Saturday's WaPo has a great article on the campaign to develop a domestic Jewish agenda for 2008 jspot.org has been running in partnership with more than 20 friends and allies (including Jewcy.com). It does a good job spotting something new going in with this particular effort:

But some longtime Jewish advocates and historians say the campaign is as much about a new generation of activists trying to gain influence and inject their style of social justice work as it is about anything else. The new crop of groups is trying to spread influence through cultural efforts, such as JDub Records and the Jewschool blog, as well as through such traditional grass-roots groups as Jews United for Justice, which focuses on issues such as housing and labor in the D.C. area.

“It's true that established groups haven't spoken with one voice on domestic issues, but they have advocated for those things," said Pamela S. Nadell, professor of history and director of Jewish studies at American University. "What's happening is these new groups -- which are very exciting -- are trying to band together to exercise larger political clout."

I join Professor Nadell in her excitement over the possibilities revealed by this collaboration. There are dozens of independent organizations and blogs that share an upstart mentality, if not necessarily the same specific policy agendas. As I mention at the bottom, this campaign is part of our effort at jspot.org to develop a Jewish netroots.

WaPo also notes that

The discussion is not completely unlike the one underway among American evangelical groups, that have been debating in recent months whether to expand their agenda from core social issues to include such concerns as Darfur and global warming.

This is true, although among Jewish groups it is less about expanding the agenda to completely new issues than it is about emphasizing issues that often are kept on the back burner.

The article also previews the results of the Jewish agenda campaign, which were first made public in an email to campaign participants on Friday. Here is what the article was missing, with a few thoughts of my own mixed in.

More than 8600 people selected five priorities for a domestic Jewish agenda from a list of ten issue areas. The totals as of a few days ago are: Health Care: 7474 (87%); Environment: 7149 (84%); Education: 5788 (68%); Civil Rights: 4849 (57%); Wages: 3476 (41%); Seniors: 3446 (40%); Immigration: 3365 (39%); Housing: 2069 (24%); Child Care: 1,997 (23%); Hurricane Katrina/Rita: 1546 (18%).

As I watched the numbers from the behind the scenes, they remained remarkably consistent throughout, with the percentages fluxuating a point or two but not much more. In other words, we would have the same results if only 900 people had participated instead of the almost 9000 who did participate.

It is hard to compare the results with other polls, because few used the same methodology and our effort was not scientific. In national polls of Americans that ask about a range of issues, of the issues we included in our poll health care and education are clearly priorities, along with seniors (eg: Social Security & Medicare). Of the top issues in the Jewish agenda - specfically the four that received a clear majority of votes -two (health care and education) are shared priorities with all Americans. But two are not: the environment and civil rights. In fact, pollsters seem to have stopped asking about civil rights issues, with the exception of GLBT issues, when conducting polls about priorities. The environment is just focused on the hot issue of global warming. (Terrible pun intended)

It is important to note that the priorities expressed through this poll are NOT the priorities of most Jewish organizations. In other words, if you visit the typical Jewish organizational website and tried to figure out what issues that group was focused on, it is unlikely that the home page would be filled with information about the need to fix our health care system, or our public schools, or our environment, or civil rights.

There are exceptions. And I am not saying that Jewish groups that do not prioritize this issues are bad groups. If you took a poll of Jewish concerns right now, I'd bet that the war in Iraq and Darfur would be right at the top. However, the issues identified in our poll would also be there.

Here is my humble assessment of the current state of domestic issues in Jewish communal life, when it comes to the top five issues from our poll. Among Jewish organizations, the top domestic priorities are usually anti-Semitism, church/state separation, and government programs (often health care) for seniors. The environment is the focus of Jewish organizations like Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life (COEJL) and Hazon, but has only just entered the agendas of most other Jewish groups – often in the context of ending our dependence on foreign oil. With a few exceptions (eg: the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism’s recent statement calling for universal health care), the health care issue is largely focused on advocacy around Jewish service delivery of existing programs (eg: Medicaid and Medicare). Public education is rarely discussed in Jewish organizations, unless there is a church/state issue involved. Civil rights remain a topic of concern and an area of some consensus and activism, although communal institutions are split on a few key issues like affirmative action. Civil liberties, sometimes seen as a subset of civil rights, have almost completely fallen off the Jewish agenda after 9/11. The recent increase in the minimum wage was supported by a wide range of Jewish organizations, with real leadership from groups like the Jewish Council on Public Affairs; however, wage issues are not usually a top communal priority.

Next up: the candidates respond.