Controversies Around Restorative Justice

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Most articles in this issue come from progressive and radical activists, scholars, lawyers, and teachers who are writing wholly from within the restorative justice movement. So with one foot planted inside the restorative justice movement as a student and the other in more journalistic territory, I am hoping to offer a different perspective: a beginner’s birds-eye glance at some of the controversial issues both outside and within the movement, and at factors that may be enabling it to gather traction.

2012

Restorative Justice: Some Facts and History

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The overuse of prison and extended probation casts a long shadow that devastates families and communities throughout the country. Restorative justice is a fast-growing state, national, and international social movement and set of practices that aim to redirect society’s retributive response to crime. It attends to the broken relationships between three players: the offender, the victim, and the community.

2012

From Individual Rights to the Beloved Community: A New Vision of Justice

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The United States itself was founded on a principle of human freedom that presupposed an inherent antagonism between self and other, a belief that the essential meaning of liberty was that we need to be protected against other people. Yet as we now look out at and live within the envelope of the world we have thus created, we must come to realize by a kind of evolution or enlightenment—by “waking up”—that the liberal framework, the framework of separation, is not only inadequate but harmful.

2012

Walking Toward Conflict

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At the top of one of Rio de Janeiro’s favela shantytowns—one of several recently occupied by heavily armed military police units—an uneasy gathering begins. This simplest, most ancient of social patterns describes an intention—to recognize the other, to share meaning, to invite truth-telling. Guided by precise questions drawn on the wall for all to see, the participants edge forward in that most counter-intuitive of social discourses: dialogue.

Articles

A Populist Assault on Judicial Independence: Newt Gingrich, Recep Tayyip Edrogan, and Benjamin Netanyahu

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It is not unusual to see politicians in the U.S. chastising courts for rulings that contravene their party’s interests or ideology, but the recent proposals from Republican candidates would undermine the critical and constitutional independence of the courts. Similar assaults on the courts being carried out by conservative governments in Turkey and Israel are important as cases of these Republican policies being executed.

Activism

Israel’s Good Life Revolution

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To live the good life, according to the dominant Israeli ideology, is to be sufficiently secure from physical threats, which is why each and every aspect of life in Israel is carried out under the tutelage of the notion of security. What this security is for, what higher end it serves, is a question seldom asked and never answered.

Articles

Incision and Gender

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The uproar over San Francisco’s proposed ban on circumcision has largely died down after a judge struck the measure from the city’s ballot, but the national conversation is far from over. Indeed, just this week, the American Medical Association voted to adopt a policy officially opposing any future attempts by cities or states to outlaw circumcision.

Articles

Becoming a Jew Is Dangerous — Circumcision Is the Least of It

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Matthew Taylor initiates his sharp critique of brit milah (the covenant of circumcision) with anger … as a rabbi, I would of course be very engaged by such a confession and would want to know more. But as an introduction to a learned discussion over a ritual practice that is so central to the Jewish narrative, this expression of anger is not exactly conducive to a rational exchange. It is, however, honest and deserves a sober response.

About Tikkun

Debating Circumcision

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The uproar over San Francisco’s proposed ban on circumcision has largely died but the national conversation is far from over. Indeed, the American Medical Association just voted to oppose all future bans. Don’t miss this vigorous debate between opponents and defenders of the practice.

Activism

A letter to those who care about Tikkun surviving from Rabbi Michael Lerner, Nov. 14, 2011

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I don’t know if you got the snail mail letter I sent a few weeks ago but since I haven’t heard from you, I’m trying email. I like to update our community each year about my personal news and our Tikkun/Network of Spiritual Progressives situation as we enter into the holiday season and into the new year.  I know this letter is long, but please read all of it!!! If you’d prefer, you can read it on line at

Let me start with some great personal news. The nodule on my lungs has not grown, and there is no indication of cancer elsewhere in my body as of the last CT scan in July.

Articles

The Gift of the Gay Rights Debate

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We grow as religious people through an unlikely combination of courage and humility. It takes courage to question one’s opinions, and humility to recognize that we may not be as right as we thought. It is for this reason that spiritual progressives have rightly embraced the movement for equality for LGBT people not as a condundrum, but as an opportunity for precisely the kind of spiritual maturation we seek.