Tikkun (https://www.tikkun.org/category/about/)
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These are difficult times for anyone seeking a world of love and justice. Yet I continue to believe that within the next hundred years, those who survive the many hurtful human forces and the massive destruction of the environment will be living in a more loving and just world.
Here is what we mean by a Tikkunish article:
*It approaches issues with intellectual sophistication yet is understandable to anyone who has graduated college and makes a contribution to those who are interested in tikkun olam–the healing and transformation of our world toward a more generous, loving, environmentally sensitive socially and economically just, or spiritually alive and compassionate world. AND/OR
*It in some way brings a compassionate frame to a complex issue, reflecting empathy, or psychological complexity, or a spiritual dimension, which raises new ways of thinking about issues that are currently being discussed or ought to be discussed. AND/OR
It helps us understand some aspect of reality in a way that makes less able to fit traditional leftie dichotomies, e.g. helping to see that Israel/Palestine can best be understood through a lens of two peoples who have been victims of PTSD through their existence rather than just faulting one side or sounding as if one side is entirely evil and the other side entirely good. AND/OR
It gives us a new perspective on some reality that our readers are unlikely to have heard before and uses that perspective to give us some guidelines for activists or creative social theorists
AND/OR
It is funny in a way that doesn’t require one to be in some “in” crowd to get and appreciate the joke AND DOES NOT depend on putting down some real world person like Trump or other detestable leaders or culture figures
AND/OR
*It is spiritually or psychologically innovative, opening our eyes to elements of existence about which our readers might want to learn (e.g. important new developments in physics or astronomy or biology, without falling into an implicit scientism in which anything not subject to empirical verification, falsification, or measurement is deemed irrational or meaningless)
AND/Or
*It beautifully and imaginatively re-presents to us some aspect of daily life or some unusual experiences in a way that opens our eyes to the beauty of the universe or of some aspect of human experience, either through new analyses, or poetry, or fiction or by reviewing books that help strengthen the author’s analysis. AND/OR
* It reinterprets an established religion or religious text in a way that helps people outside of that tradition or text-world to see what is beautiful in it or in a compassionate way points out what needs to be transcended.
This quarterly issue of the magazine is available both online and in hard copy. The full online articles are only available to subscribers and NSP members — subscribe or join now to read the rest! You can also buy a paper copy of this single print issue. Members and subscribers get online access to the magazine. If you are a member or subscriber who needs guidance on how to register, email miriam@tikkun.org or call 510-644-1200 for help — registration is easy and you only have to do it once.
Non-subscribers: This forum is available as featured open-access content on our publisher’s website. What’s Next for Israel/Palestine? An Introduction
MICHAEL LERNER
Until Two States Exist, Palestinians Deserve Voting Rights in Israel
DAVID BIALE
The Logic of Abandoning the Two-States Campaign
REBECCA SUBAR
Nonviolence, BDS, and the Dream of Beloved Community in Palestine/Israel
LYNN GOTTLIEB
We Need to Make Peace More Lucrative Than Occupation
RAJA SHEHADEH
Israel Can’t Have It Both Ways: Recognize Palestine or Grant Equal Rights
SAM BAHOUR AND TONY KLUG
The Only Road to Sustainable Peace: Pluralistic Democracy
MAZIN QUMSIYEH
If You Want Justice, Support All Forms of Nonviolent Pressure on Israel
REBECCA VILKOMERSON
Escaping the Two-State Snare
IAN S. LUSTICK
Moving Beyond the One-State/Two-State Debate
ANDREW ARATO
Israel’s Human Shields Defense: Shielding Israeli War Crimes
OVADIA EZRA
A New Horizon for Peace: An Israel-Palestine Union
OREN YIFTACHEL
State-Building Can Pave the Way to Statehood: Lessons from Kurdistan
REUVEN KIMELMAN
Israeli Elections Won’t End Oppression in Palestine/Israel
AMER SHURRAB
Closing Thoughts on “What’s Next for Israel/Palestine?”
MICHAEL LERNER
Online Exclusives
These online exclusives are freely accessible articles that are part of an ongoing special series associated with Tikkun’s Fall 2015 print issue, What’s Next For Israel/Palestine. A Two-State Solution is the Only Option
ALON BEN-MEIR
The Legacy of Jewish Trauma
TIRZAH FIRESTONE
“The Ploughshare Without Fear”: Remembering Martin Buber (1878-1965)
CAROL ASCHER
Communities of Faith Must Join to Demand an Arms Embargo
TIMOTHY R. PRISK
Moving Beyond Despair
DOV WAXMAN
The Problem with Solutions
NOAH HABEEB
On the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Back to Democratic Basics
SAM SUSSMAN
If you appreciated these free web-only articles, please help enable us to keep up this important work by becoming a print subscriber or offering a donation.
The United States and Terrorism: An Ironic Perspective
Ron Hirschbein
Rowman and Littlefield, 2015
This is a deeply insightful analysis of how self-destructive and dangerous to all humanity U.S. responses to and engagements with terrorism have been. For many decades, Ron Hirschbein has been an intellectual architect of Concerned Philosophers for Peace. He asserts that the U.S. campaign against terrorism has helped produce the very violent world it was supposed to prevent. Terrorism is most widely understood as the intended infliction of violence upon noncombatants or civilians, so it is ironic that most of the Western media fail to notice that the United States and its allies have been engaged in terrorism since World War II, despite sanctimoniously condemning the terrorist actions of others. Hirschbein gives us an alternative history of the past seventy years.
