Standing Up for Marriage Equality & A Progressive Agenda for Change
Featuring a dazzling array of over 30 top-name performers from the worlds of Broadway, television, film, music, and comedy – including many Tony, Emmy, Oscar and Grammy Award winners and nominees, plus prominent political leaders, progressive and LGBT activists
Support the Jewish Alliance for Change Marriage Equality Campaign and receive a highlights DVD from Broadway for a New America
Tony Award Winning Actress Phyllis Newman reads “Loving for All” By Mildred Loving
The Broadway Boys bring down the house at Broadway for a New America Marriage Equality Concert
“Loving for All” was originally delivered on June 12, 2007, the 40th Anniversary of the historic Loving vs. Virginia US Supreme Court Announcement, striking down race restrictions on the freedom to marry and advancing racial justice and marriage equality in America; read here by Phyllis Newman at Broadway for a New America, New York City, April 13, 2009.
Click here for more from the Broadway for a New America concert
Starring
Jim Dale Tony & 2-time Grammy winner, Oscar nominee “Voice of Harry Potter” Our Host
Richard Belzer Star of TV's Law and Order: SVU Stand-Up Comedian
John Bucchino Renowned composer and pianist Score for “A Catered Affair” Drama League Award for Best Musical
Mike Burstyn 2-time Drama Desk Award nominated stage, film & television actor & singer
Ann Hampton Callaway Multiplatinum-selling singer, composer, lyricist, pianist & Tony nominated actress
Melissa Errico Tony-nominated Best Actress in a Musical Singer & Recording Artist “The voice of enchantment” (NY Times)
Tovah Feldshuh 4-time Tony nominated Broadway, TV, Film actress & singer
Malcolm Gets Tony-nominated Broadway, TV and film actor and singer
Peter Jöback Multiplatinum Grammy-nominated Scandinavian recording artist Star of London’s West End
Robert Klein Emmy & Tony nominated Stand-Up Comedian & Actor
Linda Lavin Tony winner; 3-time Tony nominee & Emmy nominee, Actress & Singer
Nellie McKay Critically acclaimed singer-songwriter Recording Artist Award-winning Broadway actress
Anne Meara Tony & 4-time Emmy nominated actress & comedian (“Stiller & Meara”)
Phyllis Newman Tony winner, Best Actress in a Musical Tony nominee, Best Actress in a Play
Christine Pedi Drama Desk Award nominee (Forbidden Broadway) Broadway actress & Musical comedy impressionist
Alice Playten Tony nominated Best Actress in a Musical
Seth Rudetsky 3-time Emmy Award nominee Sirius Radio’s “Voice of Broadway”
Billy Stritch Grammy-winning composer, vocalist, jazz pianist
The Accidentals “The best a cappella group in America” – New York Post
The Broadway Boys
New York City Gay Men's Chorus
The Broadway Tenors Broadway's Matt Farnsworth; Brian Lane Green, Tony nominee, Best Actor in a Musical; Kevin Spirtas, Broadway & NBC TV “Days of Our Lives” star
Scott Blakeman, “New York’s Top Political Comedian” (NBC TV)
Darrian Ford, Broadway star, singing the songs of soul music pioneer Sam Cooke (“You Send Me,” “Wonderful World, “Change is Gonna Come”)
Cheryl Freeman, Drama Desk award nominee, recently performed for President Obama at Ford Theatre reopening, Washington, DC
Shauna Hicks, Broadway, TV, Cabaret Star; “A powerhouse voice, a winning comic flare” - Chicago Sun-Times
Michael Longoria, recently starred on Broadway as Frankie Valli in Jersey Boys
Karla Mosley, singer & actress, newest cast member on CBS TV’s Guiding Light
Krysta Rodriguez, currently appearing in Broadway's In the Heights
Jeremy Schonfeld, pop, rock, gospel, soul & blues singer-songwriter
Lucas Steele, vocals, Broadway performer, performing with renowned composer and pianist John Bucchino
Noah Weisberg, South Pacific at Lincoln Center and Legally Blonde
Featured speakers and honorees include
Wayne Besen Truth Wins Out Founder & Executive Director
Evan Wolfson Freedom to Marry Founder & Executive Director
Cantor David Berger Congregation Beth Simchat Torah
Rabbi J. Rolando Matalon Congregation B'nai Jeshurun
Click to receive a DVD from Broadway for a New America & support our marriage equality campaign
BROADWAY FOR A NEW AMERICA Directed by Sara Louise Lazarus, the award-winning theater and cabaret director who directed the highly successful Broadway for Obama concert. Produced by Kati Meister and Scott Denny, both producers of the Theatre World Awards; Music Direction by Broadway Conductor Lawrence Yurman
Photo from Lazarus' Broadway for Obama, Oct. 20, 2008 which featured over thirty leading Broadway performers, including Tony-award winners and nominees, from the casts of Rent, In the Heights, A Chorus Line, The Little Mermaid, Wicked, The Color Purple, Jersey Boys, Mamma Mia! and Hairspray.
