Tikkun (https://www.tikkun.org/category/emancipatory-spirituality/page/7/)
From the Islamic Cultural Center of Northern California (ICCNC)
July 4, 2016
It is with great sadness and profound grief that we have to once again express our deep sympathy to the recent victims of the savage crimes of ISIS in Orlando, Turkey, Bangladesh, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia. Those who carry out these barbaric and vicious acts pay no heed to the religion or nationality of their innocent victims but are driven by sheer hate, animosity, and bigotry to promote their own political agenda.
How to experience God today
Leonardo Boff
Theologian-Philosopher
Earthcharter Commission
The present present times are so politically afflicted that we are psychologically altered. Seeing no path forward, walking blind, adrift like a rudderless ship, extinguishes our spark to live. We wind up forgetting what is essential.
Those who read my last article, Can present day Brazil be fixed?, find the background there for this refection on God. In moments like this, without being pietistic, we turn towards the Fountain that has always nourished humanity. Especially in somber times of generalized crises, we feel a longing for God.
Progressive American Jews are very much in favor of these peace movements. And yet many of these movements, committed to liberal ideologies, become victims to liberalism’s Achilles heel.
In case you who missed it, here’s Rabbi Lerner’s talk at Muhammed Ali’s funeral. His vision is all the more relevant given the horrific killings in Orlando and the way it is being used to promote fear, hatred and Islamophobia. It has gone viral on social media and inspired over a million people already. If it inspires you as well, please read below for how to be an ally with Rabbi Lerner to help build the world he describes.
Judaism Unbound (http://www.judaismunbound.com) is a project of the Institute for the Next Jewish Future, a project that catalyzes and supports grassroots efforts by “disaffected but hopeful” American Jews to re-imagine and re-design Jewish life in America for the 21st Century. In the third of a four-part series discussing the Jewish future in America, Shaul Magid discusses his 2013 book American Post-Judaism and explores various challenges that face Jews and Judaism in America in the next generation. Focusing on the idea that America is moving into a post-ethnic phase whereby ethnicity no longer defines collectives the way it once did, Magid talks about various new forms of Jewish spiritual practice, syncretism and hybridity with other religions, the role of the non-Jew in the Jewish community, the developing role of the Holocaust and Israel in American Jewish life, the cresting of Habad’s influence, the normalization of intermarriage, the contributions ex-haredi Jews can make to American Judaism, and two models he calls “survivialism” and “spiritual humanism” that have emerged as competing paradigms in the 21st century.
Not Another Dark Holocaust Poem: Chava, Miriam, Auschwitz
by Renna Ulvang
It is tempting to dredge up ashy metaphors for your last days on earth
To remain riveted, horrified, impaled by thoughts of what it must have been like
Torn away from the comfort of a beautiful room, in your beautiful clothes, your ordinary Jewish lives
Turning away from the gathering gray clouds; the rumors, the stricken faces, the sinking fears pulling you into a reality too dreadful to be faced
And then, too late;
for Chava, for Miriam, too late
But wait, here is where I stop being able to go with you, onto that train, towards the sorting desk: live or die,
The barracks, the showers, the endings. Instead I carry you in my arms into the present
Into my music, quilting, cooking, tikkuning, praying and I feel you here in the invisible connections
Great-aunts with large breasts, recipes, laughter, wisdom, sewing machines, struggles: loving life, loving me. I hold you here, in the only life I have, living it in memory of you.
Renna Ulvang is a long time member of Beyt Tikkun Synagogue; a psychotherapist and certified spiritual director, companioning people in their search for connection to the Divine. (rennaulvang.com)
Cultivating a Spiritual Life
By Dave Hood
A man strolls through the woods, listening to the birds chirping, the rustling of the leaves, the river flowing in the background. A middle-aged woman takes photographs of her urban setting, and then creates expressive paintings. A young man takes up Buddhism, meditates, and strives to live a compassionate life. A young woman studying to become a social worker fights for social justice, attending a peace march. What does each of these people have in common?
I know she loves me. She’s told me as much. And I’ve tried my best to love her back, and I do—or have.
Before the Door of God
Edited by Jay Hopler and Kimberly Johnson
The Sea Sleeps: New and Selected Poems
by Greg Miller
Once in the West
by Christian Wiman
Our social change organizations have internalized the destructive messages of mainstream society. It’s time to compost what’s not working.
To overthrow the alienation and false needs of capitalism, we must imagine a culture of love, fearlessness, and honor for the sacred—then start building it.
Secular society is narcissistically stuck in the now. As progressives, we must focus instead on how we’ll be viewed by future generations.
The meaning of the virgin birth got lost in translation: it wasn’t meant to vilify female sexuality but to echo a prophetic challenge to oppression.
Click here to download our 2015/5776 High Holidays Repentance Workbook and click here to download a PDF of the Al Cheyt Prayer. For the Ways We Have Missed the Mark and Gone Astray—Al Cheyt Prayer, Meditation, and Spur to Transformation
A Supplement to the High Holiday Prayer Book (not a replacement)
On Yom Kippur, we invite you to use the following supplement along with the traditional confessional prayer, Al Cheyt. Bring this supplement along with your own list to Yom Kippur services. Don’t just go through the rote reading the traditional “sins,” many of which actually reach to the ways we “miss the mark” in our contemporary reality. If you are not Jewish or aren’t attending any High Holiday service, use this supplement at your home or with your friends at any time during these ten days of repentance!
Editor’s note: There have been frequent communications to us at Tikkun claiming that ISIS reveals “the truth about Islam.” This is as big a slander as saying that Netanyahu and the racist remarks of some of the people in his cabinet reveals “the truth about Judaism.” We have seen many many public statements from Muslim leaders condemning ISIS. Obviously those that come from Saudi or Iranian leaders are a bit hard to take seriously, given their own repression of human rights. But there are many other wonderful Muslims speaking out, and the one below is quite typical of many that we’ve received over the course of the past two years.