Activism
Never Again? Then help the Rohingya!
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Stop the genocide and persecution of the Rohingya and check out these organizations providing relief to see how you can help.
Articles
Read Bnai Brith attack on UN critique of Trump on Jerusalem to see why YOU should help Tikkun NOW
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The Bnai Brith statement below, like that of the American Jewish Congress and other mainstream Jewish organizations, should remind you of why it is so important to have Tikkun in the public arena. When the UN voted overwhelmingly on Thursday, Dec. 21, to condemn the Trump Administration’s decision to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel without in any way acknowledging that any peace agreement with Palestinians must include recognition of Jerusalem as ALSO the capital of a future Palestinian state, the “Israel is always right and its policies must be given 1000% support” voices of most of the mainstream Jewish (and Christian evangelical) movements congratulated Trump. Of course Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, but it should also be recognized as the capital of the Palestinian people and will be eventually the capital of a Palestinian state, no matter how many decades it takes for Israel to reconcile with the Palestinians in a spirit of generosity and open-heartedness appropriate to a state that calls itself “the state of the Jewish people.” We, on the other hand, congratulate the United Nations for taking this stand.
Editorials & Actions
UN Vote on Jerusalem
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A UN security council resolution calling for the withdrawal of Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital has been backed by every council member except the US, which used its veto. The unanimity of the rest of the council was a stark rebuke to the Trump administration over its unilateral move earlier this month, which upended decades of international consensus. The Egyptian-drafted resolution did not specifically mention the US or Trump but expressed “deep regret at recent decisions concerning the status of Jerusalem”. A spokesman for the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, responded to the veto by saying it was “unacceptable and threatens the stability of the international community because it disrespects it”. The UK and France had indicated in advance that they would would back the text, which demanded that all countries comply with pre-existing UN security council resolutions on Jerusalem, dating back to 1967, including requirements that the city’s final status be decided in direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.
Articles
Chanukah and Christmas: Don’t Let the Light Go Out
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Don’t Despair. Hope is the Chanukah and Christmas Message…so don’t let the light go out!!! A note from Rabbi Michael Lerner
Honestly, do you know anyone who has not been struggling with some form of pessimism, despair, or even Trump-caused-depression? Sad truth: there are lots of reasons to be upset! The Trump Administration has at times looked like it is heading toward nuclear war. It has promised to underfund Obamacare and make it collapse so that it can then step in with the Republican alternative, in the process cutting off care for 24 million people.
Editorials & Actions
Jerusalem and Chanukah–Rabbi Lerner’s letter printed in S.F. Chronicle
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Opinion
Letters to the Editor, Dec. 9
San Francisco Chronicle
December 9, 2017
Of course, Jerusalem is the capital of the State of Israel. But it is also the capital of the State of Palestine, currently occupied by the Israeli army and unable to exercise its sovereignty in the Arab parts of Jerusalem that will some day be an integral part of the Palestinian state. American Jews who seek an end to that struggle recognize that a lasting peace with justice for both sides can only be achieved through a new spirit of generosity and repentance from both sides. President Trump has weakened the hands of those who seek peace through negotiations and has given a gift to Hamas and to the Israeli settlers.
Editorials & Actions
Anti-Ageism: The Next Big Social Movement
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By Ruth Ray Karpen
A Review of Ending Ageism or How Not to Shoot Old People
By Margaret Morganroth Gullette
Rutgers University Press, 2017
Forty years ago, Erdman Palmore, a senior fellow at the Duke University Center for the Study of Aging and Human Development, published a series of questions – the Facts on Aging Quiz – designed to provoke group discussions about aging and old age. To his surprise, the quiz revealed that most Americans knew very little about the aging process and harbored many misconceptions, most of them negative. Among the most common misconceptions were that the majority of old people (age 65+) were bored, angry, irritated and unable to adapt to change and that at least 10% of them lived in nursing homes. For years Palmore and other gerontologists, used the quiz in classes and public forums to educate people about the facts of aging. They knew from previous research that the more knowledge people gain, the less negative and the more positive attitudes they hold about aging. In 2017, Americans still need to be educated, perhaps even more so, if the proliferation of negative behaviors and hate speech toward old people is any indication. Of all the prejudices that divide us, ageism is still the most universally shared and tolerated. It can be hostile and overt, like the Facebook comment that “anyone over the age of 69 should immediately face a firing squad,” or more subtle and passive aggressive, like the birthday card that makes fun of getting old, the comment that a retired colleague has “let herself go” or your own disgust at the wrinkles and brown spots on your face. These are mere bagatelles, however, compared to the most serious forms of age bias. Consider these facts of contemporary life in America:
Midlife men, especially those once considered at the peak of their ability and experience, are now widely discriminated against in the workplace. In some places, such as tech companies in Silicon Valley, discrimination starts at the age of 35. Among the Facebook groups that focus on older adults – approximately 25,000 members – 74% “vilified” older adults, according to one study, and 37% thought they should be banned from public activities like driving and shopping.
