Tikkun (https://www.tikkun.org/category/emancipatory-spirituality/rethinking_religion_1/page/15/)
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.
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.
We are, at long last, in the midst of a vigorous and comprehensive critique of the U.S. war in Iraq. People throughout the world decry the horrendous loss of lives, both civilian and military, and are critical of the arrogance and poor planning in this administration’s attempt at “regime change” in Iraq.
The word “Hindu” derives from a Persian way of characterizing the variety of traditions and cultural practices that can be found on the other side of the Indus River, the great Himalayan cascade that now bisects Pakistan. “Hindu” describes persons practicing Vedic ritual or worshiping Krishna. “Hindu” also describes the shared customs of Jains, Sikhs, and Zoroastrians.
During the past few years I have been giving workshops on the psychology of prayer at temples, synagogues, and Jewish book fairs nationwide. At each event, I invariably get asked the same probing questions: “Is it OK to ask God for assistance?”, “Do Jews still talk to God about their dreams and desires?”, “Do these personal prayers and meditations make a difference?”
Most Americans have some image from September 11 that has stayed with them during the year since the attacks. Mine was not a television image. It was a single line of print: “One of the hijackers left a Qur’an in his rental car at Logan Airport.”
The year 2002 should find Americans looking ahead, despite our natural instinct to revisit the scenes of the year past. Yet past and future are wedded, and facing some unfinished business of 2001 can help us face, though of course not finish, some of the business of the years ahead.
In this time of ideological upheaval, when the old ideologies of left and right, of socialism, liberalism, and conservatism, no longer capture the political imagination the way they once did, new political visions are required. Some have tried to formulate a “Third Way” between social democracy and conservatism. Others, such as Michael Lerner, have proposed a more spiritually-oriented approach to transcend left and right. I would like to present another vision, that of Integral Politics.
Education is everywhere in crisis. This is true not just in the failed schools of our inner cities but also in our successful” schools where we are spending huge sums to turn out graduates who lack a moral conscience to match the power of their skills to destroy, to make greedy profits, and to despoil the earth for future generations.
Naomi Wolf describes her struggle to “come out” as a spiritual person in a progressive, post-Marxist milieu which was “profoundly atheistic and hostile to religious and spiritual traditions.”
ONE: Name. Often unpronounceable, unmanageable, redolent of incense and cumin. A name that twists letters into spirals the way a djinn emerges from a lamp.
A few weeks after converting to Judaism, I stopped by my neighborhood fish market. I told the man behind the counter that I needed supplies to make gefilte fish for Passover. “You?” he asked. “You’re Jewish? That can’t be, you don’t have the right kind of nose.” By this time I was used to Jews questioning whether I was Jewish, but no non-Jew had done it before. And this comment about noses? I was horrified.
For many years, I had difficulty listening to the Megillah reading on Purim. I found the story morally repugnant. Vashti’s banishment for refusing to display herself before a group of drunken revelers seemed to me an example of male chauvinism it was impossible to slide over. And I experienced chapter nine, in which the Jews slay their enemies, as dreadful and bloodthirsty.
Save America! Bring back God and religion! The message that launched the religious Right into its current high-flying orbit fifteen years ago is now “going wide,” as they say in the movie business.