to invite you into a conversation. this is rabbi julie tyler. welcome rabbi. >> thanks so much. ddleeast project er, who is director for the jewish relation counsel based here in san francisco. welcome, karen. >> thank you. >> why don't we jump in and talk a little bit about what your organizations do and then we can kind of funnel that conversation into the ways in which you express your leadership in responding to these kinds of events that are happening in the world around us. rabbi saxtoler. >> the religious action center is the social justice, you could say, department or manifestation of the reformed movement of the unioned of reformed jude i didn't mean. it's a national organization. it's been around for a long time and people are familiar with it. hopefully are. in 2012, rabbis and some lay leader this is california decided that we needed organized in california specifically to impact statewide poll situate sock it's under the umbrella of the rack and integrated into the national organization, but we're also a statewide network of reformed congregations putting together the justice work of each congregation to be powerful on a statewide level. >> thank you. we should say the reformed movement is part of the theological left branch in the united states. karen. >> so the jewish relation counsel represents over 60 jewish institutions in the bay area on a wide range of issues. issues that our community deeply cares about and we build consensus on the issues. we take them, mobilize our community and turn it into action. we're trying to bring our voice on issues we care about. there are about a hundred formed in the wake of the holocaust when we learned we need to be more effective on issues that impact our community. we came together to bring the community together to increase that effectiveness. >> and is it fair to let folks know that in the broader jewish landscape, it's a counsel community based organizational structure that's not attached to any branch of judaism. >> that's correct. we represent across the different streams of judaism. >> in those ways you're a little bit different. can you talk a little bit about how you even understand what is jewish response to an event in general? is that a fair way to sort of ask you to focus in on how we understand these events? how do the organizations think of jewish response to what happens in the world underuses? >> so you're referring to a number of events that have happened recently. so my question, it depends of what we think of as a jewish event. when there's a synagogue shooting, we have a response that's public but also internal. and when there's a shooting in a mosque or a natural disaster even, there are other kinds of responses. there's lots of overlap because we care about human beings. there's a kind of response that happens when people feel like we're personally under attack or we have to do both thinking on a policy level and thinking about how we care for our communities. >> interesting. yes. karen, from your perspective? >> i think we're amplifying the needs of the community, the voice of our community in responding to these challenges. when something happens, i think about it's not just to our community. it's to many other communities. our community wants to do something. our jewish values tell us we have an imperative. not just for us but we see everybody in god's image. so when a tragedy happens, when an issue happens we look and say what can our community uniquely provide in this situation to help out? >> interesting. believe it or not, we'll take a quick break and come back and continue this conversation here in just a moment here on mosaic. >> good morning and welcome back to mosaic. i'm rabbi eric wise. we're in the middle of a wonderful conversation with canisteller -- we were talking a little bit about how your organizations view response in general to events and talked a little bit about the current events that have happened in the world of late. and i was thinking as we were ending that segment that both of your organizations consistently respond to the world around us all the time. it's just that sometimes in the media we see a particular faith community responding to a particular event and we don't realize all the work they do otherwise. i'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about really the nature of your ongoing response to the world anyway. in an ongoing way. >> yes. i really appreciate that question. as it happened just now in the past several weeks this season, rack california, which is the network of reformed congregations in california, has chosen as our top priority campaign a gun violence prevention campaign. it's something for cal-vip. their local programs proven to be effective at reducing gun violence in the communities where they're already funded. drastically producing it by 40 or 50%. in oakland and a couple of other states. we're looking for full funding for those all over the state because of how effective they are. this is the campaign we were in the midst of, including a call in week to governor newsome. this is what we were in the midst of when the shooting in poet happened. there's not usually a confluence. in that moment, we were able to do what we would want to do. one to mourn that attack. and then to actually have something for people to do right and now about gun violence. >> what is vip? >> vip stands for violence intervention programs. they're local programs operating in individual cities. >> and they're a state or county program? >> we're looking for statewide funding to bring those to cities that don't have them yet. or where the funding doesn't allow them to fully operate yet. and i'll distinguish between those programs and the source of the shooting in san diego because they aren't the same. these programs are