Tikkun (https://www.tikkun.org/category/articles/)
In 2020, when Emma Quayle and I started vagabonding in earnest, one of our criteria for what we wanted our next steps to be as we journeyed further was “unmasking the impact of patriarchy and allowing us to experience first-hand the intensity of its manifestation.”
Observations, feelings, needs, and requests, which many of us within the NVC network end up referring to as OFNR, are some of the most basic building blocks of NVC. Within the circles of people who study and practice NVC, a divergence exists about whether these elements are enough
Neoliberal capitalism has created a culture of isolation and empty spectacle — and driven the comeback of fascism.
You can now listen to the powerful words of selected Tikkun.org articles and poetry on multiple streaming platforms.
It’s sad but true that people who have been brutalized often end up being brutalizers of others. It happens in the U.S., it has happened to many Israelis, and it happens throughout the world, including the Arab and Muslim worlds. While we support the right of the Palestinians to their own national self-determination and the right of Jews to their own national self-determination, we’ve never romanticized the Palestinian people or the Israeli people (or for that matter, any other national entity including the U.S., U.K. etc.). https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/23/palestinian-authority-hamas-torture-peaceful-critics-rights-group-says?fbclid=IwAR3beQ2rb6udS-EyZxMhooZsh0Sy-qOFbwWmVujj3eSkayR9HaptWlUXHew
https://www.timesofisrael.com/report-details-torture-by-pa-and-hamas-in-their-parallel-police-states/?utm_source=The+Daily+Edition&utm_campaign=daily-edition-2018-10-23&utm_medium=email&fbclid=IwAR2fxubZZ_yX4NLpur7_yyBUAJ4lbbaG-cqe9W1VIHjOd-k8-axy240rVrg
Rabbi Michael Lerner rabbilerner.tikkun@gmail.com
After Kavanaugh’s nomination, Jim Sleeper postulates that the Democrats did quite as much to widen the civic and political vacuum into which Trump has swept as did the follies of conservatives.
Rabbi Phyllis Berman shares her reflections on the #MeToo movement in powerful support for Dr. Christine Blasely Ford.
Yossi Khen and Jeff Warner take a closer look at the tipping point that prompted Democrats to start examining Israel’s actions with respect to their principles, and what’s being done today to drive change.
Review by Bill Roller of Daniel Ellsberg’s book The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner
It’s Midnight in America
There was a game that children in the southern Midwest played
during the early days of the Cold War. It was called, “What Time is it Mr. Fox?” It was a version of “tag” and went something like this. We children gathered at the brick wall in the school yard. One of us was given the role of “Mr. Fox”, and that child faced the brick wall, hands on the wall and eyes closed. As the rest of us approached the wall slowly, one step at a time, we asked, “What time is it, Mr. Fox?” Mr. Fox replied
“Five-thirty” and we took another step forward.
The nonviolent protest will gather at the Supreme Court at 8:30 am on Monday.
[Editor’s Note: At a moment when religion is being blamed for Trumpism, it is good to hear some alternative perspectives. While the perspective presented is different from some of the reasons a portion of our readership embrace a wide variety of spiritually progressive religions (and many do not embrace any religion), it nevertheless deserves to be given serious attention.–Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor, Tikkun . rabbilerner.tikkun@gmail.com]
Religion is Emotional Therapy
by Stephen T. Asma
Religious extremism comes in many forms. Sometimes it clings to arcane doctrines despite mountains of scientific evidence. Such was the case during the famous Scopes Monkey trial of 1925. John Scopes was slapped with a $100 fine for teaching evolution in Dayton Tennessee, violating a law making it a misdemeanor to “teach any theory that denies the story of the divine creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals.” Even though Scopes lost the trial, his defense attorney Clarence Darrow successfully put prosecutor William Jennings Bryan on the stand and demonstrated the tortured and impossible logic of scriptural literalism.
Can you feel the Earth quaking? Simon Mont’s prose asks us to envision a beautiful world beyond the pain of oppression and trauma.
This past week the Jerusalem District Court decided that the Mitzpeh Kramim settlement—which no one denies was built on private Palestinian land, and no one contests that that land was taken from the original Palestinian owners by extra-legal means—can remain in the hands of the current settler residents. The reason the court gave was that the deal that was made between the settlers and the World Zionist Organization, who had been given ownership over the land by the army, was executed in “good faith”—tom lev in Hebrew, pure or whole heart. “Good faith” as we shall see, is nothing more than a legal term of art rather than a phrase which describes the actual intentions of any of the parties between the initial Palestinian owners and the current Jewish settler owners. It being the week before Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, the idea of good faith or pure heart is in the front of peoples’ minds. Maimonides in his Laws of Repentance writes: “Anyone who confesses verbally but does not commit in their heart to abandon [their previous actions], behold this is like one who ritually immerses [in a mikveh for purification purposes] and is holding vermin [which is radically impure] in their hand, and the immersion is not effective until they throw the vermin away.” This powerful illustration sets in stark relief the type of “good faith” that the court was satisfied with.
Eric Kandel explores the effects of aging on memory and the brain.
