Here are some of the projects the Social Action Committee is working on over the summer. Please email Debby McNeil at McNeilEdina@aol.com for more (no obligation) information about any of them:

1. Evening at Dar al Hijrah mosque, June 4: Some social action committee members joined Board members and other congregants on a visit to Dar al Hijrah (“house of the immigrant”) mosque in Minneapolis. The event was sponsored by the JCRC and the St. Paul Council of Churches. This wonderful evening with our warm, hospitable and very friendly hosts included a delicious Somali meal, great conversation, an explanation of Islamic practices, and an invitation to observe their prayer service.
    
2. Family Volunteering, Fall 2008: Adults and children would join in helping out at an evening neighborhood event set up by Family and Children’s service of Mpls. Date TBA in September.
    
3. Scholar-in-Residence and Food Packaging weekend: October 24-26: Rabbi David Kaufman will be Bet Shalom’s scholar this weekend. His wife Julie Kaufman leads Project Elijah, a kosher food packaging program that feeds the hungry (similar to Feed My Starving Children). She will guide us in packaging thousands of nutritious and non-perishable kosher meals, to be sent where the need is greatest.
    
4. Meeting our legislators in congregants’ homes, Nov-Dec. 2008: Some of our congregants in Golden Valley (senate district 44) are planning an exciting pilot project. Bet Shalom congregants from district 44 could have a person- to-person conversation with their state legislator in the congenial setting of a congregant’s home. We are targeting this evening for after the November election and before the 2009 state legislative session.
    
5. Deposit drive at Franklin Bank: Jewish Community Action is working with Northside neighborhood groups on a plan to significantly improve the mortgage foreclosure crisis in North Minneapolis. When the details are worked out, individual depositors like us could open special accounts at Franklin Bank. The bank would in turn loan out that money to rehabilitate foreclosed North Side homes, and finance the sale of those homes on favorable terms to qualified buyers. We are keeping in touch with Jewish Community Action on the progress of this project.
   
   - Debby McNeil