Tikkun (https://www.tikkun.org/category/archive/page/10/)
PAUSE FOR A MOMENT and consider a curriculum that extends beyond merely practical schooling, past our standard materially-oriented instruction that fixates almost exclusively on the academic skills that promote professional success. Consider instead a curriculum centered in deep connectedness, a curriculum of love.
Why we (re)member
JACQUELINE IS A twenty-one-year-old Black female. She is introspective and soft-spoken, reflecting her modest, humble Christian upbringing where one speaks only when spoken to and lowers one’s eyes in the presence of elders. Her curly brown hair is often straightened or pulled back in a bun and dark- rimmed glasses frame her skin, the color of butterscotch. Often dressed in university apparel, she came to the university from a community college. When we first met, she was a junior studying early childhood education and minoring in sociology.
Over the past year, I preached a sermon series on the Torah’s seven days of creation at First Unitarian Congregational Society in Brooklyn, NY. In this series I lifted up the images of natural beauty and ecological abundance in this passionate text—a text that is too often claimed by (and ceded to) hard-line creationists and climate change deniers. Far from the conservative politics that such voices promote, I see the Genesis text as a call for human humility and environmental stewardship. It highlights the gorgeous and fragile gift we have been given in our planet Earth, celebrates its diversity, and casts humans as merely one thread in its living web. My interpretations in this series are partly my own midrash and partly the insights of traditional commentators. The following article is adapted from a sermon I delivered on the sixth day of creation, the creation of land animals and humans.
Comments delivered at Yom Kippur service on Sept 23, 2015 at Beyt Tikkun Synagogue Without Walls in Berkeley, CA
THERE ARE SO MANY WAYS to read and interpret Torah and then to share that with others. We can read it literally and stop there. We can see what Torah commentators wrote about these texts over the past two thousand years of conversation among the generations of Jews who treasured these texts even as they re-read them in light of their own developing understanding. And we can look at it from the perspective of what lessons we can take from it—what we can extract from its meaning for how to live and understand life today—undoubtedly placing our own spin on it. It is in this latter way that I am engaging with the story of Sarah and Hagar.
We welcome your responses to our articles. Send letters to the editor to letters@tikkun.org.
Letters
[brclear]
Chanukah Supplement
[brclear]
Clinton’s Victory and Ours
Editorial: The Sixties Generation Returns BY MICHAEL LERNER
Clinton and the ID BY PETER GABEL
Memo to Clinton BY GAR ALPEROVITZ
Memo to the Tikkun Community BY TOM HAYDEN
[brclear]
Articles
Dodging the Bisexual Boss BY MARIAN NEUDEL
The Future of Auschwitz BY JAMES E. YOUNG
Beyond Mitzrayim: Egypt, Israel, and Middle East Peace BY LETTY COTTIN POGREBIN
The Missing Melody BY GERSHOM GORENBERG
[brclear]
