Focus on Issues

Focus on Issues

Jewish Federations Umbrella Releases New Document Adding Gun Reform And LGBTQ Advocacy Back To Policy Priority List

By Ron Kampeas

(Alexander Spatari/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Less than a week after the Jewish Federations of North America removed hot button items such as addressing gun violence and defending LGBTQ rights from their annual priorities list, the umbrella group added them back into a subsequent and more detailed policy document.

The JFNA’s Working Public Policy Agenda, released late Friday, includes more than a hundred words on gun violence prevention. It encourages Congress to double funding for research into the causes of gun violence and calls for increased funding for the enforcement of existing gun laws and background checks.

The document also includes substantial programming related to LGBTQ advocacy, including goals of rolling back faith-based discriminations in federal regulations and providing platforms for LGBTQ Jews.

The agenda additionally includes a sentence on pledging support for “bipartisan approaches to ensure voter access.”

All three issues — gun violence, LGBTQ rights, and voting rights — were missing from the group’s public priorities document, which it releases annually to its constituent organizations nationwide. All three issues had appeared on that document in previous years.

A JTA story noting the omissions triggered queries from multiple constituents to the national body. The JFNA said on various social media platforms the JTA story was “misleading” but did not explain why.

A JFNA spokesman said the Jewish Federations Public Priorities document was substantially revised this year to be more “abridged and broad” and that the longer and more detailed Working Public Policy Agenda released Friday was already in the works, due to be released this coming week. At 2,000 words, the Working Public Policy Agenda is four times as long as the Jewish Federations Public Priorities. It’s not clear whether the JFNA has ever before released a more detailed document following up on its annual Public Priorities list.

In an interview last week, Elana Broitman, the group’s senior vice president for public policy, said the broader public priorities list language this year was meant to make it “nimbler” for the state and federal level activists and lobbyists who use it as a guideline for advocacy.

Broitman and another official emphasized that the JFNA was dealing with equity issues through, among other means, JEDI, a program for “Jewish equity, diversity and inclusion” that is preparing a curriculum for Jewish professionals on race, LGBTQ and other inclusion issues.

Broitman emphatically rejected any notion that hot button issues like gun violence, LGBTQ advocacy, and voting rights were removed to appease political conservatives. JFNA has faced accusations recently that it is seeking to avoid controversy and identification with causes those political conservatives have objected to — such as the Black Lives Matter movement.

There is a notable difference in how voting rights are addressed in

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POLICY

Continued from Page 20 the 2021 Public Priorities list, and how they are addressed in the new Working Public Policy Agenda. In 2021, as Republicans on the state and federal level intensified efforts to make voting access more restrictive, the JFNA committed to “safeguarding voting rights and ending racial and religious profiling.”

This year, the federations are committed to supporting “bipartisan approaches to ensure voter access.” The inclusion of the word “bipartisan” is new. There is currently no substantial bipartisan agreement on voting access.

Ethan Felson, a longtime professional in the federations system who now leads the Jewish LGBTQ advocacy group A Wider Bridge, said in an unsolicited statement late Friday that he never doubted the JFNA’s commitment to LGBTQ equity.

“As the current leader of a group that works in the LGBTQ community, people should know that JFNA and the federation system is part of our family,” he said.

Roblox, Popular Kids’ Computer Game, Removes Virtual Nazi Gas Chambers

By Shira Hanau

In this photo illustration, the Roblox app seen displayed on a smartphone screen and a Roblox logo in the background. (Thiago Prudêncio/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images) (JTA) — Roblox, a collaborative computer gaming platform for children as young as 7, has faced serious criticism over the years for failing to properly moderate its content — with antisemitism and racism rife, according to multiple reports.

Now the platform says it has removed a virtual Nazi concentration camp featuring gas chambers that users could operate.

In a report published Saturday, the Daily Mail revealed the existence of the concentration camp game, which included tall watchtowers, gas chambers, and train tracks apparently representing the cattle cars that brought Jews to Nazi death camps to be murdered.

The game featured gas chambers which users could operate by pressing a button with the word “execute” or enter to experience death of their avatar, or the computer figure representing the player, by gassing.

Roblox released a statement to the Daily Mail in which it said it had removed the concentration camp game and condemned extremism and antisemitism.

“We have zero tolerance for content or behaviors that promote or glorify extremism, including antisemitism. We have removed the experiences in question and banned the individuals who created them. We work tirelessly to maintain a platform that is safe, civil and inclusive, and use manual and automated detection tools to swiftly remove experiences that do not comply with our community standards,” the company said.

Roblox experienced a major increase in popularity during the pandemic as more children began playing the game while at home during lockdowns and used the game, which allows players to interact, to stay in touch with friends.

The growth means that more people are present to encounter and participate in illicit content that has plagued the platform for years, in a reflection of the internet’s wellknown tendencies.

In recent months, the platform has been plagued with recurring game rooms in which players engage in sexually explicit conversations and in which their avatars engage in sex acts. The company has said it removes the games quickly, but they frequently reappear.

The sexually explicit game rooms have also been reported to include avatars dressed in Nazi uniforms.

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