Tikkun (https://www.tikkun.org/category/archive/2011/page/11/)
I’ve had the privilege of working with a kaleidoscope of issues from local to global: disarmament, economic justice, labor justice, decolonization, indigenous sovereignty, homelessness, urban ministry, community organizing, gang diversion, immigrant rights, hospice, food justice, water rights, environmental protection, fair housing, literacy, solidarity, inclusion — not to mention all the relational work that glues together (or doesn’t) such work.
Tenured humanists are an endangered species, possibly the last of a dying breed. Even now, adjunct instructors and graduate assistants teach most of the courses. Further, the ubiquitous presence of for-profit and online universities has increased pressure on brick-and-mortar universities to offer students more options for taking courses via the computer screen.
Living in the polarizing atmosphere of the Middle East, I feel the need to reassert the very basics — like affirming that Palestinians and Israelis are all human beings. I say this only somewhat facetiously, as dehumanizing, collective rhetoric justifies violations of many individuals’ basic rights.
Consider the latest toxic spill in Hungary. To put it in terms that anyone can grasp, it is as though we filled up the entire Empire State Building with some of the worst stuff imaginable, tipped the building completely on its side, and then spilled the full contents on the ground. The resulting mess would have filled an area of approximately seventeen square blocks, or slightly over a half-mile in any direction.
When I know that this is what is happening right now and the next moment will be different, as long as I do not resist it, a space opens. This is the space of freedom which activates my intelligence, my free will.
It would appear, however, that Rabbi Papa was perhaps not really completely empathetic with the plight of his community. He was the head rabbi, so of course it was expected of him that he would take some kind of action, like decreeing a day of fasting and prayer. But social activism requires more than a functionary response to society’s maladies.
Awe awakens us to the world. To stay alive as activists, we need to guard against constricting our lives in the face of immense political challenges and acting out of mere ideological habit.
Melanie Klein says the more resentment grows, the less room is left for gratitude, and the more gratitude grows, the less impetus toward resentment. I believe it. I believe it! I’ve experienced it.
Our hypermodern selves are pretty much at a kindergarten level now regarding the understanding of how dynamically interrelated the world is (not to be confused with the sort of connectedness the Internet affords, useful though that may be).
What concerns me is the type of oblivious and self-involved behavior that becomes so pervasive that it saps energy and even breaks the spirits of those who encounter it. I think that there is a contradiction in claiming to work for a better world in the future while at the very same time causing people a lot of pain because of how one acts in the here and now.
For the better part of a year, nearly every Friday afternoon, we have been coming to this ravine in the Palestinian half of Jerusalem. Standing with hundreds of Jews and Palestinians and foreign visitors, young and elderly, and intellectuals and working people, we take part in a protest movement that began spontaneously and refuses to die.
Religions are intrinsically human; we make them in our own image, after our own likeness, often to conjure divine sanction for what we know is evil. Religion isn’t evil, but it is dangerous.
When Tikkun was founded, its name made clear its intent to repair and establish a means by which the values of tikkun olam would have their moral and ethical effect on not only the Jewish community but also the larger American and global ones.
We offer interfaith courses to our rabbinical and ministerial students because we believe that contemporary clergy working in an increasingly interconnected world should possess knowledge of other religious traditions and the skills to interact constructively across religious lines.