Obama's Grand Plan for the Middle East Gidon D. Remba, Jerusalem Report, May 18, 2009
With newly elected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meeting with President Obama for the first time in the White House on May 18, to be followed by meetings with the Egyptian and Palestinian presidents and a major speech to the Arab and Muslim worlds in Egypt on June 4, the contours of Obama's grand strategy for Middle East peace are beginning to unfold.
Obama's aim is the creation of a new regional political architecture in which Israel’s vital needs, and American national security, will be more firmly anchored than ever before. How does Obama hope to set in motion this tectonic realignment?
Torturing Truth: Why Civil Rights Are Good for Us, by Doni Remba Including a new op-ed: Cheney, Obama, Jack Bauer & Torture
Two major civil rights stories unfolded recently, seemingly unconnected; yet both testify mightily to why civil and human rights are not only just, but good for us. Dick Cheney accused President Obama of putting Americans at greater risk of a new catastrophic terrorist attack by ordering the closure of the detention camp at Guantanamo and an end to the torture of suspected terrorists. Was Cheney speaking the truth? Or torturing it? But first to another civil rights issue–marriage equality–and then to the questions of terrorism, the Constitution and national security.
Repeal Proposition 8 and Support Civil Rights for Same-Sex Couples
Watch this powerful video from Keith Olbermann to learn more about why we support repealing Proposition 8 and respecting the civil rights of gay couples throughout America.
Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf, z"l–“Obama’s Rabbi”– A Remembrance by Doni Remba
Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf, one of the great religious leaders of our time and a champion of peace and social justice, has passed away. Rabbi Wolf, whose synagogue is across the street from President-elect Obama's home, was among Obama's earliest supporters when he launched his political career over a decade ago, springing to Obama's defense during the presidential election. President-elect Obama issued a statement upon learning of his passing. In this remembrance of Rabbi Wolf, who served on the Board of Advisors of the Jewish Alliance for Change, JAFC Executive Director Doni Remba, who has known him for three decades, pays tribute to the enormous contribution Rabbi Wolf has made to Jewish and American life.
Ain't Funny, a series of 3 short TV ads and a full-length web video produced for the Jewish Alliance for Change, brings together iconic Jewish and non-Jewish comedians to talk about the election and why they're voting Obama.
Vice President
Click here to help the Jewish Alliance for Change campaign to repeal Proposition 8, guarantee civil rights for all Americans and mobilize Americans to support President-elect Obama's agenda for change.
Go to our Videos page to watch the other two Ain't Funny videos, “Fear Tactics” and “Our Grandchildren.”
Our Ain't Funny series features Carl Reiner, Danny DeVito, Rhea Perlman, Jerry Stiller, Anne Meara, Valerie Harper, Garry Marshall and Larry Gelbart.
To learn more about the team that produced these TV spots visit www.AintFunny.org
Israelis for Obama make their voices heard in a new video
Israelis, both prominent and ordinary, step up to fight the Republican right’s deceptive ads and attacks against Barack Obama.
The Jewish Alliance for Change helped produce this video and distributed it throughout the American Jewish community. Directed by Alma Har'el, Produced by Boaz Yakin.
Retired Generals of the Israel Defense Forces and high-ranking Mossad officials praise Barack Obama.
“I would personally vote for Obama to help the State of Israel,” said Brig. General Giora Inbar, Former IDF Commander of Lebanon.
From the Jewish Council for Education and Research (JCER).
The Torah repeatedly instructs us to care for the “widow, orphan, poor, and the stranger.” It is fundamental to Judaism that those who are blessed with “more” have an obligation -- not a choice -- to help those who have less.… How then could I support McCain, who has voted against the minimum wage at least 10 times? How could I support someone who believes in the privatization of Social Security? Can you imagine what would be happening today as the economy lurches toward implosion to people who depended on private Social Security accounts? Social Security is a contract a society makes with its citizens: We will help you when you are old and needy. How could I support a candidate, McCain, whose health-care program would leave millions uninsured and tax the health insurance benefits we now receive from our employers? How could I support someone who supports more tax cuts for the very wealthy and almost nothing for the middle class or the poor?
