Tikkun (https://www.tikkun.org/category/other_voices/editorials__actions/page/40/)
Editor’s note: Thanks to Rabbi David Seidenberg for developing this ritual. I would only add one thing: another way to show caring for the animals with whom we share this rapidly shrinking planet is to NOT EAT THEM!–Rabbi Michael Lerner
Honoring the Animals With Whom We Share This Planet
This year, the first of Elul 5774, Rosh Hashanah LaBeheimot — the New Year for the Animals, begins the evening of August 26, 2014 and continues through August 27.
Why It’s Hard to Believe Israel’s Claim That It Did Its Best to Minimize Civilian Deaths
Among the difficult reports streaming in from Gaza over the past few weeks, two especially painful events have captured my attention. The first was the shelling of a UN school building in Jabaliya, where a number of families that had escaped or been forced to flee their homes had taken refuge. At least 15 civilians were killed, and dozens more wounded. Israel argued they were targeting an area from which fire had been directed at Israeli forces. The second was the bombing of a bustling market in the Shuja’iya neighborhood.
Editor’s Note: For those who think all Israelis are rallying around the war efforts of the Netanyahu government, the big peace rally Saturday night in Tel Aviv comes as an important corrective! See the stories below. Also, please read Uri Avnery’s article that substantiates the point I’m about to make in the next paragraph. Avnery’s Gush Shalom peace movement helped create the intellectual foundation for this demonstration–which is what we in the Network of Spiritual Progressives also focus on: consciousness transformation. Consciousness transformation is the necessary prerequisite for building a transformed political reality.
Demonstrators face off outside Jewish-Arab wedding
Some 200 right-wing protesters demonstrated against what they called ‘assimilation in the Holy Land.’ A counter-demonstration was held by the entrance to the hall. By Ilan Lior | Aug. 18, 2014 | 10:55 AM
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August 11
Over the last month, as I have posted my comments and thoughts about what is happening in Gaza on Facebook a number of people have accused me of taking a one sided position on Israel and Palestine and of not acknowledging Palestinian violence against Israelis. I want to address this briefly. Everyone who has been involved in activism on this issue for an extended period of time has a particular moment that committed him or her to long-term activism.
Editor’s Note: We at Tikkun oppose military solutions to the world’s problems. Please read our proposed Global Marshall Plan at www.tikkun.org/gmp. –Rabbi Michael Lerner
Hillary Clinton’s Foreign Policy Deception
Jeffrey D. Sachs
August 13, 2014
It’s said that the best defense is a good offense. This strategy probably lies behind Hillary Clinton’s recent takedown of President Barack Obama’s foreign policy. After all, Clinton was a lead architect of that policy as Secretary of State, and the policies that she espoused until recently now lie in shambles. The most aggressive of her claims, that Obama’s unwillingness to give support to the Syrian rebels has led to the rise of ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) — is not true.
“The P Word”
See,
I had a
hard time
writing
the word
Palestinian. It stops
civil discourse
for Jews. To say
the “P” word
during war,
means
you
are
a
traitor.
In a recent short
at the Jewish
Film Festival,
a granddaughter reads
her film script
to her grandparents,
who fought
in the Jewish
underground
army
in 1948. In their hallway
hangs a mirror
which was plundered,
No, “taken,”
corrects her grandfather,
from a Palestinian,
No, “Arab,”
corrects her grandmother,
home.
If we act from a loving and generous place, seeking to overcome behaviors that were previously perceived as disrespectful and humiliating, then the icebergs of anger and hate (some of which our behavior helped to create) can melt away and people’s hearts can once again turn toward love and justice for all.
Israel’s Barbarity in Gaza
by Haaretz journalist Gideon Levy
On Saturday morning the Palestinian Health Ministry phoned A. from Rafah and asked him to open his vegetable refrigeration room. The idea was to make room for dozens of bodies piling up in the city’s small hospital. A.’s refrigerator quickly filled up with bodies, including of many children. In Rafah Saturday they counted 120 dead and about 500 wounded in one night of Israeli operations looking for 2nd Lt. Hadar Goldin. At midnight between Friday and Saturday I got a call from Y., A.’s brother, who told me, in fluent Hebrew, in a choked voice that turned into weeping: “What happened in Rafah today is a massacre in every sense of the word.”
With his family, Y. had fled on foot from his home toward the sea as shells fell on his neighborhood.
Uri Avnery
August 1, 2014
Meeting in a Tunnel
THERE WAS this village in England which took great pride in its archery. In every yard there stood a large target board showing the skills of its owner. On one of these boards every single arrow had hit a bull’s eye. A curious visitor asked the owner: how is this possible? The reply: “Simple.
Pardes in Rio
Rabbi Nilton Bonder on Zalman Schachter Shalomi
Ben Azai gazed and died. Ben Zoma gazed, and lost his mind…. Bonder gazed, and lost his job
RebZalman entered, and exited in peace. December of 1987, Reb Zalman came to Rio for Tikun Olam, an event which I had envisioned as a sort of Jewish Woodstock in Rio de Janeiro. Few months earlier I had gone to Philadelphia to convince Reb Zalman to come to the tropics for that occasion.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/30/us-firm-condemnation-shelling-un-school-gaza
US condemns shelling of UN school in Gaza but restocks Israeli ammunition
The United States issued a firm condemnation of the shelling of a United Nations school in Gaza that killed at least 16 Palestinians on Wednesday, but also confirmed it restocked Israel’s dwindling supplies of ammunition. The White House expressed concern that thousands of civilians who had sought protection from the UN were at risk after the shelling of the girls’ elementary school. Some 3,300 civilians were taking shelter there, after being told by Israel to leave their homes. The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, which runs the school, said its initial assessment was that it has been struck by Israeli artillery. “The United States condemns the shelling of a UNRWA school in Gaza, which reportedly killed and injured innocent Palestinians – including children – and UN humanitarian workers,” said Bernadette Meehan, a spokeswoman for the White House’s National Security Council.
ALERT: Conference Call with Sami Awad from Palestine this coming Monday, August 4 on the Israel/Gaza War. Sami Awad is the Executive Director of Holy Land Trust (HLT), a Palestinian non-profit organization which he founded in 1998 in Bethlehem. HLT works with the Palestinian community at both the grassroots and leadership levels in developing nonviolent approaches that aim to end the Israeli occupation and build a future founded on the principles of nonviolence, equality, justice, and peaceful coexistence. For NSP–Network of Spiritual Progressives currently paid-up members, Tikkun subscribers and Beyt Tikkun members. The call will include Sami Awad calling in from Bethlehem, Palestine, Rabbi Michael Lerner, and Cat Zavis (executive director of the Network of Spiritual Progressives). TIME: 2 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time / 11 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time. (You may join the call if you join or renew membership in the NSP before Monday at www.spiritualprogressives.org).
Kindness
Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth. What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness. How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever. Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road. You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
JERUSALEM — Israelis and Palestinians are imprisoned in what seems increasingly like a hermetically sealed bubble. Over the years, inside this bubble, each side has evolved sophisticated justifications for every act it commits. Israel can rightly claim that no country in the world would abstain from responding to incessant attacks like those ofHamas, or to the threat posed by the tunnels dug from theGaza Strip into Israel. Hamas, conversely, justifies its attacks on Israel by arguing that the Palestinians are still under occupation and that residents of Gaza are withering away under the blockade enforced by Israel. Inside the bubble, who can fault Israelis for expecting their government to do everything it can to save children on the Nahal Oz kibbutz, or any of the other communities adjacent to the Gaza Strip, from a Hamas unit that might emerge from a hole in the ground?