THE OBAMA PHENOMENON

This may be a turning point, a time when Americans can start to once again believe in the possibility of a different type of politics. Even if Obama loses, his presence, success, and integrity have the potential to create a powerful change in American politics; a change in which optimism, hope, and integrity are more than rhetoric; they may become the character of at least some of our leaders.

Louis Hoffman

Colorado Springs, CO

I agree with Michael Lerner’s statements about how important it is not to “demonize” the Other. In fact, I think the manner of our being towards others will be the most important element for healing our nation. And while I respect his statement that Tikkun does not support any particular candidate, isn’t it imperative that the next President actually “gets it”? That the next President is capable from his or her very core to genuinely display behavior that doesn’t demonize the Other?

In his recent book The New American Story, Bill Bradley describes a weekend retreat back in 1993 where President & Mrs. Clinton explained to Democratic senators how they would get their new health care reform legislation passed. One senator asked what their strategy would be if the legislation didn ’t pass by the July 4 recess. “You don’t understand,” Mrs. Clinton replied. “We will demonize those who are blocking this legislation, and it will pass.”

Yes, you are right that the Obama phenomenon is about us, not about Obama. But someone will be the next President, and shouldn ’t that person be authentic to the phenomenon?

Micah Rubenstein

Gambier, OH

Your decision to stay neutral so far in the Obama vs. Hillary race is wise.

I voted for Hillary in the Ohio primary. They are 98 percent for the same issues, but Hillary stands a better chance to win in November. She will have more contacts with Congress, the Pentagon, and the corporate elite.

The White/Black divisions going back to 1619 cannot be resolved in 2008. It requires a long-term commitment to historical, moral, ( “spiritual” is too vague for me), sociological, economic and political education. The votes in the Electoral College are key to any short-term gains for 2009.

Robert Whealey

Athens, OH

Among the many great contributions of the British psychoanalyst Melanie Klein, her insights into the nature of evil hold a special place. With ancient Biblical and Christian thinkers, Klein held that envy always underlay such sins as greed and destructiveness. More original was Klein ’s distinction between envy, which is always directed at another person, and jealousy, which is directed at what another person possesses. This distinction gave Klein her special understanding of the nature of evil. Evil, she taught, was not directed at victims in general but was always actually aimed at a particular object: that which seems innocent, inspires hope, and is perceived as a source of goodness, fecundity and newness. Only when Klein ’s thought is appreciated at these deeper levels can one full appreciate Hillary Clinton ’s determination to soil, eviscerate, and destroy Barack Obama and the movement around him.

Eli Zaretsky

New York, NY

OBAMA AND ISRAEL 

I think you are being deceived by Obama. He has too many connections with people who are anti-Semitic. G-d told Israel, “It is not what you say, but what you do that tells me where your heart is.” That should be your guide in accepting Obama. When you look at him and what he proposes in international relationships, it makes you not only wonder, but get chills, about what might happen to the United States, as well as to Israel.

Although I have never been there, I love and support Israel and want to see someone in the Oval Office who feels the same.

I pray that you will do some serious thinking and praying about your approval of him.

David Payne

via e-mail

Political expediency demanded that Barack Obama openly refute the ideas espoused by his former spiritual leader, Reverend Wright. Obama said, “They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted … view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam. ”

I suggest that it is Obama’s view that has been “profoundly distorted” by the overwhelming pressures of the political campaign. He is incapable of resisting the forces that demand fealty to the colonial, expansionist Zionist project. Unable to recognize Jewish supremacy —which is, after all, exactly the ideology upon which the “Jewish State” was founded—as the evil it is, and unwilling to appreciate the disastrous role of U.S. hegemony in the region, he is left to adopt the acceptable paradigm that thrusts all responsibility for the conflicts of the Middle East onto “the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.” He speaks as if such ideologies developed in a vacuum, divorced from the realities of massive injuries to human rights: by Israel in the Occupied Territories and by the United States throughout the region.

Thus, the lines of acceptable discourse, precluding any discussion of the illegality and immorality of Israel ’s actions, are drawn. They are designed to distort the debate so that it sharpens the focus on how best the United States should confront the “hateful ideologies of radical Islam” and blurs the focus on the real issues: the Israeli Occupation, the U.S. government ’s unbridled support for it, and the criminal actions of the U.S. government throughout the Middle East.