Obama: Wall Street Crisis Caused by McCain-GOP Policies
We are witnessing the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Conservative deregulation is the culprit. Since the Reagan years—and especially during the current Bush Administration—regulators in Washington have torn down or allowed banks to get around the financial rules and protections that were established as a result the Great Depression.
Barack Obama's new running mate praises Israel in 2007 interview with 'Shalom TV'
Senator Joe Biden called Israel “the single greatest strength America has in the Middle East,” and revealed a Jewish family connection in an interview last year.
“You don't defeat a terrorist network that operates in eighty countries by occupying Iraq,” said Senator Obama. “You don't protect Israel and deter Iran just by talking tough in Washington. You can't truly stand up for Georgia when you've strained our oldest alliances. If John McCain wants to follow George Bush with more tough talk and bad strategy, that is his choice - but it is not the change we need.”
Vilifying Barack Obama’s name has become a favorite blood sport in the 2008 presidential campaign. The lineage of Obama’s name, however, extending back to a revered biblical namesake, befits his status as a Christian of rich ancestral influences.
Biden Blasts Bush Comments in Israel on Obama: “Outrageous!”
Watch the video:
“He [Bush] is the guy who has weakened us,” he said. “He has increased the number of terrorists in the world. It is his policies that have produced this vulnerability that the U.S. has. It's his [own] intelligence community [that] has pointed this out, not me.” Biden noted that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have both suggested that the United States ought to find a way to talk more with its enemies. “If he thinks this is appeasement, is he going to come back and fire his own cabinet?”
“We need to figure out a way to develop some leverage...and then sit down and talk with them...." The US should construct a combination of incentives and pressure to engage Iran, and may have missed earlier opportunities to begin a useful dialogue with Tehran, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said.
Senator Biden has a sterling voting record on pro-Israel issues and as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has helped shepherd through key pro-Israel legislation. Biden's longstanding relationship with the Jewish community should reassure Jews who still feel anxious about Obama, said Cameron Kerry, Senator John Kerry's Jewish brother
A war with Iran would be “disastrous on a number of levels,” according to U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. In an article appearing in the latest issue of Parameters, the U.S. Army War College quarterly, Gates wrote that with the army already bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan, “another war in the Middle East is the last thing we need.”
Hebrew University political scientist Yehezkel Dror, a strategic expert of the realpolitik school, wrote this week in the Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot that the “probability is very low” that either a U.S. or Israeli [military] operation would force Iran to abandon its nuclear program.
One hundred and eighty one scholars in Jewish Studies have signed a statement supporting Barack Obama for president. The signers, who include some of the most prominent people in the field, argue that “Senator Obama shares many of the values and positions held by the majority of American Jews.” They point out that his positions on domestic and foreign issues, including Israel’s security, are in agreement with those of most Jewish voters.
John McCain's positions on Israel and the Middle East promise a continuation of George Bush. To my friends in our community who continue to argue that George Bush has been a good friend to Israel, my answer is to ask whether Israel is stronger or weaker today...Israel cannot afford any more years of such “friendship.” We know what the future will be like if our country chooses McCain/Palin: They promise us more years of the same failed Bush foreign policies, more years of being bogged down in Iraq. They promise us an evangelical administration that will attempt to impose right-wing evangelical Christian beliefs on our laws and institutions. If they are elected, I fear for the country and world in which my four children are growing up.
I was with Obama in Israel and in Europe, and I saw how he focused on the urgency of the Iranian threat. I saw how he used his discussions in Israel to remind the European leaders that Israelis are justified in seeing Iran with nuclear weapons as an existential threat -- and that for Israel's sake and our own we must put far more pressure on Iran if we are to stop it from going nuclear. Obama understands that weak sticks and weak carrots -- the current policy -- can't work. We need strong sticks to concentrate the Iranian mind on what they stand to lose, and we need strong carrots, conveyed directly, to show the Iranians they have something to gain by giving up their nuclear weapon pursuit. And, if in the end diplomacy fails, the fact that we engaged directly and Iran was unwilling to alter its behavior creates a very different context for tougher options.
Many young people understand well that the environment and its preservation is the most urgent cause of this new century. Unless we do something drastic about the way we humans use resources, all the rest of our dreams for the future will stand little chance of fulfillment. This is the most essential reason why educated young people, including the vast majority of Jewish college–age and post-college students, are fervent supporters of the Obama campaign.
The key issue dividing the candidates is their position on choice. A woman’s right to choose to bear or not have a child, a couple’s freedom to decide when to start or expand a family, and the composition of the Supreme Court for years to come—all hinge on which candidate wins.
