What Comes Next for Spiritual Progressives?

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America’s political dysfunction is a symptom of a national identity crisis. Americans are drawn to incompatible views of human purpose. I appreciate how Gary Dorrien (writing in both this issue of Tikkun and in The Obama Question) frames the broken mirror of national identity in two panes. In one is yearning for unrestricted liberty to acquire wealth; in the other is yearning for self-government—that is, a desire for rightful power to apply core values in the creation of public policies and practices, including those that pertain to wealth. Not only do large blocs form around these two yearnings, but many individuals seem internally split by the competing desires. They want leadership, but no clarity comes from political or religious leaders. If this crisis goes unsettled for much longer, the system will founder. That fact should cheer no one, for in the present state of affairs, tyranny, not revolution and reconstruction, will follow.

2012

Reclaiming the Radical Imagination: Reform Beyond Electoral Politics

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It is time for progressives and others to shift the critique of Obama away from an exclusive focus on the policies and practices of his administration and instead develop a new language for politics—one with a longer historical purview and a deeper understanding of the ominous forces that now threaten any credible notion of the United States as an aspiring democracy.

2012

Be a Progressive Democrat!

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Election year is different from all other years. The media will invite progressives into the fray. They’ll goad us, for ratings’ sake: Do you love Obama? Hate him? Are your politics pure?

2012

The Need for Progressive Realism

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Yes, Obama was moderate, and still the lofty sounding rhetoric made us feel that change really was possible. Hope was in the air. With time, we didn’t so much argue about the policies of his administration, many of which seemed fair and forward-looking. Rather, we took issue with the unwillingness to fight, the folding of the hand before the cards were played, the untoward interest in compromise with those who sought his political demise, and the combination of heady discourse with reliance on advisers peddling conventional economic wisdom geared toward the rich.

2012

Obama in Question: A Progressive Critique and Defense

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Four years ago we seemed to take a shortcut to some kind of national redemption. The same nation that enslaved African Americans until 1865 and imposed a vicious century-long regime of segregation and everyday abuse upon them elected an African American to its presidency. The same nation that elected twelve slave masters to its presidency elected a president whose wife was a descendant of American slaves. The same nation that never would have elected a veteran of the Civil Rights Movement to national office fulfilled some of the movement’s most idealistic hymnody.

2012

Why America Needs a Left

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The United States today should be engaged in a great debate, not so much over who the next president will be, or over the role of government in economic life, but over the very identity and future orientation of the country itself. On the one hand, powerful right-wing voices argue that America is an essentially conservative country. On the other hand, other voices, led by the president, argue that “there’s not a liberal America and a conservative America—there is the United States of America!” implying that we are an essentially centrist country.

2012

Sabbath Practice as Political Resistance: Building the Religious Counterculture

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One thing Abraham Joshua Heschel and Karl Marx had in common, aside from having both been spectacularly bearded Eastern European Jews, is the shared insight that time is the ultimate form of human wealth on this earth. Without time, all other forms of wealth are meaningless. It is this insight about time—patently obvious but frequently forgotten—that makes keeping a Sabbath day both spiritually profound and politically radical.

Activism

A Salvo Against War, Torture, and Racism: The Art of Mariano Gonzales

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Working in political isolation from most of his artistic colleagues in Alaska, Mariano Gonzales continues a noble tradition of critical visual consciousness that goes back many centuries and that thrives in the early decades of the twenty-first century. His politically and socially charged images challenge his audiences to think about the major issues of their times.

Articles

Coming Out on Yom Kippur

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The moment I put the tallis around my shoulders, my service started. Immediately, I was taken up in the embrace of the rich cloth, the whole texture, the weave of my life, my family, the renewal of New Orleans. As soon as I felt the cloth on my shoulders, and the fringes between my fingers, I knew that the tallit is for both men and women. As I sat there, I felt every bit a woman, a beautiful Jewish woman in a beautiful Jewish tallis.

Articles

High Holiday Workbook 2012

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To acknowledge our own screw-ups is an important first step. But the High Holidays are not about getting ourselves to feel guilty, but rather engaging in a process of change. If we don’t make those changes internally and in our communities and in our society, all the breast-beating and self-criticism become an empty ritual. In many situations and relationships, you are not the only part of the problem—but for the sake of this process, it is your part that you are to focus on, not the part contributed by your partner, spouse, parents, children, friends, etc. Begin to work on your part during these ten days of repentance/teshuvah!

Articles

In Praise of Baseball

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After decades of observation and outright devotion, I believe that even in these difficult days for the sport, baseball continues to instruct on our most fundamental human virtues and values. More to the point, I believe baseball far more that any other team sport embodies and celebrates many of the principles at the core of what it means to be a progressive, and especially a spiritually minded progressive.