To reorient this country’s immigration policy toward generosity and compassion will require serious creativity and vision. Let’s look to art for inspiration!
2013
How to Stop a Deportation
|
Individuals often endure deportation proceedings in isolation, but it doesn’t have to be this way. The stories of Steve Li and Laibar Singh show what is possible when communities mobilize in response.
Articles
How to Stand in Solidarity with African Americans This Weekend
|
I’m writing to YOU to urge you to either come with me on Sunday or go to a nearer African American church this Sunday and let the African American community in your neighborhood or town know that they are not alone, that we understand their fear and stand in solidarity with them. No matter where you came out on the Zimmerman trial, you can still stand in solidarity with African Americans, support them in their grief, and signal to them that they are not alone.
Activism
An End to Easy Answers: Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore’s New Memoir
|
Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore describes decades of queer activism in her new memoir, which is often scarring, startling, and never easy. But Sycamore confronts the problems in her life with real feeling, showing that emotion—if genuine—can often break us out of the corporate-sponsored numbness which so inundates our culture.
2013
A Psychoanalytic Guide to Kabbalah
|
Psychoanalysis and Kabbalah have a lot in common, not the least their ability to profoundly alter our mind-states and influence our actions. In his modern Guide for the Perplexed, renowned psychologist Michael Eigen breaks down the connections between psychoanalysis and Kabbalah, and how they might be used together for our benefit.
Articles
Black Coffee at Noon
|
“Black coffee at noon with fellow sufferers. / The bleak cups squeak in our hands. So do the chairs…” A poem by Kenneth Fields.
Activism
Old Roots, New Branches: Jewish Spiritual Communities and the Rise of Alt-Labor
|
In both the independent Jewish communities and the alt-labor groups, newcomers are more comfortable with the languages of faith and justice than their predecessors.
Articles
Hark! The Psychiatrists Sing, Hoping Glory for that Revised DSM Thing!
|
The DSM-5 is full of labels and misconceptions. Avoid it, if you can. If you can’t, at least know how it manipulates medical information to turn various mind-states into “disorders” and “diseases” which must be “cured.” The truth is, psychiatry can be a wonderful and holistic discipline, when not in the clutches of Pharma and the often useless drugs that industry peddles.
Activism
An Interdependence Day Celebration for July 4
|
Faced with July 4th celebrations that are focused on militarism, ultra-nationalism, and “bombs bursting in air,” many American families who do not share those values turn July 4th into another summer holiday focused on picnics, sports, and fireworks, while doing their best to avoid the dominant rhetoric and bombast.
Articles
Why “Voting Rights, NO, Gay Marriage, YES” from the Supreme Court?
|
The Supreme Court’s decision on voting rights reminds us that racism against Blacks remains far more deeply implanted in America’s economic and political institutions, and in the consciousness of many Americans, than the horrendous homophobia that may now be somewhat receding. Yet it is also a testimony to those in the gay world who refused to be “realistic” when told that gay marriage was unthinkable. We need that same kind of unrealistic thinking to revive the necessary struggle against American racism.
Articles
Dollarocracy and the Fight to Get Money Out of Politics
|
That the corporate-driven “medium” overcomes almost any conceivable “message” is one of the clearest lessons of the election of 2012. A review of Dollarocracy: How the Money and Media Election Complex is Destroying America by John Nichols and Robert W. McChesney
Articles
Anti-Muslim Fervor in the Wake of the Boston Marathon Bombings
|
More than a month has passed since two bombs exploded near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, but the fear and anti-Muslim fervor generated by the attack continues to ripple through the United States.
Articles
Three New Movies: We Steal Secrets, Hannah Arendt, and Fill the Void
|
Hollywood hasn’t been igniting many intellectual sparks lately, but imports and indies are stepping in to fill the void, if I can borrow the title of a current movie. They vary in quality but share an urge to get audiences thinking and discussing. At a time when serious journalism is in crisis, some observers see documentary film as the best hope for putting crucial information and unpopular points of view before the public eye.
Articles
Film Review: Hannah Arendt and the “Banality of Evil”
|
Van Trotta’s film on Arendt and “the banality of evil” not only restores memory but also might remind us of contemporary violent conflicts, including the Israeli-Palestinian one. The narratives told on both sides promote an unremitting hostility that over the past century has stymied efforts to make peace. These narratives, combining personal memory with cultural tradition, have fostered distrust and demonization of the Other. As Rabbi Michael Lerner points out, both sides “embraced nationalist rhetoric …. Both sides were traumatized by their own history, and by outrageous acts of violence perpetrated by the other.”