Tikkun is the winner of the prestigious 2014 “Magazine of the Year: Overall Excellence in Religion Coverage” award from the Religion Newswriters Association! Managing Editor Alana Yu-lan Price accepts the RNA award on behalf of Tikkun. Credit: Dawn Cherie Araujo. Tikkun caught the eye of the Religion Newswriters Association (RNA) with our special issue on immigration, which took discussions of spiritual religious principles and values beyond the confines of temples, churches, mosques, and synagogues, and instead debated their application in political and social realms. Reading Puck Lo’s report on a Sikh temple that mobilized to protect a worshiper from deportation, a diverse array of articles on why scripture should energize faith communities to fight for more caring policies on immigration, Ross Hyman’s impassioned article about why it’s a Jewish obligation to stand up for collective bargaining rights, and the many other wonderful contributions to that issue, the judges at the RNA decided to offer this special honor to Tikkun. The immigration issue lauded by the RNA was just one example of the deep convergence of religious and political thought that makes Tikkun powerful and unique.
Walking to Jerusalem
Pedometer attached to her belt, your mother, spry and strong
at eighty, joins the other Methodist Church members
in calculating the 5,915 miles, no matter the weather, to add up
all the way from Linesville, Pennsylvania to Jerusalem. They need not worry about miracles or pausing
at the signs of the cross. They need not stop for security
to check their purses for weapons. They need no visa
nor baggage, no money to exchange for shekels, no guide-
book, no guide. They need no ancient tongue or prophecies.
by Admiel Kosman
We fastened ourselves to the holy texts
and witnessed wonders,
great was the city that lay before us
lights stretched like ornamental carpets
at night when we entered this cartoon city
within the holy texts
we saw this exquisite place,
spires, towers, gates, niches, stairways. On the stairs the people of the city,
caricatures on parchment, emerged,
received us in friendship
with welcoming faces,
their disasters
very much like ours. Happily in their dream
they also dressed us fed us bread
and were so glad
to serve us, free, the living
waters from the stream.
From Ma ani yakhol/What I Can, 1995
Adapted from the Hebrew by the author with Lisa Katz. Translator Lisa Katz is editor of the Israeli pages of the Rotterdam-based Poetry International Web.
Human Nature & Jewish Thought
Alan L. Mittleman
Princeton University Press, 2015
Jews and Genes: The Genetic Future in Contemporary Jewish Thought
Edited by Elliot N. Dorff and Laurie Zoloth
Jewish Publication Society, 2015
One of the popular ways to dismiss plans for healing and transforming the world is to assert that the distortions we see in the contemporary world are an inevitable outcome of a fixed human nature. In his careful examination of Jewish thought, Alan Mittleman insists on the centrality of moral personhood not constrained by any set of conditions external to the process of ethical reflection and intuition. Not only are reductionist programs incoherent, he argues, they are also absurd. He argues for real freedom and transcendence but simultaneously insists on our human limitations: “We are holy—and capable of unimaginable evil.” Holding both, he suggests, is one of the great strengths of the Jewish tradition. Some genetic diseases are more prevalent among Ashkenazic Jews than among the general population, largely because Jews were always a small population and historically predominantly married only other Jews.
by David Cleveland, Charles Eisenstein, Arundhati Roy, and David Fideler
Nobody Home: Writing, Buddhism, and Living in Places
Gary Snyder, in conversation with Julia Martin
Trinity University Press, 2014
Nobody Home presents three interviews conducted by South African scholar and writer Julia Martin with the poet Gary Snyder that take place from the late 1980s to 2010, along with a selection of letters between them covering the same period. Martin was a young academic in apartheid South Africa when she first reached out to Snyder, motivated by her critical work on his poetry and thinking. Martin’s study and practice of Buddhism and her intuitive grasp of Snyder’s importance as a forefather of a growing international movement of spiritual environmentalism provoked Snyder to respond with sympathy and encouragement. They had an instant rapport in letters, which led to the interviews. This is a great period for Snyder, as his thinking about the nondualism of self/no-self and its relation to the world and all phenomena is culminating in his concentration on finishing Mountains and Rivers Without End, one of the crowning works of his generation of poets.
This quarterly issue of the magazine is available both online and in hard copy. Everyone can read the first few paragraphs of each piece, but the full articles are only available to subscribers and NSP members — subscribe or join now to read the rest! You can also buy a paper copy of this single print issue. We sent an email and postcard to all current members and subscribers explaining how to register for our members-only area. If you remember the username and password you created for Tikkun, you’re all set.
Selections by Philip Terman
Swimming in the Rain
Swaddled and sleeved in water,
I dive to the rocky bottom and rise
as the first drops of sky
find the ocean. The waters above
meet the waters below,
the sweet and the salt,
and I’m swimming back to the beginning. The forecasts were wrong. Half the sky is dark
but it keeps changing. Half the stories
I used to believe are false.
Tikkun received a number of letters and essays in response to Peter Gabel’s Summer 2015 print article, The Spiritual Dimension of Social Justice: Transforming the Legal Arena. We publish them here in full. To join the conversation, write letters@tikkun.org. Essays
A Response from the River Jordan
by John Henry Schlegel
A Reply to Peter Gabel and John Schlegel
by John Farago
Spiritual Evolution and the Law
by Bruce Peterson
The Problem is that Life is Imperfect
by James P. Gray
History and Transcendence
by Gary Peller
Letters from Mika Dashman and Glen T. Martin. If you appreciate these free web-only articles, please help us continue publishing important work by becoming a print subscriber or offering a donation.
Adam Morris is managing editor of Tikkun. He has contributed work to numerous literary and cultural publications.