Our Temple Isaiah Organizing Project (TIOP) has developed action teams (project teams) organized around local, regional, state and national issues of importance to our Temple membership. We have a core team of 6-8 members who support TIOP strategic planning. We organize house meetings to listen to and organize our members around the issues and concerns that congregants care about.
Temple Isaiah partners with other faith institutions in order to have to power to successfully act for change. We are a member of the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization (GBIO) comprising over 55 churches and synagogues working together to change our world. And we are a founder of the Greater Boston Synagogue Organizing Project (GBSOP) which now includes over a dozen synagogues. In addition to participating in GBIO and GBSOP campaigns, Temple Isaiah also receives from these organization leadership training on community organizing.
Youth and Safety: Together with the many congregations in GBIO we have initiated a campaign to address the issue of youth safety. Our concerns include many significant dangers that our youths are confronted with -- bulimia, anorexia, bullying, drug and alcohol abuse, depression and other mental health issues. We held house meetings to engage Temple members interested in this issue in discussions to identify key concerns. And, with Emily Messenger’s leadership, we worked with our Temple teens to learn from them the problems they see and face.
Last year, we held an Assembly at Temple Isaiah at which 150 Temple members, community leaders, and school officials came to listen and hear our concerns about excessive academic stress in our public schools. And we received commitments from the school leadership to partner with us in addressing these concerns. We are now actively following up those commitments. For further information contact our team leader Robert Nierman.
Environmental Action: Past work has included participation (with LEFTY) in a nationwide campaign to address the global warming crisis. This ranged from selling energy efficient compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulbs, organizing a film showing of An Inconvenient Truth, and we organized a Yom Shabbat program entitled “Shomrei Adamah: Guardians of the Earth,” focusing on how environmental sensitivity (being “green”) is part of being Jewish.
More recently our efforts have focused around the greening of the Temple. We organized several environmental energy audits by NStar and KeySpan to identify opportunities to improve the efficient use of our resources and are working closely with the Temple House Committee to identify how to address the opportunities identified. We participate with the local Lexington Interfaith Environmental Coalition; Joyce Greif is our representative.
Upcoming opportunities for action focus on sustainable living and interfaith community farming.
Aging with Dignity: Together with the many congregations in GBIO, we have been working to address the challenges of elders and their loved ones. Within the Temple, we are working with our emerging “caring committee” and held a forum entitled “Elder Care is a Family Affair,” co-sponsored with SAGE and Sisterhood. With GBIO, we are focused on ensuring adequate support for Massachusetts’s elders to find ways to age within their community.
Currently, we are following up on the agreement GBIO, negotiated with the State’s Office of Elder Affairs, agreeing to improve the systems for elders to learn about and navigate the Massachusetts elder care system. This has included that development of a new State Elder Care website, which GBIO and Temple Isaiah members will be reviewing as part of that agreement.
Economic Crisis: This is our newest organizing endeavor and was initiated as a response to the economic collapse of 2008/2009. Inside Temple Isaiah, we organized house meetings and collaborated with Brotherhood and Sisterhood on events to help folks find jobs. We are now working along three thrusts: networking to find jobs, support groups, and support for home-based entrepreneurs.
Together with GBSOP, we are working with other Greater Boston synagogues on recommending actions to take within the Jewish community and have provided CJP with the results of our house meetings. And together with GBIO, we are working on four research teams that GBIO formed (jobs, student loans, credit card debt, and mortgage foreclosure).
This summer GBIO joined with 16 other faith-based community organizing groups to kick-off a national campaign on the economic crisis focusing on excessive interest rates and demanding a national cap on interest rates of 10%. The coalition is called the Metro Industrial Areas Foundation (Metro IAF). Engaging is a national campaign is a new direction for GBIO. For more information on the campaign see http://www.10percentisenough.org/.
Greater Boston Interfaith Organization (GBIO)
The Greater Boston Interfaith Organization (GBIO) is a broad-based organization that works to coalesce, train, and organize the communities of Greater Boston across all religious, racial, ethnic, class and neighborhood lines for the public good. GBIO has over 60 member institutions including faith institutions that encompass the Christian, Jewish and Muslim communities.
Successes include the enactment of the Massachusetts Health Care Reform Act where GBIO was a key coalition member, local community campaigns on Youth Safety, and successful legislation and agreements with the Executive Office of Elder Affairs to promote Aging with Dignity. These campaigns continue but GBIO is currently focusing on addressing the current economic crisis both locally and nationally.
For more information on GBIO see http://www.gbio.org/.
Greater Boston Synagogue Organizing Project (GBSOP)
Temple Isaiah was one of four founding synagogues of GBSOP, a partnership that promoted community based organizing as a new addition and approach to synagogue social action work. Through this partnership, Temple Isaiah, Temple Beth El of Sudbury, Temple Emanuel, and Temple Israel had hired Meir Lakein in 2004-2007 as a professional organizer to guide us in learning about and applying this model. GBSOP as originally constituted ended and transitioned into a core program of the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC). A team of JCRC organizers under the leadership of Meir Lakein (new director of JCRC’s GBSOP) now works with over a dozen synagogues in Greater Boston. Temple Isaiah can be proud of our contribution to this endeavor. See http://www.jcrcboston.org/focus/justice/synagogue/greater-boston-synagogue.html for more details.