I’m struggling with this right now, and I’ve struggled with it for thirty years … self-care and soul care and close-circle-of-friends care are not distractions from our work for tikkun olam or the kingdom of God, but rather are integral to it.
26.1 Winter 2011
Tikkun at 25
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Those of us who founded and shaped Tikkun for the past twenty-five years have been solidly committed to supporting the manifestation of the Spirit of God in this world. In our view that means advancing the possibilities of a world based on love; kindness; generosity; individual and collective freedom; mutual recognition; thanksgiving; pleasure; joy; the evolution of scientific knowledge, spiritual wisdom, understanding of self and others, and deep levels of individual and global consciousness; the triumph of social justice; peace; equality; material well-being; environmental sanity; mutual forgiveness and caring for each other; and awe, wonder, and radical amazement at the grandeur and mystery of the universe. Our goal of tikkun-ing the world (healing, evolving and transforming it), has a long tradition in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and in other spiritual and religious communities as well. We are merely one contemporary embodiment of that tradition. The Promise, Successes, and Problems of the NSP
Knowing that people often find that their highest progressive ideals cannot be expressed freely in their various religious communities, or at least not acted upon in those institutions, we decided seven years ago to create the Network of Spiritual Progressives (NSP) to be the educational and activist arm of Tikkun.
2011
Nineteen Ways to Heal and Transform the World
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Don’t be afraid of solitude and silence, and question those who are!
2011
Six Rabbis Pray in Jail
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I remember my arrest. It was May of 1972 and Nixon had just mined Haiphong Harbor.
2011
Dare to Struggle
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Today, conditions are as dire as those we faced in the 1960s, but we are not coming together with sufficient urgency to confront them. Climate change threatens the very existence of a habitable planet, but here in the United States, the business of burning fossil fuels continues as usual.
2011
The Struggle for Universal Health Care
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This is why I devote my time to working for a health system in the United States that meets the human rights principles of universality, equity, and accountability: a single-payer national health insurance. Anything less will prolong suffering and unnecessary death. Every person in this country must have access to the same high-quality standard of health care.
2011
A Note from Michael Lerner about the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Section
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In celebration of our anniversary, we asked some of the authors we’ve published over the last quarter-century to share a short piece (either prose or poetry) about the aspect of their thinking, writing, spiritual practice, work, or social activism that they believe to be most relevant to Tikkun’s goal of helping heal, repair, and transform the world.
2011
The “How To” of Caring Community
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These are lean times for utopian thinking. We know too much about its dangers and failures. What within previous utopian experiments, from communism to kibbutzim to ’70s communes, undermined them? Human nature? Our particular cultures?
2010
Coercive Environments
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Education. Consumerism. Incarceration. Henry Giroux’s new book identifies these as three key forces in binding contemporary youth to the social structures of neoliberalism.
2010
Racial Justice: New Structures and New Selves
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In his famous March 2008 speech in Philadelphia, then-candidate Obama asked us to move beyond a racial politics that demands a perpetrator and a victim and instead to begin to embrace the full complexity of race in this country. Yet, as we enter the winter of 2010, this rhetoric of hope and change has given way to an administration that has been disappointingly silent on race, as well as milquetoast in its policy prescriptions, even as multiple populist movements stir up white fear and anger.
2010
Oscar Grant or Lebron James? The Systemic Devaluation of Black Life in America
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On the same day that millions of people watched Lebron James announce he was going to Miami, twelve jurors in Oscar Grant’s case decided that, unless he can put a ball through a hoop, a black man’s life is worth little in America. Two decisions — both resulting from five hundred years of white supremacy.
Articles
Comment on Tony Campolo’s Critique of Darwinism
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Tony Campolo’s essay is, in one regard, extremely well-informed and timely, but in another regard dangerously ill-informed about Darwin himself. The basic problem is that Darwin’s theory came in two halves.
Articles
What’s Wrong with Darwinism
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Darwin was a racist, and his racist theories have had an enormous impact on American thinking. In terms of science, Darwin’s account may be solid indeed. But value-free? Nothing could be further from the truth — and that’s where the problem lies.
2010
A Politics Based on Soul Force
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I think that if you’re looking at the world today and you’re not heartbroken and you’re not grieving, you’re not conscious. The question is, if we know that things can be done, what are we called upon to do?
Articles
Love the Life–and Activism–You’re In
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“Awakening Joy: Ten Steps that Will Put You on the Road to Real Happiness” by James Baraz and Shoshana Alexander: Review by Margie Jacobs