A poem in the Winter 2011 issue of Tikkun.
2011
Inner Courage and Love: The Path to Disarmament
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Reliance on science and technology to solve human dilemmas does not lead to peace. And the threats of nuclear annihilation and war certainly give anyone adequate reasons for fear. The modern world does little to remind us of our humanity.
2011
Justice and Trauma: Reflections on Terrorism and Empire
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How much are we motivated by a natural partiality for our own suffering? And how much by willful blindness and moral laziness? And finally, where do we draw the hard lines of rejecting injustice, no matter how traumatic the source?
2011
Tikkun Olam: The Art of Nonviolent Civil Resistance
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Faith in militarism is on the rise in the Jewish community, and yet, violence, as Hannah Arendt reminded her generation, always leads to more violence.
2011
My Two Cents
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Two cents from a hippie-generation activist to those dedicated to healing the world:
You should not assume that others know what you know, have read what you’ve read, have seen what you’ve seen, or have heard what you’ve heard.
2011
The Social Movement as a Parallel Universe
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As I wrote here long ago in a piece called “What Moves in a Movement” — and as we’ve in different ways emphasized throughout the twenty-five years of existence that we are commemorating in this issue — a social movement can only emerge and gather steam as a social force if it acquires the density of authentic mutual recognition, if through our participation in it we gain a new sense of our social worth, power, and authority in our very collective being.
2011
Transforming Trade Unions: A Psychotherapist’s Insights
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Since 1972, the Right has set out to build a well-financed, interlocking, loosely coordinated set of institutions that promote their message, train their cadres, and support their public representatives with money and ideas. Similarly, the Left needs interpretive institutions that can creatively link people’s real interests — their needs for economic security, meaning, recognition, agency, and connectedness — with a broader political program.
2011
Polarities to the Rescue
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What is your passion? Find it — or let it find you — and, from that ecstasy, act to make the world better, more just, more joyous. It is only from such ecstasy, from such an energy-producing position outside of (ex) the fixed place (stasis) of things, that tikkun comes about.
2011
Internal and External Challenges for Muslims
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While barriers to understanding and implementing human rights are the biggest challenge facing the community from within, particularly in the international context, from without, Islamophobia is a huge problem. The Danish cartoon controversy is a prominent case in which there was a marked failure of communication.
2011
A Christian Realist’s Lament
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For someone who interprets the course of events from a Christian realist perspective, the prospects for healing and repairing the world appear less than promising. That defines the position I happen to occupy. Although my admiration for those who insist otherwise knows no bounds, I find myself unable to enlist under their banner: over the course of many centuries, evil has proven to be too persistent; humankind’s penchant for folly too great; the allure of mammon too insidious; and power in all its variegated forms too corrupting.
2011
Real Change
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Almost every government has signed agreements to help develop a peaceful, sustainable, and socially just world. But what does this mean? When most politicians and business leaders talk about sustainable development, they do not mean sustaining life on earth but maintaining profits; when they talk about peace, they do not mean ending violence but winning wars.
2011
The Ethical Challenge for Diaspora Jews
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Armed against all forms of criticism, the Israeli public is increasingly sequestered in its own psychological fortress. Two responses that dominated my discussions with Israelis were: It is just a chain reaction. You should only know what they have done to us; and Why are you here? Go home and tend to your own country’s problems.
2011
A Shared Cosmology Could Transform the World
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Long before science, every tribe shared a “cosmology,” that is, a big picture. If we construct a shared cosmology today, based on our best scientific understanding combined with a deep appreciation that in human brains the sense of reality is created by metaphor, it could transform our minds and thus our world.
2011
Healing the Trauma of the Middle Passage
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The roots of present-day disorder are about the inability of the nation’s best economic theorists to untie the Gordian knot to solve the intractable problem of feeding the huge appetite of a large, bloated, and ever-growing economy in which expanding overseas markets cannot contain what was started when human bodies were sold as commodities, as simply material objects that wear out and are replaced.
2011
Rejecting Cultures of Domination
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Genital mutilations of girls and women are still condoned by custom and religion in parts of Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, as are so-called honor killings. The World Health Organization reports that a huge proportion of women worldwide have been physically abused by an intimate partner and that rape is still endemic.