The teenager with the huge "Jewfro" approached me trembling. "How did you know to put me into this group?" he asked. "What group?" I responded, trying to understand. "The one about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire," he said. I had not known to put him into that group: it happened by accident, even though it did not feel that way to him.

I was surrounded by nearly one hundred sixteen- and seventeen-year-old teens at Camp Newman outside Santa Rosa.  It was the first day after a brutal two-week heat wave, so, needless to say, it was a challenge to keep them riveted. I was speaking about sweatshops and the Progressive Jewish Alliance's work on the issue.

To make things lively, I divided them into five groups, with each group assigned an interactive task. Some were to look at the tags on everyone's T-shirts and list where they were made, then contextualize their findings with a map I distributed of average wages around the globe (twenty-three cents per hour in China, and between four and twenty cents per hour in Bangladesh, according to statistics from 2002) and calculate how many shirts you'd have to make per day to feed a family of five. Another group checked the manufacturers of their sneakers and read about harsh employment conditions at a factory in Mexico producing footwear for Adidas.

The boy with the big hair ended up in a group that read short articles about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire and a fire in a garment workshop in Bangladesh in 2003. In both cases, the owners locked the doors and fled. Workers were trapped in the building and burned to death.

"My great-aunt died in that fire!" he told me. "She jumped out of the second-story window and was killed."

I got the shivers. "And," he continued, "my other great-aunt survived because she was sick that day and didn't go to work."

My work here is done, I felt, if I could just get him to stand up and tell that to his friends. He did, and I could feel something like an electric current run through the group. Point made: we were once in the sweatshops, as we were in Egypt. This is our story and now it's happening to other people around the globe.

This is emblematic of the work of the Progressive Jewish Alliance (PJA), where I have been the Bay Area Regional Director for nearly three years. PJA was founded in Los Angeles in 1999 by a group of ex-American Jewish Congress members who left an organization they perceived as steadily drifting to the right. With founding director Daniel Sokatch, now the chief executive officer of the Jewish Community Federation of the greater San Francisco region, PJA set out to create a new model of Jewish social justice activism. PJA hopes to be a new kind of Jewish organization by connecting Jews to the critical social justice issues of the day in the midst of the cities in which they live.  It defines itself as bridging two worlds, as "a Jewish voice in the Progressive community and a progressive voice in the Jewish community." Thus it works simultaneously in coalition with non-Jewish social justice and equality organizations and with organizations within the "establishment" Jewish community.

PJA's choice of issues and allies is guided by a number of considerations:

1        Is the issue local or is there a local point of leverage to work on the issue?

2        Is the issue in some way part of our Jewish story, resonating with Jewish ethical teaching or history?

3        Is the issue one that no one else is focusing on in the Jewish community?

4        Are there productive alliances outside the Jewish community for the work and will the collaboration offer opportunities to change the perception of the Jewish community in marginalized groups and communities? 

5        Are there concrete steps toward success, even if only in a limited arena?

PJA's work is also guided by a healthy understanding of its limitations. With a staff of eleven and two offices in California (though national expansion is planned for 2009), we know we are a drop in the bucket. The organization tries to stay humble, with a good dose of self-critical irony, in order to keep from drifting into self-righteousness.

Early in PJA's history, we were deeply engaged in the struggle to expose sweatshops in Los Angeles and pressure their owners to improve labor conditions. Some workers, mostly Latinas, were organizing a boycott of several workshops, including those producing for the popular "Forever 21" stores. Sokatch went to their meeting to learn about their plans and work on collaboration. When he entered the room and was introduced, cheers and multiple conversations erupted.  "What are they saying?" asked Daniel, whose Spanish is rudimentary. His host explained that the organizers were saying, "The Jews are here-they know how to organize!" 

PJA's goal is to live up to that reputation by supporting sweatshop workers, hotel workers in the Bay Area and Los Angeles, food service workers, car washers (especially in Los Angeles), janitors, and security workers. Our group also works on campaigns for marriage equality and immigrants' rights, as well as on a Jewish-Muslim Community Partnership, which is presently in Los Angeles. PJA is striving to develop the next generation of Jewish social justice leaders and trouble-makers through a fellowship for young adult Jews.

Rachel Biale is the Bay Area Regional Director and Interim Executive Director, Progressive Jewish Alliance (www.pjalliance.org). She is the author of Women and Jewish Law (New York: Schocken, 1984) and has worked in the Bay Area Jewish Community for over 20 years.