Tikkun (https://www.tikkun.org/category/archive/2019/)
Considering the Nubian people’s dilemma after the Egyptian revolution of 2011, Hatem Hassan reflects on the obstacles of decolonization: “Moments of political rupture and state transition […] require groups to reconsider decolonization as a set of strategic decisions.”
Lipika Pelham considers modern refugees’ defiance in the face of their host societies’ norms and expectations: “What individual and group identities mean to the migrants must be decided by them only.”
Cat Zavis responds to our world-in-crisis: “The way to manifest your sacredness is to embody sacredness – to treat all life as sacred.”
Jihan McDonald shares a story of an unexpected encounter with strangers in a store that forces the author and all of us to look beyond patriarchy, its binary categories, and the way it keeps us separate from the stranger/other and the Earth itself. “I must get away from HISstory and HERstory and get into THISstory: this story that the Earth is telling itself through us, this story that the Earth is telling the Universe through us, and vice versa.”
Brenda Peterson shares a personal interaction she has with young students in which a tribal method of storytelling surprisingly becomes a method for healing and empowering the children. “When children claim another species as not only their imaginary friends, but also as the animal within them—an ally—doesn’t that change the outer world?”
Rabbi Tirzah Firestone delves deeply into the legacy of fear and trauma that is left in the wake of patriarchy, and argues that, if we are to heal from this trauma, we must reclaim the connections between body-knowing and cerebral understanding, individual and community, and personal and collective memory. Her analysis provides an opportunity for both personal and societal healing that can move us to a more loving future.