Tikkun (https://www.tikkun.org/category/archive/page/57/)
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.
“The affirmation of the divine unity aspires to reveal the unity in the world, in humankind, among nations, and in the entire content of existence, without any dichotomy between action and theory, between reason and the imagination. Even the dichotomies experienced will be unified through a higher enlightenment, which recognizes their aspect of unity and compatibility” (2:411).
It is important to listen. My most frequent mistake is trying to impose my point of view or other personal expectation on a multifaceted world. When we set out to improve life for others without a fundamental understanding of their point of view and quality of experience, we do more harm than good.
We know the earth is beautiful. We equate the livingness of it with beauty. When we mourn the loss of life, we also know that we mourn the loss of beauty. And we look to beauty as a marker of life, even life that has been badly mutilated.
Here in Palestine, we unfortunately face a unique narrative that acquired tremendous power and resulted in a large population of refugees after World War II. The question many Jews are struggling with is how to separate this Zionist narrative from the rich and wonderful history of Jewish contributions to humanity.
The president’s Christian faith compels him to seek common ground with his political opponents in our shared desire to provide a secure and prosperous life for the nation, especially for those who are poor and vulnerable. It requires him to seek strength in our diversity, to explore solutions that bridge the partisan divide.
Despite its obscurity as a federal government regulatory body, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is making decisions now that could determine whether hundreds of millions of people experience malnutrition, hunger, and perhaps even starvation in the coming years.
Babi Yar where are you, no signs that will bring me there,
Hid behind a sickled fist, the savior of the mortified,
Crushing leaves on walking by,
Trees renewed by the black lake of forty-one.
When I was in Jewish Sunday school many years ago, I was taught that Jews arrived in Palestine in the late 1940s to an empty land. It was a lie. Just like being told at an Anglican school that in 1788 the British arrived in an Australia without Aborigines. I was ill-served by both myths.
We must challenge both the right-wing obsession with individual morality (which is combined with a failure to address the far more significant moral issues inherent in economic and military policies), and those who seem to believe that societal injustice somehow gives license to personal irresponsibility.
Maimonides said the highest form of tzedakah (charity) is anonymous giving. I think the best test of a pure commitment to social justice is one’s willingness to do the work with zero expectation of honor or recognition.