Kivie Kaplan

With all this talk about Human Rights (including a discussion tonight for Jewish Women's International), the subject of Kivie Kaplan came up. Anyone who grew up in the Reform Movement in New England--especially if they went to Camp Eisner--will know the name. A Jewish philanthropist and lifelong Reform Jew, he was a board member and eventually president of the NAACP (from the mid-50s until his death in the 70s). Can you imagine such a thing today? He remains a giant of social justice and an inspiration for us that has, sadly, been forgotten by too many, especially in an era where we spend too much time thinking about our own vine and fig tree and not enough reaching across color and religious divisions to seek real solutions to what ails us.