pundit discuss the intersection of governing and faith, and you’ll likely hear them refer to Judeo-Christian values. Take Focus on the Family (FOTF), for example, a fundamentalist Christian advocacy organization with a public policy approach self-described as “drawn from the wisdom of the Bible and the Judeo-Christian ethic.” Under this guise of Judeo-Christian values, FOTF opposes same-sex marriage and LGBTQ equality, staunchly lobbies against abortion and reproductive freedom, and promotes creationism and abstinence-only sex education. In...
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