A new independent study projects that 20 million Americans who have employment-based health insurance would lose it under the McCain plan. The whole idea of the McCain plan is to get families out of employer-paid health coverage and into the health insurance marketplace, where naked competition is supposed to take care of all ills. We’re seeing in the Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch fiascos just how well the unfettered marketplace has been working.
Bush Administration has neglected key measures to thwart nuclear and biological terror attacks on U.S. cities, a government task force warned. Bush-McCain policies have sparked growing anti-American sentiment in the Muslim world, fueling the efforts of violent extremists.
John McCain has explicitly embraced President Bush's economic policies. This means that McCain is running on the worst economic track record of any president since the Great Depression.
If you take away those votes, by any fair reading, the court would move significantly to the political right…Jurisprudence on abortion, a variety of civil rights, affirmative action, environmental protection and the whole question of federalism as well as the limits of executive power could change with new justices.
Economists say that lifting the ban on oil drilling off our coasts would do nothing in the short term and almost nothing in the long term to reduce gas prices.
Barack Obama’s detractors have made a game out of finding anti-Israel and anti-Semitic material on Obama’s social networking site, and using it to smear Obama. In part 1 of our response, we discuss the motives behind it and what its architects don’t tell you about the offensive content. In part 2, we discuss how anti-Semitism within the Republican party should be of much greater concern to Jewish Americans than offensive content on Obama’s community blog site.
Both candidates for president have proposed tax plans. But they are starkly different in their approaches and their economic impact. Sen. Obama is focused on cutting taxes for middle-class families and small businesses, and investing in key areas like health, innovation and education. He would do this while cutting unnecessary spending, paying for his proposals and bringing down the budget deficit. The McCain plan represents Bush economics on steroids. It has $3.4 trillion more in tax cuts than President Bush is proposing, largely directed at corporations and the most affluent. The McCain plan would lead to deficits the likes of which we have never seen in this country.
Because of the policies Mr. Bush has pursued and Mr. McCain would continue, the entire Middle East is more dangerous. The United States and our allies, including Israel, are less secure.
Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit—the cabinet minister responsible for the Mossad espionage agency, the Shin Bet security service, the Atomic Energy Commission and Military Intelligence—said that Israel must not attack Iran, but only defend itself if attacked. “And if we do attack, I am not sure it will scuttle the project, or even delay it. I doubt we will be attacked [by Iran with nuclear weapons]. Every country will fully understand the consequences of such an attack.” Many senior Israeli military figures share his opinion, he says.
At almost every turn along the way, the Bush administration was warned that whatever the short-term benefits of its extralegal approach to fighting terrorism, it would have tragically destructive long-term consequences both for the rule of law and America's interests in the world.
With newly elected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meeting with President Obama for the first time in the White House on May 18, to be followed by meetings with the Egyptian and Palestinian presidents and a major speech to the Arab and Muslim worlds in Egypt on June 4, the contours of Obama's grand strategy for Middle East peace are beginning to unfold.
Two major civil rights stories unfolded recently, seemingly unconnected; yet both testify mightily to why civil and human rights are not only just, but good for us. Dick Cheney accused President Obama of putting Americans at greater risk of a new catastrophic terrorist attack by ordering the closure of the detention camp at Guantanamo and an end to the torture of suspected terrorists. Was Cheney speaking the truth? Or torturing it? But first to another civil rights issue–marriage equality–and then to the questions of terrorism, the Constitution and national security.
Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf, one of the great religious leaders of our time and a champion of peace and social justice, has passed away. Rabbi Wolf, whose synagogue is across the street from President-elect Obama's home, was among Obama's earliest supporters when he launched his political career over a decade ago, springing to Obama's defense during the presidential election. President-elect Obama issued a statement upon learning of his passing. In this remembrance of Rabbi Wolf, who served on the Board of Advisors of the Jewish Alliance for Change, JAFC Executive Director Doni Remba, who has known him for three decades, pays tribute to the enormous contribution Rabbi Wolf has made to Jewish and American life.
“You don't defeat a terrorist network that operates in eighty countries by occupying Iraq,” said Senator Obama. “You don't protect Israel and deter Iran just by talking tough in Washington. You can't truly stand up for Georgia when you've strained our oldest alliances. If John McCain wants to follow George Bush with more tough talk and bad strategy, that is his choice - but it is not the change we need.”
“We need to figure out a way to develop some leverage...and then sit down and talk with them...." The US should construct a combination of incentives and pressure to engage Iran, and may have missed earlier opportunities to begin a useful dialogue with Tehran, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said.
John McCain has explicitly embraced President Bush's economic policies. This means that McCain is running on the worst economic track record of any president since the Great Depression.
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