Social Justice
Sukkat Shalom as a congregation, families, and individuals are quite active in our local community and in the greater Chicago-land area supporting social justice causes.
Featured Social Justice Opportunities
►Connections for the Homeless Dinner
Additional Social Justice Opportunities
Social Justice Pilars
| Economic Justice | Equality |
Environmental
Stewardship
|
Immigration |
|---|
►Economic Justice
If there is a needy person among you...do not harden your heart and shut your hand against your needy kin. Rather, you must open your hand and lend whatever is sufficient to meet the need.
(Deut. 15:7-10).
You shall not hate your kinsfolk in your heart. Reprove your kinsman, but incur no guilt because of him. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against your countrymen. Love your fellow as yourself: I am the Eternal.
(Leviticus 19: 17-18).
Jewish tradition teaches that we must accept others without prejudice or bias. Together we can live out our values by engaging in learning about racial injustice and LGBTQ inequality and promote advocacy and action on behalf of policies that mitigate those inequalities.
►Environmental Stewardship
Do not destroy My world, for if you do, there will be nobody after you to make it right again.
(Midrash Ecclesiastes Rabbah 7:13).
The Torah teaches that human beings were created to care for and protect God’s creations. We will work to conserve and protect our environment through changes in personal behavior, education, and action in our local and regional communities.
►Immigration
You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress them, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.
(Exodus 22:20).
Jewish tradition places great importance on just the treatment of immigrants. No less than 36 times, the Torah commands just treatment of strangers.
Featured Social Justice Opportunities
Connections for the Homeless (connect2home.org)
Sukkat Shalom's ongoing partnership with Connections for the Homeless provides meals for families and individuals twice each month. Volunteers are needed to purchase the ingredients, and to prepare, assemble and deliver thirty individually packaged meals to the Margarita Inn. Using the banner below, you can learn more about this project, connect to its lay leaders, and sign up for one or all of the volunteer tasks, with friends, family, fellow congregants, or on your own. Click HERE to reserve a date.
For more information about the Connections for the Homeless organization, please click here.
Additional Social Justice Opportunites
Stock the Shelves
Stock the Shelves provides what food stamps won't and what stretched incomes can't cover by giving Chicago area refugees and their families the household and hygiene supplies they need to lead thriving lives. Despite their best efforts, many refugees strain each month to stretch their earnings to purchase the indispensable household and hygiene supplies food stamps don’t cover. Striving to close that gap, every fourth Wednesday of the month, Stock the Shelves drives a truck filled with the 15 items refugees need (and the only items we accept!) to the Indo-American Center in Rogers Park, where volunteers set up a mini-store stocked with new, unopened items.
Click here to register to volunteer, or click here to donate much-needed items.
The Night Ministry
The night ministry connects with Chicago’s most vulnerable by providing basic supplies, free health care, housing, and self-care resources. Sukkat Shalom partners with Night Ministry each year to provide hygiene bags to those in need.
Share the Harvest
Annual Thanksgiving Collection
Our congregation will be sponsoring families in need (identified through local agencies) during the Thanksgiving holiday. The STH committee will collect your baskets, bags, or gift cards prior to the Family School before Thanksgiving. Your generous donations will be distributed to families in need. Questions? Contact us.
Maot Chitim
Maot Chitim refers to the custom of gathering wheat and providing the poor with matzah to observe Passover. This mitzvah has been expanded to provide food for families in need on Passover as well as Rosh Hashanah.
To learn more or add your name to the volunteer list email sukkatshalom@sukkatshalom.org.
