An exchange between Tikkun reader Ruth Eisenbud and Michael Lerner, in response to Daniel Brook’s article “The Planet-Saving Mitzvah: Why Jews Should Consider Vegetarianism” in the July/August 2009 issue of Tikkun. magazine.
2009
A Labor Leader Loses His Way
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Four years ago when several key labor unions formed Change to Win as an alternative umbrella organization to the AFL-CIO, many of us hoped that a new vision of the labor movement was being born–one that would go beyond the economics-only focus of industrial unionism and see unions as an important social context for building a greater sense of community and a new universal vision of a society based on empathy and compassion for other human beings.
2009
The Planet-Saving Mitzvah: Why Jews Should Consider Vegetarianism
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God’s original plan for how to be kosher.
2008
God without God
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The atheists have all the best arguments. They find the religious world utterly indefensible, both morally and intellectually. Thankfully the God the atheist denies is not the God that people of true faith affirm.
2007
How Jewish was Jesus?
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There is a consensus among Biblical scholars that Jesus and the New Testament can only be understood in the context of the ancient Jewish sociocultural system. However, Christian theologies over the centuries have largely developed in synthesis with Greek philosophy.
2007
The Israel Lobby
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The overbearing power and McCarthyite tactics wielded by the American Jewish establishment against critics of Israeli government policies has made critical discourse about U.S. support for the Israeli government extremely difficult. As a result, it is all too easy to buy into the arguments put forward by the book “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” that the ‘Israel Lobby’ is primarily responsible for the tragic course taken in U.S. Middle East policy.
2007
Science and Spirit
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If science saves us from religion gone bad, who or what will save us from science gone bad?
2007
NSP Update: Notes from the Network of Spiritual Progressives
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THE NSP HAS SET OUT TO TRANSFORM ALL OUR INSTITUTIONS, POLICIES, and social practices so that they encourage rather than undermine our ability to treat every human being as an embodiment of the sacred (as having “inherent worth and dignity,” in secular terms) and our ability to respond to the universe with awe, wonder, and radical amazement. Where does one start on a task that large?
2007
Carbon: Tax Not Cap-and-Trade
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A May headline in the Chicago Tribune says it all: “The First Refugees of Global Warming: Bangladesh Watches in Horror as Much of the Nation Gives Way to Sea.” Each day’s news brings more reminders of the harms that global warming is already causing to people, communities, and nature throughout the world. From Hurricane Katrina and the inundation of island nations to heat waves in Europe and drought in Australia, climate change is wreaking horrific damage.
2007
The Simpsons: It’s Funny ‘Cause it’s True
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Flying into Orlando in a 2003 episode of The Simpsons, patriarch Homer peers down at a theme park and sees a large, distinctive Future Sphere like the one at Disney’s Epcot, and takes a decidedly dim view. “It’s even boring to fly over,” he whines. Thus begins a typically madcap set of misadventures and missteps familiar to any family that has dragged itself to Florida for a vacation it couldn’t afford, including a run-in with a fascist-sounding mouse and grossly overpriced food.
2007
Why Torture Continues
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The American media has largely acquiesced to the Bush Administration’s strategy in reporting on the war: if American human rights violations get reported at all, they are quickly forgotten. Yet, the strong efforts by the Bush Administration to retain torture as a standard procedure in dealing with anyone it considers a terrorist or “enemy combatant” indicates a commitment to continue using torture for as long as the government can get away with it.
2007
Conservative Judaism: Good for the Gays?
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In the gay Jewish community few people are breaking out the champagne over the Conservative movement’s long-expected split decision on homosexuality this past December. It was, the conventional wisdom goes, a positive step—nothing more.
2007
Two Dystopian Movies . . . and their Visions of Hope
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WHAT DOES IT MEAN to be human? What is it that limits our humanity, and what causes it to flower? The need to find or create meaning seems to be one commonality of human existence—through storytelling, myth, or religion, we can connect to our core decency, a place untouched by the vagaries of the world. Recently, a cadre of Mexican directors—Alfonso Cuarón (Children of Men), Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth) and Alejandro Gonzáles Iñárritu (Babel)—has taken on our global humanity, offering genre-defying and emotionally rich perspectives