Special Focus: Nationalism and Ethnic Particularism
Nationalism and Identity in (Former) East Germany BY MARLA STONE
Jews and Latinos BY TSVI BLANCHARD
Roundtable on Nationalism in a World of “Ethnic Cleansing” BY MICHAEL WALZER, TODD GITLIN, JEAN BETHKE ELSHTAIN, MARSHALL BERMAN, GAIL KLIGMAN, AND BOGDAN DENITCH
Sport, African Cultures, Value for Money: A Return to South Africa BY JENEFER SHUTE
[brclear]
Fiction
Heartless Willie BY LEO LITWAK
[brclear]
Personal Essay
Mikveh BY SHIRA DICKER
[brclear]
Reviews
REGINA MORANTZ-SANCHEZ on Ellen Chesler’s Woman of Valor
DANIEL LAZARE on Michael Crichton’s Rising Sun
CHRISTINE STANSELL on Willima R. Taylor’s in Pursuit of Gotham
ARTHUR WASKOW on Marge Piercy’s He, She & It
[brclear]
Letters
Publisher’s Page
Editorials: America’s Shame Continues; Mubarak’s Plan; Gay Equality Should Not Be Delayed
Editorial: Editor’s Note; On Passionate Reason
[brclear]
Articles
Crossing the Street in Chile BY ARIEL DORFMAN
Divine Conversations BY JUDITH PLASKOW
Edward Said: Discourse and Palestinian Rage BY MARK KRUPNICK
The Bough Breaks BY LORE SEGAL
The Convent and Solidarity BY DAWID WARZAWSKI
My Daughter and Arafat BY YAEL GVIRTZ
But All Men Are Brothers, Bogdan K. BY JOSEPH EDELMAN
[brclear]
Special Features
Looking Forward to the Nineties BY MICHAEL LERNER
Biting the Rubber Bullet BY MILTON VIORST
Private Pleasures and Public Virtues BY JANE DELYNN
Bushed and Bewildered BY ROBERT L. BOROSAGE
Twilight of the Reaganauts BY CARRIE RICKEY
Remember Central America? BY SAUL LANDAU
A Decade of Unlearning BY AMY E. SCHWARTZ
[brclear]
Poetry
Intifada BY SHIRLEY KAUFMAN
First There Was Light and That Begins the Narrative BY BARBARA GOLDBERG
Dead, Dinner, or Naked BY EVAN ZIMROTH
The Night Fireman BY L.S. ASEKOFF
[brclear]
Current Debate: Jews and Christmas
Taking Down the Christmas Tree BY ANNE ROIPHE
Dancing with the Dark BY ARTHUR WASKOW
[brclear]
Fiction
Premonitions BY ELISHA PORAT
Kaddish by the Sea BY DEBORAH SHOUSE
[brclear]
Film Review
Dead Poets Society by Peter Weir BY EVAN CARTON
[brclear]
Book Reviews
What Dinah Thought by Deena Metzger BY MARGO PELLER FEELEY
Rediscovering American Values by Frances Moore Lappe and Fluctuating Fortunes by David Vogel BY FRED SIEGEL
Korea: The Unknown War by Bruce Cumings and Jon Halliday BY BARTON J. BERNSTEIN
Letters
Publisher’s Page
Editorials: The Pro-Flag and Anti-Abortion Pathology; Editor’s Notes
[brclear]
Articles
Blue Skies: Reflections on Hollywood and the Holocaust BY LESLIE EPSTEIN
To Blacks and Jews: Hab Rachmones BY JAMES A. MCPHERSON
Mornings and Mourning: A Kaddish Journal BY E.M. BRONER
Jews, Jewish Studies, and the American Humanities BY ARNOLD EISEN
Israeli Literature’s Achilles Heel BY HANAN HEVER
Scratching the Belly of the Beast BY ALAN FREEMAN AND BETTY MENSCH
Death of Popeye BY SHANA PENN
[brclear]
Special Feature: The Pathology of the Occupation
Psychological Dimensions of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict BY MICHAEL LERNER
Just Legal: Human Rights in the Territories BY DEDI ZUCKER
Plant a Tree, Get Married, Have a Child, Build a House BY AVIGDOR FELDMAN
The Decline of the Labor Party BY HAIM BARAM
[brclear]
Poetry