operating in the communities where gun violence is part of every day life. where people most at risk for committing or being injured or killed by gun violence. that's where the programs are needed and effective. >> and karen, from the jcr perspective? >> let me step back a little with the way we approach the issues, we try to be as proactive as possible. when we look at many ofthe challeng whether it's challenges to our democracy, or gun violence, which is an issue we've worked on as well. whether it's poverty or a host of challenges, we take what we call a community relations approach. we build relationships. we start proactively by building the relationships, working with other communities and we think is critical. for us to advance the issues we have, the concerns we have, it's critically important to build coalitions with other organizations, other organizations of interests working on the same interests we do. so we build these relationships year in, day in, day out. so when something like this happens, not only do we have somebody to call, but we have somebody we've been working with all along on advocating towards these ends. we're able to, i think, be much more effective. whether getting legislation passed or bringing the community together to address the needs of the particular community in response to an event. >> we have a lot of overlap in our perspective. it really is about building relationships. in working with synagogues for as long as we know, synagogues have had social justice committees. often those committees organize things a congregation can do. you can do endless blood drives and clothing drives and food drives. at a certain point, you need in addition to helping people with the emergency needs, you need to look upstream and say why are people hungry? why are we having shootings in the every day lives of people? we're looking at how we can effect policy and that takes building relationships, just like you said. >> that's a lovely point. we'll take a quick break. maybe when we come back, we can talk about what is sustained response and how do you sustain something and get to the deeper roots of something? we'll be right back here on mosaic. >> good morning and welcome back to mosaic, i'm crabby eric weis and rabbi eric weiess. welcome back rabbi saxaler and saxe-taller and karen. what's a sustained response after something leaves the news cycle but still there's an issue at work and rabbi sax taller -- or gun violence issues? is there an education issue or advocacy issue? can we deepen and broaden the conversation and talk with you about how you understand what those elements are in terms of sustaining response? maintaining response and building towards response? it might be part of the larger picture than an event in a moment? >> rack california has at this point, six issues we work on. they all work towards our mission. which is to stand with vulnerable communities to build the state of california that we want to live in. we ask ourselves that question, actually. what is the california of our dreams? what is the next step we need to staining our work after a given campaign, we go back to that question and we go back to the issues we've built our teams to work on. we have now an issue team on each of six issues. housing, climate change, immigrants' rights. let's see if i can remember them all while we sit here. gun violence prevention. so each of our teams is looking at the campaigns that we could potentially work with our partners on in a given season. we're doing that research and building the research. when one campaign ends, we look at what will rise to the top and we've built relationships and been thinking ability that. >> from the jewish community relations perspective, how does that function? >> we have core things to work on's all hands on deck, drop everything response. we commly cares about. are really over the last number of years, we've taken up issues around immigration, racial justice and this year we're looking at democracy. many of the core issues come from a democracy under threat. the model we use is we study the issue. we take a year. we bring together our committees and groups. study the issue, bring in experts, host town halls. we give a chance for the community to hear from experts. also give their feedback and then we craft our position statements and come up with a list of action items we're going to do to follow up on the issues we've taken a consensus on. >> i'm curious to know within each of your perspective, we all know when groups come together, just a group coming together in and of itself is an accomplishment. then paying attention to what each individual is saying in a group and how that process then yields something of a consensus, i'm curious to know how do you even decide oh, it's immigration or democracy or education or whatever it is. how do you even come to those themes to begin with? >> i mean, we look at what's going on in the community. where are we putting out the most fires? we step back and say what are the core issues or the core root issues? that's where we came around economic justice. it's not just an issue of incarceration rates. it's an issue around racial justice. same thing with democracy. we bring our committees that are structured together. they come up with a consensus to look at this particular issue. then it's a whole process of building consensus around that and consensus around detailed policy statements that lay out positions and then put together an action plan for mobilization around those issues. >> similarly, we work with each congregation. so while we're building a statewide network on the one hand. i also have the opportunity to work with the justice teams at each congregation i work with. for them to think about what do you care about? what's happening? where