Joel Finkel

Chicago, IL

ON DENIAL OF RACISM

Reading Senator Barack Obama’s address on race delivered in Philadelphia, and watching his subsequent drop in national polls, made me reflect upon the depth of America ’s 

denial of racism both past and present, but also the double standard to which we hold African American leaders. If it was James Joyce who said, “History was a nightmare from which he was trying to awake,”  white America is very content to slumber away.

Perhaps the poster boy for racial denial should be Thomas Jefferson. It is baffling to learn that in his initial draft of the Declaration of Independence, he listed the institution of slavery as one of the evils created by the English crown that justified war. This written by a man that owned over 500 slaves. In his own mind, he was a lifelong abolitionist arguing against that institution most powerfully in 1884 in his “Notes on the State of Virginia,” and as president, he even signed a bill in 1807 abolishing the slave trade.   

But upon his death, he freed only five slaves and sold the rest, including two of his children by Sally Hemmings, a slave and his wife ’s half-sister with whom he had six children. The original Great Emancipator.

White America doesn’t want to recognize it, but American history, even of the twentieth century, is inexplicable without accounting for brutal racism. President Wilson refused to invite black Civil War veterans to the fiftieth anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg even though 600,000 served, with 40,000 losing their lives. President Truman was a member of the Klu Klux Klan as an adult, and President Reagan chose to 

announce his campaign for president in 1980 in Philadelphia, Mississippi, a city only symbolically meaningful as the location of the murder of three civil rights workers in 1964. And, of course, we can all remember George Bush ’s desperate rush to Bob Jones University, an institution that until recently forbade interracial dating, to save his flailing campaign in 2000 by throwing himself at the feet of that divisive icon.

Racism in America is not ancient history. It is still swirling around us; lurking below the cover of decency. And like the patio stones my children lift in my backyard to see the worms and spiders beneath, its gruesomeness is there for those who have the will to look.

And we wonder why Reverend Wright is angry.

But I think the double standard is even more troubling. White America was outraged by Reverend Wrights ’ claim that the destruction of the World Trade Center was explainable by U.S. foreign policy, and more specifically, our policy towards the Palestinians. But is that any more outrageous than the claims of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, who claimed the bombing was the result of our toleration of “gays, abortionists, and People for the American Way,” who took God out of our schools? Yet, for any Republican worth their salt, they come fawning, and craving their support. And no one bats an eye.  

Even in this election, Senator John McCain actively sought and received the endorsement of Rev. John Hagee of Texas, who stated that Hurricane Katrina was an act of God due the sinners of that city, and in the past even joked that his church should have a “slave sale” to raise money for his youth program.

So while white America continues to be offended by Reverend Wright’s accusatory anger, they cannot dismiss it as a relic of the distant past.

As a white man who was born in the 1950s, having witnessed many wonderful changes, I can only hope for the future and say thank God for our children and their color blind ways.

Stephen S. Bowman

Syracuse, NY

FORGIVENESS: WHAT, WHEN AND WHY?

I am writing this letter in response to Professor Griswold’s article “Forgiveness and Apology” (Tikkun March/April, 2008) and the discussion between Dr. Griswold and Father William Meninger. I believe that ultimately the victim must let go of the rage born from moral hatred to become a survivor. By letting go, the individual can begin the healing process and become psychologically and spiritually whole again. In my opinion, to hold onto this vengeful rage indefinitely is emotional suicide. In addition, embracing the cornucopia of emotional toxins contained in this lethal mixture of rage, hatred, and revenge may lead to physical deterioration as well as psychological despair. Thus, the individual may be at risk for serious and life-threatening illnesses, including high blood pressure and heart disease, and various psychological disorders such as clinical depression. Furthermore, the medical problems are often exacerbated by the concomitant psychiatric disorders.  

Yet letting go of this venomous rage is not necessarily forgiveness. I agree with Professor Griswold who states: “But not every manner of giving up moral anger or revenge counts as forgiveness.” Furthermore, I agree with his conceptualization of forgiveness as distinguished from excuse or condonation. If forgiveness is excuse, we do not “hold the perpetrator responsible.” And if forgiveness is actually condoning, we may “enable continued wrongdoing.”

Unconditional forgiveness may be problematic in the treatment of traumatic patients who have been physically, sexually, or emotionally abused. Victims of abuse who forgive their abusers unconditionally may be placing themselves at risk for further abuse. “An abused spouse ‘forgives’ the offender every morning for beating her the night before.” Unless the abusers undergo intensive therapy, learn and practice stress and anger management coping techniques daily, and demonstrate cognitive, emotional, and behavioral changes, they will continue to be walking time bombs and lethal threats to the abused. I strongly 

recommend that my patients who have been abused in the past or in the present ensure their own safety and the safety of their children, if they are parents, before considering even conditional forgiveness.