Articles
Trump’s Arrogant Recognition of Jerusalem as Capital of Israel
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Rabbi Michael Lerner’s insightful critique of Trump’s arrogant recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
Editorials & Actions
Thanksgiving 2017: How to be More Effective at a Thanksgiving Gathering
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Ever had a frustrating experience on Thanksgiving with friends or family? Your progressive ideas are dismissed as unrealistic or seem to offend people? Here are some tips on how to navigate that at your Thanksgiving table 2017. First, remember that there is a lot to give thanks for in our world today. We ought not let our celebration of all that is miraculous in the universe, our celebration of the continuing bountiful reality of planet Earth, and our appreciation of all the good people in this would be undermined or ruined by having all the conversation focusing on the Trumpists. So step one: encourage friends and family to spend some time celebrating the good, even at the expense of not watching the t.v. or focusing on everything wrong with the world.
US_Politics
ESRA–the Environmental and Social Responsibility Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
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Imagine a world where politicians are not bought by corporations, and where corporations have a responsibility for the well-being of the environment and people. We have a proposal that will accomplish both—The Environmental and Social Responsibility Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (ESRA).
Articles
Thanksgiving Mythology and Reality
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The Thanksgiving Myth
by Cliff DuRand
[This talk was given at the Unitarian-Universalist Fellowship of San Miguel of Allende, November 23, 2008]
In many ways the Thanksgiving celebration is a unique festivity. As harvest festivals go it’s not particularly unusual: families gathering for a special meal to enjoy the bounty of nature and the fruit of the growing season’s labor. Most societies in the temperate zones of the earth have such harvest festivals. In the more northerly latitudes of Canada it comes in October as it does also in north China at the time of the harvest moon. At the latitudes of the United States Thanksgiving comes in late November, after the harvests are in.
Editorials & Actions
Saudis Can’t Win Their War in Yemen
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Saudi Arabia is embroiled in a war in Yemen that it can’t win. Saudi Arabia seems to have bitten off more than it can chew in Yemen. On March 26, 2015, the kingdom launched Operation Decisive Storm, a broad Arab-Islamic initiative ostensibly aimed at reinstating the government of Yemeni President Abd Rabboh Mansour Hadi, whom insurgents had forced from the capital, Sanaa, a month earlier. More than two and a half years on, Saudi Arabia is no closer to its goal, embroiled in a war that it can’t win. How did the country wind up making such a strategic blunder?
Editorials & Actions
Christian Theologian Gregory Baum 1923-2017 z’l –a great friend of the Jewish people
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Tikkun author Gregory Baum was a powerful Catholic force for reconciliation and care between Catholics and Jews. We at Tikkun mourn his death. When the rabbis of the Mishnah wrote that the righteous of all people and all religions have a place in the world to come, they could have been thinking of people like Baum. –Rabbi Michael Lerner, Editor, Tikkun magazine
Gregory Baum, who as a theological expert at the Second Vatican Council was one of the drafters of the conciliar document Nostra Aetate, the Declaration on the Relation of the Church with Non-Christian Religions, which repudiated anti-Semitism, died Oct. 18 in Montreal at the age of 94.
Editorials & Actions
Tom Engelhardt on Osama bin Laden’s America
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Osama Bin Laden’s America
Niger, 9/11, and Apocalyptic Humiliation
By Tom Engelhardt
Honestly, if there’s an afterlife, then the soul of Osama bin Laden, whose body wasconsigned to the waves by the U.S. Navy back in 2011, must be swimming happily with the dolphins and sharks. At the cost of the sort of spare change that Donald Trump recently offered aides and former campaign officials for their legal troubles in the Russia investigation (on which he’s unlikely to deliver) — a mere $400,000 to $500,000 — bin Laden managed to launch the American war on terror. He did so with little but a clever game plan, a few fanatical followers, and a remarkably intuitive sense of how this country works. He had those 19 mostly Saudi hijackers, a scattering of supporters elsewhere in the world, and the “training camps” in Afghanistan, but his was a ragged and understaffed movement. And keep in mind that his sworn enemy was the country that then prided itself on being the last superpower, the final winner of the imperial sweepstakes that had gone on for five centuries until, in 1991, the Soviet Union imploded. The question was: With such limited resources, what kind of self-destructive behavior could he goad a triumphalist Washington into?
Articles
The (still) Hidden Injuries of Class
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The (still) Hidden Injuries of Class
by Rabbi Michael Lerner
IT’S NO SECRET that the past several decades have witnessed growing economic inequality and deepening economic insecurity for a very large section of working people both in the U.S. and other capitalist countries around the world. Yet the Democrats and their supporters in the liberal and progressive social change movements are living in fantasy land if they think that the way the Trumpites are exacerbating that inequality gap will be sufficient to win them control of the Congress and the presidency by 2021. What most progressive and liberal politicians and movements miss are the hidden injuries of class that become dramatically intensified when the underlying psychological and spiritual dysfunction of global capitalism interact with economic insecurity. Right-wing, ultra-nationalist, fundamentalist, and/or racist movements gain support as more people begin to lose faith in the efficacy of democratic governments and liberal/left politics focused on providing economic entitlements and political rights to those who had been previously disenfranchised while seeming to ignore or even dismiss as “white privilege” or “male privilege” the ways that many people are in pain. For many, the fact that people of color are more likely to get killed by police than whites or that women face outrageous sexual harassment does not register as a “privilege” to those who have their own forms of suffering, both economic and psychological, which make them feel frustrated with their lives and misunderstood and angry at those who tell them that they are the beneficiaries of a racist and sexist system (which they did not create and which they often feel powerless to change). Sadly, many turn to authoritarian leaders in the hope that their own fears and pain can be alleviated, in part because the liberal and progressive world makes them feel “less than” and disrespected.