Gaza BY RACHEL TZVIA BACK
Shards BY ENID SHOMER
[brclear]
Fiction
In Memory of Jane Fogarty BY JAY NEUGEBOREN
[brclear]
Book Reviews
Leaving Brooklyn by Lynne Sharon Schwartz BY MARCIE HERSHMAN
Environmentalism and the Future of Progressive Politics by Robert C. Paehlke and Ecology in the 20th Century by Anna Bramwell BY ROBERT GOTTLIEB
The Conquest of Politics by Benjamin Barber BY JOSH HENKIN
[brclear]
Film Reviews
Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing BY MICHAEL ERIC DYSON
Steven Spielberg’s Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade BY HARVEY R. GREENBERG
[brclear]
Current Debate: Abortion
Being Ambivalent About Abortion BY RUTH ANNA PUTNAM
A Response to Ruth Anna Putnam BY CAROLE JOFFE
Letters
[brclear]
Publisher’s Page
[brclear]
The Editor: A Personal Note
[brclear]
Editorials: Revolutions: France 1789, China 1989; Flashing the “V” Sign: Sedition in Israel
[brclear]
Articles
An Interview with Abbie Hoffman BY BENNY AVNI
Abortion: Historically Compromised BY RUTH ROSEN
Abortion: Bad Choices BY LARRY LETICH
Abortion in Jewish Law BY RACHEL BIALE
“thirtysomething” BY JAY ROSEN
What Kind of State is a Jewish State? BY MICHAEL WALZER
Can Judaism Survive the Twentieth Century? BY JACOB NEUSNER
Is Psychiatry Going Out of Its Mind? BY MICHAEL J. BADER
Assault on the Couch BY STEPHEN SELIGMAN
Toward a feminist Jewish Reconstruction of Monotheism BY MARCIA FALK
A Response to Marcia Falk BY LAWRENCE S. HOFFMAN
After “The Last Intellectuals” BY RUSSELL JACOBY
Indian Giver BY ANDREW BARD SCHMOOKLER
Jean-Paul Sartre: Hated Conscience of His Century BY JOHN GERASSI
The Rabbi and the Abyss of AIDS BY JOSEPH A. EDELHEIT
The Politics of Translation BY CHANA BLOCH
Wherein Is Related My Encounter with a Swabian Windmill BY JOSEPH EDELMAN
[brclear]
Conference Papers
Tikkun and Progressive Liberalism BY GARY PELLER
The Real Issue Behind Who-Is-a-Jew BY DAVID BIALE
The Whole Truth BY ANNE ROIPHE
Black-Jewish Relations: A New Vision BY CHERIE BROWN
Blacks and Jews in the Political Arena BY BARNEY FRANK
Blacks and Jews: troubled Times on the College Campuses BY CHAIM SEIDLER-FELLER
Black-Jewish Dialogue BY CORNEL WEST
Class, Women, and “The Black-Jewish Question” BY MELANIE KAYE/KANTROWITZ
[brclear]
Poetry
Dust BY SUSAN LITWACK
My Story BY DAVID IGNATOW
Covenant BY SHARON KESSLER
[brclear]
Fiction
The Brass Ring BY NICHOLAS DELBANCO
[brclear]
Reviews
All Consuming Images by Stuart Ewen BY TODD GITLIN
The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order, 1930-80 edited by Steven Fraser and Gary Gerstle BY THEDA SKOCPOL
The Cultural History of the French Revolution by Emmet Kennedy BY TONY JUDT
[brclear]
Current Debate: Is Modernism Destructive? Why Postmodernism Still Matters BY JEFFREY C. ISAAC
A Response to Jeffrey C. Isaac BY MARSHALL BERMAN
Letters
[brclear]
Publisher’s Page
[brclear]
Editorials: The Destruction of the Planet; Victimology
[brclear]
Articles
A Conversation with the PLO BY NABIL SHAAT AND MICHAEL LERNER
New Age Mythology: A Jewish Response to Joseph Campbell BY TAMAR FRANKIEL
Progress: The Last Superstition BY CHRISTOPHER LASCH
The Malaise of Jewish Education BY ISA ARON