One patient I am treating has contact with the father of her children who savagely beat her decades ago, knocking out her front teeth and disfiguring her face. The abuser was incarcerated and subsequently received residential treatment for drug abuse after his release from prison. However, there is no proof he received intensive therapy for anger management. Yet after completing his drug treatment program, he confessed his love for my patient and asked for her forgiveness. My patient says she has forgiven him and admits she still loves him. I am helping her explore the dangers of unconditional forgiveness.

I have emphasized the importance of conditional forgiveness and the dangers of unconditional forgiveness. Are there any circumstances in which unconditional forgiveness is needed, possible, and the ideal? I do not recommend forgiving the unrepentant. But perhaps we can forgive perpetrators who are dead or unknown. Within the context of psychotherapy (and perhaps, in other settings), victims can have imaginary dialogues with their abusers, in which the abusers acknowledge responsibility and regret for wrongdoing and ask for forgiveness. At that point, patients can let go of retributive rage. During the therapeutic process, conditional forgiveness can become unconditional forgiveness.

Perhaps unconditional forgiveness is a “gift.” Father Meninger points out that “in Christian sources the gift (referred to as grace, which means a free gift from God) is given to the victim, not to the perpetrator. When the victim tries to open his mind and heart to the love he is called to have for all men, including his enemies, this is referred to as a grace. ”  

While unconditional forgiveness may be dangerous at times, I suspect there are other occasions in which it represents a higher state of consciousness.

Mel Waldman

Brooklyn, NY

HAMAS, ISRAEL, AND VIOLENCE

Editor’s note: 

In an email sent to our subscribers and NSP members, we “unequivocally condemned” the murder of students at the Yeshiva Merkaz HaRav. We also contextualized that act in response to the killing the week before of some 120 people in Gaza, most of them civilians with no connection or contact to Hamas. We had many letters, some appreciative, others accusing us of bias. For example:

Once again, according to you, the Jews of Israel are to blame for the acts of those who want to kill them. This is one of the oldest lies of history, and you have bought into it. Apparently, the only “politically correct” thing Israelis can do that would satisfy you is die. Your standard line of calling terrorist murderers who fire rockets into Israeli towns “victims” and the 

Israeli citizens who are killed by those rockets “oppressors” is getting tiresome indeed.  

Michael Kolker

Seattle, WA

Thank you for the sensitive, caring, and intelligent article you wrote regarding the killing on all sides, including the United States in Iraq and the violence and destruction of human lives all over the world.

Sylvia Manheim

Long Beach, CA  

Your “Progressive Middle Path” is one-sidedly pro-Israel. In your recent emails, not a mention of the twenty-two students killed last week when Israeli tanks tore through school buildings. Not a mention of the newborn infant shot in the head and killed while in her mother ’s arms. Not a mention of the twelve-year-old girl gunned down in her own home by a rooftop Israeli sniper firing through windows. And, I wish to question the bemoaned “2000-year exile” claimed by those whose ancestors never set foot in what used to be the Holy Land, now destroyed by Jews whose only claim to it is via something they wrote in what is now called “the Bible.”

Mary Sparrowdancer

via e-mail

EDUCATION TODAY

I absolutely disagree with Svi Shapiro’s article “It’s Time for a Progressive Vision of Education” (Tikkun January/Feburary 2008).

It seems he is not in touch with today’s schools. What he describes is education when I went to school in the 1940s and 1950s, when students sat at their desks in rows and learned things by rote and where no time was spent on developing children ’s self-esteem, sharing, caring, tolerance and sense of community.

In the San Francisco elementary schools, where I have been substitute teaching for eight years, and which are similar to most public schools in the country, the children do learn the above things. Further, they learn respect and appreciation for one another, conflict resolution, appreciation of different racial and ethnic groups. I have seen children helping kids with special needs, e.g., wheeling wheelchairs and accepting kids with deformities. The students ’ desks are in groups of four, facing each other, making it conducive to their many cooperative and creative activities. Students have choices in some assignments and express themselves through writing journals and stories. Older children serve as “reading buddies” to younger children. Students also learn about human emotions and morals through literature.  Urban children also have gardening classes and learn respect for the environment.

Although standardized tests may not be such a good practice, they do test thinking abilities and problem solving rather than only memorization.

Linda Lewin

San Francisco, CA