Key Issues

We supports bodily autonomy as a Jewish value and a human right. Elected officials should not be basing laws on biblical or religious beliefs. We advocate for access to comprehensive access to reproductive healthcare, including abortion and contraception. Read more about our work on reproductive rights on our blog.

Jews were once excluded from commercial enterprises and we won’t accept it again, no matter who the target. We oppose discrimination against all religious minorities, including nonreligious people, and advocate for inclusion of all faiths and none in our government and society.

Religion is not a license to discriminate. We oppose religious exemptions that allow employers, businesses, and government-funded programs to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. Grounded in our secular and Jewish values, we advocate for full LGBTQ equality.

All schools, even religion-based schools (including yeshivas), must require meaningful instruction in standardized subjects essential to gainful employment and engaged citizenship, such as math, science, history, and English. We also support access to comprehensive, evidence-based sex education for all students.

In the US, child marriage is still legal in 40 states. Approximately 300,000 children as young as 10 were married in the U.S. between 2000 and 2018—mostly girls wed to adult men. In many of these cases, it is the child’s parents pushing them to marry, driven by fundamentalist religious beliefs. We support the end of child marriage (before the age of 18) nationwide, with no exceptions.

Right-wing Christian organizations’ use of the term “Judeo-Christian” is inaccurate, problematic, and offensive to American Jews. While “Judeo-Christian” may sound inclusive, the agenda behind it is not. It is an appropriation of Jewish culture used to to justify an extreme, fundamentalist agenda. We refuse to be a political pawn of the religious right. Read more about this issue here. 

White Christian Nationalism fuses white Protestant and American identity, and ultimately seeks to restore power to white Protestants determined to maintain the cultural, social and political dominance they have historically enjoyed at the expense of religious and racial minorities. We work to educate the Jewish community about the intersection of white supremacy and Christian supremacy, and how it connects to the dangerous trends we’re currently seeing in our politics—book bans, racist immigration policies, whitewashing US history in public schools, and the rise in hate crimes. 

Death with dignity is the right for an individual diagnosed with a terminal illness with six months or less to live, to die on their own terms. For too long, religious conservatives have lobbied against efforts to legalize death with dignity (also known as medical aid-in-dying), despite widespread support among Americans to have the option. As strong supporters of bodily autonomy and freedom of conscience, we believe end-of-life decisions should be a decision left to patients, their families, and their doctor—not the state or the church.

The Jewish tradition of tikkun olam, or “fixing the world,” compels us to act on the climate crisis. The Jewish faith has long been reconciled with science because we know that knowledge about the world empowers us to improve our lives and that of others. Politicians have a moral imperative to stop denying the science behind the human-driven climate crisis and to take action to stop it. We support swift and bold action to address our urgent climate crisis. We also oppose censorship of scientific data and the silencing of scientists both within and outside of the U.S government.

Decades of Christian nationalists’ legal and legislative advocacy have resulted in disastrous court decisions and new laws that allow religion to be weaponized as a license to discriminate. These laws embolden discrimination, including anti-Semitism, while masquerading as “religious liberty.” As Jews who know our own history of persecution, we don’t want it for anyone else. We believe everyone has the right to freely exercise their religion, but they do not have the right to impose their beliefs on other people.