is your congregation on different issues and where can you work as a congregation that won't divide the congregation but that will bring people together. sometimes that's on something very local. sometimes that local issue will bridge to something larger. also coming back to root causes. in addition to the direct service work that congregations do, we want to help our congregations being a part of addressing root policy and advocate. >> we need to take another quick break. both of you are eluding to it makes people feel this enhances their jewish identity by being involved in these topics. please join us in a moment here in mosaic. >> good morning. welcome back to mosaic. i'm rabbi eric weiss and honored to be your host. we're in a wonderful conversation with karen stellar and rabbi julie saxe taller. we were talking about this notion that this work for a lot of people in the jewish community like people in every faith community is actually something that animates their religious identity. in this case, jewish identity. i'm wondering, karen, if you can talk about that aspect of the work in general. >> sure. i think a lot of people really relate to the aspect of social action, social justice. that, for them, is their expression of judaism. the bay area is a fun place. we have so many different and unique organizations. so much niches people can go into to express their jewish values. the way they come at it. this kind of work, mobilizing the community, working on issues you care about deeply, is something that really will bring people in. perhaps in other parts of the jewish community they don't necessarily find a home but they can find a home there. >> would you say that's true from the jewish relations counsel perspective, whether a jew of color, a secular jew, a jew by choice that any age, any ability? is that across the board from your perspective? >> yeah, absolutely. these issues bring us all together. >> for sure. all the research shows that people are most proud of this commitment to justice of jews. and when we get the opportunity to act for justice as jews, not just as individuals but with their congregations or with our organizations, there's a coming together of who we want to be. we sometimes say our lobby day, which is coming up on august 20th, people can actually connect with their reformed synagogue and come to lobby with us on august 20th in sacramento. we call it our high holy day sometimes. it's a way we're expressing what it means to us to be jewish by acting on the world around us. and trying to impact policy. >> so i'm wondering, from a jewish perspective, the notions of justice in the world derive out of two biblical stories. the story of creation and exodus. it's not just me, it's you, too. as well as that we were freed from slavery. we come out of a place of oppression and moved into a place of freedom. those two core biblical stories yield these values that sort of animate us to do good in the world, do justice in the world. i'm wondering then how those notions actually then define even the determine justice. like really what justice actually is. the word justice in other realms takes on different meanings. for us, it's a particular way of seeing that term. can you talk about how that animates us when we decide what to do on immigration, on gun control, on poverty, on education. >> certainly on immigration and similarly on the other issues, we look to our history and to the way that justice is framed in the torah as something we're connected to in part because of our history. that's the biblical history and our history actually more recent. knowing what it's like to be persecuted. knowing what it's like to be on the outside and vulnerable. not to have the protection of law. all of those things, we can feel it in our bones. we organize based on that history as well just knowing what is right. >> absolutely. on the issue of immigration, so many people we've done a lot of work on immigration and so many people came to this work because of their own personal stories. whether they were refugees or their parents were survivors of the holocaust, it infused them with the need to do that. the need to have a different way of looking at people who come in the country. than the popular discourse right now. >> believe it or not, we have a minute left together. we have come full circle. how do we respond to a world event, whether a natural disaster that needs an immediate response and or a violent incident like a shooting at a synagogue or a mosque. i'm wondering, not to put you on the spot in a big way, but can you make a comment about what is hope out there for how we are responding to have an impact in a sentence or two? >> i'll try a sentence. when we respond to scary events, we need to both come together so we find comfort in these other and actually listen to each other and then we need to get together and say what are we going to do so we don't act from fear? >> thank you so much. >> i would say something similar. in these times in increasing partisan ship, we need to stand together. we have a choice to make. we can respond together or we can respond separately. >> thank you so much for joining us here on mosaic. we encourage you to continue this conversation to do good in the world. thank you so much for being with us here on mosaic. this is the morning edition. >> business owners are in disbelief and frustrated after a high-end jewelry store is robbed. a one-year-old boy day cap from his daycare center in san francisco. the latest on the search. cutting the price of insulin by 90%, how the governor says the state will cap costs for everyone. good morning on sunday august 19th thank you for joining us. let's start with first alert meteorologist darren peck. >> a rainy sunday morning and we are tracking the shower