CJJ members continue to grow our organizing work in new and powerful ways. Read more and sign up below to get involved in one of our emergent action areas.

We determine an issue is emergent when a group of CJJ members take on leadership and a partner organization or coalition led by the directly impacted community invites us into the work.

Medicaid expansion

Members of CJJ across the state take action with the Health Advocacy Project (HAP) at the NC Justice Center. With postcard campaigns and legislative visits, CJJ and HAP work together to ensure all North Carolinians, including individuals and families with low incomes, racial and ethnic minorities, and rural communities, have meaningful access to high quality, affordable, equitable, and comprehensive health care so that children, adults, and families have better health outcomes and productive lives. Fill out the form below to get involved. 

Food Justice

Our members follow the lead of NC Alliance for Health's School Meals for All NC Campaign to make sure our students are fed in and outside of school hours, and can focus on their studies. We are grateful for the national leadership of MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger. Fill out the form below to get involved. 

Environmental Justice

Carolina Jews for Justice is proud to follow the leadership of Dayenu: A Jewish Call to Climate Action to secure a just, livable and sustainable world for all people for generations to come by building a multi-generational Jewish movement that confronts the climate crisis with spiritual audacity and bold political action.

CJJ-Durham/Orange County Chapter is an active member of Interfaith Creation Care of the Triangle. ICCT was founded by members of twenty faith communities in North Carolina’s Triangle area in February, 2019.  The mission of ICCT is “to work within and across communities of faith to urgently fulfill our sacred duty to love and protect Creation, address our changing climate, and ensure justice for all life.” If you are interested in getting involved in environmental justice work as a Jewish community, click here to send an email to Rachel Karasik. 

LGBTQ Rights and Gender Justice

CJJ supports the advancement of LGBTQ+ equality in NC. With growing member leadership and in partnership with Equality NC and Keshet, we are exploring ways CJJ can secure rights and protections for the LGTBQ+ community and advocate for gender justice. Fill out the form below to get involved. 

Recently students and teachers have started the new school year – an exciting and challenging time for anyone, but especially for many LGBTQ+ students and staff. For some, school is a safe haven where they can access powerful support and care from peers and adult role models; for others, school is a place of alienation and bullying. For many, school is a combination of the two. In a time when both governments and school boards increasingly erase LGBTQ+ identities from curricula, force LGBTQ+ teachers and staff back into the closet, and prevent LGBTQ+ youth from accessing the resources they need, returning to school can feel more complicated than ever. LGBTQ+ youth deserve safety, representation, and belonging in all their classrooms, clubs, and extracurricular activities. You can make that difference: check out Keshet’s back-to-schoolresources for the 2023-2024 school year and share them with the youth in your lives.

Reparations

As Rabbi Sharon Brous teaches us in her piece “Why Jews should support reparations for slavery” in the Los Angeles Times:

There is a 2,000-year-old rabbinic dispute over what ought to be done if a palace is built on the foundation of a stolen beam. 

One rabbi, Shammai, argues that the whole structure must be torn down, the beam retrieved and returned to its rightful owner. No home can flourish on a foundation built illegally and immorally. Another rabbi, Hillel, offers a different take: What sense does it make to demolish it? Let the thief pay for the beam, considering its full value as the foundation of what is now a beautiful home. Neither argues that you can pretend, year after year, generation after generation, that the beam wasn’t stolen.

Neither suggests that time rights the wrong. Both understand that the theft, unaddressed, threatens the legitimacy of the whole enterprise. Something must be done to rectify the original injury.

In that age-old rabbinic dispute, Hillel argues that the palace ought not be demolished, but instead redeemed, precisely because he wants to make healing and reconciliation possible.. We can’t undo the past. But we can name it, take responsibility for it and do everything in our power to address what has been broken.

From the city of Asheville to Raleigh, CJJ community members advocate for reparations projects that seek to address what has been broken. We organize alongside partners like Dr. Dwight Mullen, Raleigh Friends Meeting and the Racial Justice Coalition in Asheville. If you're in Raleigh and want to get involved, contact Diane Bellamy via email at this link. All others can fill out the contact for below to get involved. Click here to read a message and call to action from the Raleigh Reparative Justice Resolution Working Group