Mark Pelavin
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If you goFebruary 07, 2008
Despite a red-hot presidential race, a legislative strategist for the Reform movement said he would rather focus on the fact that Congress is back at work after its recess — and that it is budget season.
Previewing an upcoming appearance in Warren, Mark Pelavin said lawmakers are soon to face a host of “issues that are really important for the country,” including looming Bush administration proposals to cut funding for education, Medicare and Medicaid, food stamps, and energy research.
“We’re also involved in a very expensive war that’s continuing to cost millions of dollars a week, with lives being lost,” said Pelavin, associate director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism in Washington, DC.
The RAC is also intensely concerned about Iran, and seeking ways to contain the threat it poses — hopefully without having to resort to military means, he said — and about crisis areas like Darfur, and now Kenya.
Pelavin will discuss the political positions taken by the Reform movement and the strategic thinking that underlies them on Sunday morning, Feb. 10, at Temple Har Shalom in Warren.
Using the Iraq war as an example, he will demonstrate how the RAC, the political lobbying arm of the Union for Reform Judaism, decides on a political position and on an advocacy strategy on behalf of its members. He also wants to talk about the way Jewish philosophy and history inform that process.
Given the timing of his talk, Pelavin said, he expects the subject of the presidential election to come up too.
The RAC has gone out of its way to squash “the ugly rumors” that circulated recently about Barack Obama alleging that the Democratic candidate was secretly a Muslim. “The rumors were empirically false, and we have an obligation to make the facts known,” Pelavin said.
That doesn’t mean the organization is supporting Obama over Hillary Clinton, or — for that matter — either of the Democratic candidates over the Republicans. For practical as well as legal reasons, the body is strictly nonpartisan.
“We deal with the issues and what is at stake for the Jewish community, not the candidates,” Pelavin said, interviewed by telephone from his home in suburban Washington.
The RAC’s bipartisan approach is not just for show.
“The House is so closely divided,” he said. “The only way to get anything done is to speak to people on both sides.”
Though a large majority of the Jewish community votes Democratic, and RAC has a reputation as strongly liberal, Republicans welcome the chance to speak to the RAC’s lobbyists to find out where the community stands on different issues and to possibly attract swing voters.
Pelavin said that when he speaks in Warren, he will be quite willing to analyze the election and even be “a handicapper,” but if the audience wants to know his personal preference, they won’t get very far.
“I expect them to respect my privacy just as I respect theirs,” he said.
An attorney by training, Pelavin has held the RAC position for 11 years, dealing extensively with Supreme Court issues, separation of church and state, and the religious right.
He is also the associate director of the Commission on Social Action of Reform Judaism, the body that considers how the ethical and spiritual principles of Judaism relate to problems facing the world today.
Arriving at policy positions is a careful and complicated process, he said. It calls for humility, acknowledging — as with the inclusion of conflicting points of view in Jewish texts — that there will always be divergent views, and reflecting the enormous diversity within the Reform community, let alone the Jewish community as a whole.
While there might be broad consensus on support for Israel, there is much less agreement on questions like making tax cuts permanent.
On the other hand, concern about global warming is now more widely shared.
“If we tried to arrive at total unanimity on each issue, there would be paralysis,” he said.
Pelavin said the political climate this year is marked by passion. “The stakes are really high. People are frustrated about where the country is now, and we’ve got honest-to-God races in both parties,” he said. “It’s wide open. Just to see people so energized is encouraging.”
If you go
Who: Mark J. Pelavin, associate director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism
When: Sunday, Feb. 10, 11 a.m.
Where: Temple Har Shalom, 104 Mount Horeb Rd., Warren
Cost: Free and open to the public