Last week the Jewish Standard ran an op-ed penned by Rabbi David Saperstein, ONE supporter and director of the Religious Action Center of the Union for Reform Judaism. Rabbi Saperstein writes elegantly about ONE Sabbath and the important role of faith in meeting the challenges presented by extreme poverty and global disease. Voices like Rabbi Saperstein’s are integral in the fight against poverty.

Excerpts below, full op-ed here

If we remain silent, it will be easy for our leaders to ignore these statistics and the human tragedies behind them. While the realities of global poverty and disease are neither new nor noticeable in our own backyards, they are urgent — every passing day can be a matter of life or death. These injustices should call all Jews to their posts as God’s partners in repairing the world.

In addressing these crises, the Reform movement is partnering with the advocacy group ONE to bring attention to and help assist the world’s poorest people through an initiative called ONE Sabbath. Participating in ONE Sabbath means raising awareness, educating others, and pressing government leaders to fight extreme poverty and preventable disease around the world. Between now and the critical first 100 days of president-elect Obama’s administration, we ask all of our congregations to take the time to focus on global poverty and preventable, treatable diseases.

As we call for greater U.S. leadership and action in ensuring access to basic health care, primary education, clean water, and food in the world’s poorest communities, we represent core values of our sacred Scripture’s mandate to assist those who are most vulnerable — the poor, the elderly, the child, the widowed, the stranger, and the hungry. In the Talmud, our rabbis taught that, if all the sufferings and pain in the world were gathered on one side of a scale and poverty were on the other side, poverty would outweigh them all. (Exodus Rabbah 31:14) We are taught that a society is measured by the way it treats the most vulnerable among its citizens, and we are reminded that, created in the Divine image, every living being is sacred.

-Chris Scott