Tikkun (https://www.tikkun.org/category/articles/page/39/)
Are those who seek faith healing deluded? Not entirely. Although no amount of faith can regenerate a lost limb, faith can indeed help a person overcome crippling pain. The natural brain mechanisms that allow this to occur are increasingly understood. Believing in a Higher Power—even a fictional one—can cure ills amenable to the placebo response.
In calling for a general strike on November 2, Occupy Oakland took quite a risk. Generations have passed since the last wave of general strikes in the United States, and in many ways political consciousness could not be more different. Historically, mass labor actions have depended on large-scale organization among workers, a clear list of demands, and broad community support. Moreover, changes in labor laws and union membership rates make the kind of well-structured actions seen during the height of the labor movement all but impossible. Bottom line: if you’re looking for reasons why November 2 was not a truly traditional general strike, they’re not hard to find.
Especially this year, here in Guatemala, Yom Kippur is not so much the Day of Atonement as it is the Day of Discipline. For if there’s one lesson I have taken so far from my short time here in Guatemala, it is that of discipline.
In popular imagination, jazz emerged from the bordellos of Storyville, the legendary red-light district where piano-players like Jelly Roll Morton entertained the prostitutes and their sporting men. But South Rampart itself was a prior birthplace to jazz along with neighboring Back a’ Town…. Like thrice-born Dionysius, jazz had two mothers, for a while simultaneously: according to the late jazz historian Tad Jones, South Rampart was “the spot for jazz.”
As the nation and world viewed the unconscionable execution of Troy Davis on September 22, Americans were once again dragged through a profoundly painful morality play that left many of us bitter, ashamed, conflicted, polarized, and disillusioned once again at our inability to respond to the trauma of human suffering. This state-sponsored killing underscores the urgent need for us to rethink our ideas about revenge.
Climbing the tree had not been a thoughtless or impetuous action. The girl had taken a Jew’s harp, a handful of dried cranberries, a scrap of blue leather, feathers, a vial of silver and turquoise beads, a needle, some thread, other secret objects, some sacred, all carefully balanced in the lap of an oversized T-shirt that the girl turned alternately into a desk, a knapsack, a handkerchief for blowing her nose, while another T-shirt became a bandanna, a snood, and a white banner that declared most adamantly: “I will not surrender.”
Let us hope that Pinsky’s new Selected Poems will help to dispel the more jaded views of his accomplishments. For Pinsky is an important figure. He is also, as Tony Hoagland has rightly observed, “a much stranger poet than is generally acknowledged.”
In a flurry of recent activity Rick Perry made his national debut into the national debate on the Israel-Palestinian conflict with two op-eds and a press conference within a week of each other…. Perry’s unabashed endorsement of the settlement enterprise would mark a distinct shift in presidential rhetoric, but would it appreciably change the outcome of U.S. policy on the settlement issue?
Jundi’s coming-of-age story is chronicled in the illuminating book, The Hour of Sunlight, co-authored by him and his friend, former colleague and author/documentary filmmaker/playwright Jen Marlowe. The title derives from Mahmoud Darwish’s stunning poem, “On This Earth.” Like Darwish’s poetry, Jundi’s life is a tale of dislocation, of yearning, of delight in the details and a reverence for the written word.
In its short but meteoric rise to relevance in the American Jewish community, J Street has attempted to expand the Jewish American peace camp by taking nuanced positions and poaching supporters from traditional Jewish organizations like AIPAC. But there is a major discrepancy between J Street’s repeated call for “bold and creative action” in pursuit of a two-state solution and its position paper defending the U.S. veto.
Who can defend health insurance companies? There is no business case, no health care case, no moral case to support their ongoing existence. They make their profits by avoiding taking care of sick people — by refusing to issue policies, canceling policies, or denying payment. The health insurance industry must go.
The teenagers and twentysomethings who were barely old enough to light funeral candles after Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination in 1995 are now doing what today’s adults were unable to do back then: creating a new Israeli identity capable of living in peace with itself.
Springtime is a very good and very timely volume, even if so much has changed since last fall, when the final pieces were completed, that things look rather different. The outcomes remain in doubt, of course. The crises in education, mirroring the crises in society at large, make Education Under Fire (soon to be an MR Press book) useful in a complementary fashion, setting the structure and some of the backstory in place.
Holy Beggars is a page-turner that reads like a memoir and weaves together journalism, history, deep Jewish teaching, rollicking storytelling, and poetic tribute. It paints a cinematic panorama of the 1960s in San Francisco, explores the impact of the era of “tune in, turn on, drop out,” and describes Rabbi Carlebach’s expansive musical career.
September 11 does not have to be a day of patriotic rage. Every year it also presents an opportunity. This summer the Metta Center for Nonviolence launched a bold project to use the most recent anniversary to heal and repair, to draw out our latent capacity for reconciliation, and in so doing build the foundations of a long-term campaign that will confront the war system itself.