Tikkun (https://www.tikkun.org/category/other_voices/editorials__actions/page/44/)
Editor’s note: The article below is an important challenge to the major fantasy encouraged by the Obama White House and Sec of State Kerry: that the “peace process” negotiations might yield a reasonable outcome. Lev Grinberg shows why that is very unlikely.
The newest statement from Pope Francis (reprinted below) should be read, contemplated, and discussed with your family and friends during the next few weeks when you have winter vacation! We at the interfaith and secular-humanist-welcoming NSP– Network of Spiritual Progressives urge the Pope to make this teaching incumbent upon all within his faith community, and to give it higher priority than the Catholic Church has given in past years to issues of sexuality like homosexuality and abortion, and to require Catholics to teach this in their churches and to support public policies in accord with this perspective, else these amazing words will remain just words. And let us join with and support our Catholic sisters and brothers who are seeking to have the Pope take the next necessary steps to end the patriarchal and homophobic traditions in the Catholic Church, allow women to be priests, bishops, cardinals, etc., allow priests to marry, and return to Jesus’ attempts to give full and equal power to women–just as we should be challenging patriarchal and homophobic traditions and practices in every religion and every secular or non-religious community. And if YOU (from whatever religious or secular worldview) are as inspired by this teaching as we are, we hope that you’ll join our Network of Spiritual Progressives and, even better, come to the spiritual activist training we will be doing over the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday weekend in January (details and registration at www.spiritualprogressives.org/training ). Though there is a sliding fee scale for registration, anyone truly committed to the NSP perspective (as articulated in our Spiritual Covenant with America, our ESRA: Environmental and Social Responsibility Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and our Global Marshall Plan, all of which you can read at www.spiritualprogresssives.org) who can’t afford the registration fee can come for what you can afford, whatever that is!!
Uri Avnery
December 14, 2013
Self-Boycott
CAN A country boycott itself? That may sound like a silly question. It is not.
At the memorial service for Nelson Mandela, the “Giant of History” as Barack Obama called him, Israel was not represented by any of its leaders.
The only dignitary who agreed to go was the speaker of the Knesset, Yuli Edelstein, a nice person, an immigrant from the Soviet Union and a settler, who is so anonymous that most Israelis would not recognize him.
A Letter From Elliot Sperber
The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict at the XXVII Guadalajara International Book Fair
by MALU HUACUJA DEL TORO AND ELLIOT SPERBER
Considered the most important Book Fair in the Spanish-speaking world, and second in the world only to the Frankfurt Book Fair, the Guadalajara International Book Fair in Guadalajara, Mexico, concluded this Sunday, December 8th, under heavy security. The unusually high level of security resulted from the guest of honor of this year’s book fair, the State of Israel. For the past 20 years, the book fair has honored a city, country, or region as its guest. No earlier guests, however, have been as controversial, or have aroused as much protest and dissent, as has the State of Israel. Hence, the unprecedented levels of security.
Even as we mourn the loss of Nelson Mandela, hope springs high for the possiibility that Pope Francis might become another warrior for peace, economic justice, environmental sanity, and love among all human beings. Matthew Fox, himself silenced by Cardinal Ratzinger (subsequently Pope Benedict), is not usually an optimist about the Church, so this essay for Tikkun is particularly impressive. Meanwhile, of course, no leader can change history without the commitment and active involvement of millions of others who provide leadership at a less global level. So we want to again invite you to come to our Transformative Activist Training Jan 17-20 (Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday weekend) in Berkeley, Ca., (or organize one in your home town–if you get 50 people to sign up for it, Rabbi Lerner and co-trainer Cat Zavis will be there!). Check it out: go to www.spiritualprogressives.org/training.
Chanukah celebrates the first recorded national liberation struggle–when the people of Judea rallied around a guerrilla war against the remnants of Alexander the Great’s empire, and the subsequent attempt by the Syrian (Seleucid) branch of that empire to impose Hellenistic culture and wipe out Judaism. The victory in 165 BCE is celebrated by lighting candles each night for eight nights, dancing, singing, playing with spinning dreidels, and in sine capitalist cultures the exchange of gifts. If you happen to be in the San Francisco Bay Area on the third night of Chanukah, Friday November 29th, come celebrate with Rabbi Michael Lerner and Beyt Tikkun Synagogue-without-walls, the Tikkun community and the Network of Spiritual Progressives. It’s a veggie pot-luck and we will serve latkes (potato pancakes and apple sauce) to supplement whatever delicious main course veggie dish you bring (not bread or crackers and cheese please–something substantive). Schedule:
5:30 p.m. Help us decorate
6:00 p.m. Rabbi Lerner tells the Chanukah story (early enough to bring your children–and since this is the day after Thanksgiving and most people don’t work that Friday, plan to get there no later than 5:45 so you have time to find parking).