The Two Banks of Jerusalem BY ROGER FRIEDLAND AND RICHARD HECHT
Slouching Toward Pressology BY CARLIN ROMANO
[brclear]
Special Feature: A Distance from the Holocaust
Visiting the Burnt House BY CHANA BLOCH
Protecting the Dead BY FRANCINE PROSE
Nelly BY MIRIAM AKAVIA
Resistance to the Holocaust BY PHILLIP LOPATE
Don’t Resist BY YEHUDA BAUER
A Critique of Phillip Lopate: What is the Meaning of This to You? BY DEBORAH E. LIPSTADT
Phillip Lopate Responds to Bauer and Lipstadt
[brclear]
Conference Papers
American Jews and Israel BY IRVING HOWE
Now and Then BY GRACE PALEY
The Cry for Justice BY ALFRED KAZIN
Women and Tikkun/tikkun BY JUDY CHICAGO
Jewish Progressives and the Jewish Community BY IRENA KLEPFISZ
Anti-Semitism Parading as Anti-Zionism BY DANIEL LANDES
[brclear]
Poetry
Five Parables BY STEPHEN MITCHELL
The Uses of Laughter BY ANID DAME
Porno-Drive-In, Knoxville, TN BY WILLA SCHNEBERG
Schizophrenia BY SHLOMI HARIF NABLUS
[brclear]
Fiction
Sworn Statements: The Guillotine BY MARCIE HERSHMAN
[brclear]
Reviews
The Wrath of Jonah by Rosemary Radford Ruether and Herman J. Ruether BY DAVID BIALE
The Company of Critics by Michael Walzer BY CASEY BLAKE
Reunion: A Memoir by Tom Hayden BY HAROLD JACOBS
[brclear]
Current Debate
Is Tikkun Too Conservative? Jesse Lemisch v.s. Tikkun
Letters
[brclear]
Publisher’s Page
[brclear]
Editorials: Mississippi Burning; Shamir’s “Peace Plan”; Rabin as Pharaoh; No Arms for the Saudis
[brclear]
Articles
The Transformative Possibilities of Legal Culture BY PETER GABEL
Killing the Princess: The Offense of a Bad Defense BY ELISA NEW
The Nostalgia Disease BY SVEN BIRKERTS
Welfare Reform: Maximum Feasible Exaggeration BY HOWARD JACOB KARGER AND DAVID STOESZ
Toward a Jewish Dramatic Theory BY DAVID COLE
Twice an Outsider: On Being Jewish and a Woman BY VIVIAN GORNICK
Malamud BY RICHARD ELMAN
The Problem with Halakhic Ethics BY MOSHE ISH SHALOM
The Bible’s Sleeping Beauty BY ARTHUR WASKOW
[brclear]
Special Feature: The Tikkun Conference
Introduction: The Meaning of the Conference
Claiming Out Rightful Role BY NAN FINK
A Worldview for Jewish Progressives BY MICHAEL LERNER
What Rides the Wind BY MARGE PIERCY
Negotiations Now BY ABBA EBAN
A Call to Action BY LETTY COTTIN POGREBIN
Phony Gardens with Real Toads in Them BY TODD GITLIN
The Anti-Communist Past of the Neoconservative Present BY ILENE PHILIPSON
Theses on Liberalism BY ELI ZARETSKY
Victimology BY JESSICA BENJAMIN
[brclear]
Poetry
Hospice BY L.S. ASEKOFF
Anger BY CAROLINE FINKELSTEIN
The Wrestler BY RICHARD S. CHESS
[brclear]
Fiction
Edict BY EDITH PEARLMAN
The Confession BY ROBERT COHEN
[brclear]
Reviews
On Vietnam War Films BY JENEFER P. SHUTE
[brclear]
Films
Picasso’s Man with a Sheep BY MARX W. WARTOFSKY
Deceptive Distinctions by Cynthia Fuchs Epstein BY JOAN WALLACH SCOTT
Women Adrift by Joan Meyerowitz BY ELIZABETH LUNBECK
On Bended Knee by Mark Hertsgaard BY JEFFERSON MORLEY
The Ordination of Women as Rabbis by Simon Greenberg (ed.) BY DANIEL H. GORDIS
Zion and State by Mitchell Cohen BY MADELINE TRESS
[brclear]
Current Debate: Nature and Domination
On Autonomy and Humanity’s Relation to Nature BY MICHAEL E. ZIMMERMAN
A Response to Michael Zimmerman by STEVEN VOGEL