How to Create a Tikkun/Spiritual Progressive presence in your community. Our goal: A change in consciousness. Nothing will change in our world till we have popularized the following notions:
1. Our well being depends upon the well-being of everyone else on the planet and the well-being of the planet itself. So our goal is to create The Caring Society—Caring for Each Other and Caring for the Earth.
Bellingham, Wa. Nov. 14 (Thursday) at 7 PM:
Rabbi Lerner speaks on “The Spiritual Transformation and Healing of the World: Building a Spiritually Progressive Political Party.” Location: 210 Academic Instructional Center West at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington (park at Fairhaven College, then walk through the tunnel under the road headed toward the main campus buildings. Academic West is the first building on your left).
Seattle Nov.
As the oceans rise to earth-destroying levels, the agricultural heartlands turn to desert, and the rate of skin cancer grows to match the rate of the common cold… now is the time to talk honestly with the American public about dramatically reducing consumption, combating the immense power of the 1 percent, and preparing ourselves to counter the mainstream media’s obfuscations of the urgency of the coming crisis.
Ovadia’s Choice
WHEN RABBI Ovadia Yosef first appeared on the national scene, I heaved a deep sigh of relief.
Here was the man I had dreamed of: a charismatic leader of oriental Jews, a man of peace, a bearer of a moderate religious tradition.
“Rabbi Ovadia”, as everybody called him, who died this week at the age of 93, was born in Baghdad, came to Palestine as a boy of 4, gained huge respect as a religious scholar. During the 1948 war he was the chief rabbi of Egypt, later he became the Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel. When his appointment was not renewed, as a result of some obscure political intrigue, he founded a new political party, Shas, which quickly became a force in Israeli politics.
Rabbi Lerner’s comment: Who do you trust more, Iran’s new President Rouhani or Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu? Please read the article by my former friend John Judis. Netanyahu Said Something Shockingly Bad at the UN
BY JOHN B. JUDIS
Iran’s new President Hassan Rouhani has revived talks with the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and Germany over its nuclear program. “Nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction,” Rouhani said in his September 24 speech to the UN General Assembly, “have no place in Iran’s security and defense doctrine, and contradict our fundamental religious and ethical convictions.” In his address today to the General Assembly, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denounced Rouhani as a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” and threatened to go to war to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Over the next year, Netanyahu could be proven correct in his apocalyptical assessment of Rouhani and the Iranians.
Uri Avnery
September 28, 2013
The Real Bomb
YEARS AGO I disclosed one of the biggest secrets about Iran: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was an agent of the Mossad.
Suddenly, all the curious details of his behavior made sense. His public fantasies about the disappearance of Israel. His denial of the Holocaust, which until then had been typical only of a lunatic fringe. His boasting about Iran’s nuclear capabilities.
Sept. 9, 2013
Dear Fellow Tikkunistas (those committed to tikkun olam–the healing and transforming of our world),
Aryeh Cohen, a professor of Rabbinics at the American Jewish University (and a member of the Tikkun Editorial Board) and I, wrote an op-ed on what should happen in Syria. Please read it below. And then as chair of the Network of Spiritual Progressives, I participated in an outreach to Congress together with 40 “faith leaders.” I urge you to send both of these (see below) to your elected representatives and to anyone else.
To acknowledge our own screw-ups is an important first step. But the High Holidays are not about getting ourselves to feel guilty, but rather engaging in a process of change. If we don’t make those changes internally and in our communities and in our society, all the breast-beating and self-criticism become an empty ritual.
NPR, mistakenly still identified as a liberal news source when in fact for the past decade at least it has been so worried about losing its funding that it has bent over backwards to accommodate governmental and corporate spins on the news, did a focus on Manning that sought to reduce his courageous acts to personal psychopathology. This is typical of the way the lamestream media–in bed with the military, the homeland security and spying teams, the government, and the corporate elite–either ignores or demeans acts of resistance to the American economic, political and cultural empire. That way of dealing with the opposition to the path of the elites has been very effective, though it is also immoral, intellectually dishonest, and pathetic. Tikkun and the NSP–Network of Spiritual Progressives’ response was to buy an ad in the New York Times to allow ordinary citizens to call upon President Obama to stop prosecuting whistle blowers. It’s not too late to sign and donate so we can buy space in other media to let our fellow countrymen know that there is a way to stand up publicly against all this.