Tikkun (https://www.tikkun.org/category/other_voices/editorials__actions/page/45/)
The Democratic Party is constantly compromising to placate the Right but almost never seeks to placate the Left. To break free of this cycle, liberals need to question a capitalist assumption that too often finds support in the liberal world: that material well-being is the primary key to happiness.
Henry Giroux is a frequent contributor to Tikkun and our blog Tikkun Daily. In this article, which appeared first on TruthOut, he summarizes much of his recent thinking brilliantly. Please take the time to read it! –Rabbi Michael Lerner
The Violence of Organized Forgetting
Monday, 22 July 2013 00:00 By Henry A. Giroux, Truthout
(Image: Jared Rodriguez / Truthout)”People who remember court madness through pain, the pain of the perpetually recurring death of their innocence; people who forget court another kind of madness, the madness of the denial of pain and the hatred of innocence.” – James Baldwin
Learning to Forget
America has become amnesiac – a country in which forms of historical, political, and moral forgetting are not only willfully practiced but celebrated.
The acquittal by jury of George Zimmerman who shot and murdered the unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin was emblematic of the consistent racism and double standard used in the treatment of minority groups or those deemed “Other” in the U.S. and around the world. Where is there justice in a world in which so many people suffer oppression and in which those who choose to use violence as a way to address and deal with their hatred and fear often seem to triumph? Jewish theology holds that there is a karmic order, so that evil actions will not always run the world. Justice and compassion are both essential to the survival of the planet. Unlike many religions that focus on individual sinners and imagine that they will be punished in some future not currently verifiable—for example in a heaven or hell after life, or in a reincarnation in some form that provides rewards or punishments for how one lives in this world, most of Jewish theology sees karma as playing out on a societal scale, and over the long run.
Yet for those of us committed to non-violently replacing capitalism (the global system of class domination, inequality and militarism all rooted in and expanding an ethos of materialism, selfishness, and endless growth without regard to the environmental, social justice, and spiritual consequences) with a new system based on love, generosity, caring for each other and caring for the earth, elections must play an important role along with demonstrations, mass actions (like consumer boycotts and removing investments from some banks and corporations).
[inlinetweet prefix=”” tweeter=”” suffix=” – read more at”]You Don’t Have to Be Jewish to get a lot out of my High Holiday services[/inlinetweet]–people come from all over the world to experience a spiritually rich and nurturing transformative experience in Berkeley, California. www.beyttikkun.org
Beyt Tikkun High Holy Days
September 4, 2013 – September 14, 2013
The ten days of Return to our Highest Selves
Rosh Hashanah Eve Sunday Sept 4
First day Rosh Hashanah Monday Sept 5
Second day Rosh Hashanah Tuesday Sept 6
Kol Nidrey Eve Sept. 13
Yom Kippur All day Sept 14
All services held at Pacific School of Religion 1798 Scenic Ave, Berkeley except 1st night of Rosh Hashanah at Zaytuna College across the street from Pacific School of Religion and 2nd day of Rosh Hashanah at 951 Cragmont Ave, Berkeley
Child care available on 1st day of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur if you call us in advance to reserve a place for your children. Children’s services on 1st day of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur at 11 a.m.
Come and join the Beyt Tikkun Community for a spiritually deep High Holy Days experience. Services will be under the leadership of Rabbi Michael Lerner.
We at Tikkun are proud to announce that Rabbi Arthur Waskow and his wife and partner Rabbi Phyllis Berman will be co-leading High Holiday services with Rabbi Michael Lerner on Yom KippurSept. 13-14. You don’t have to be Jewish and you don’t have to live in the Bay Area to decide to do the High Holidays with Rabbi Lerner and Beyt Tikkun Synagogue-Without-Walls which will be holding the services at Zaytuna Institute and the Pacific School of Religion one block north of the U.C. campus (people in the past have come from as far away as Israel, Australia, Russia, South Africa, Canada and South America). Registration information will be on line at www.beyttikkun by the end of June, but it’s not too early to mark your calendar now and decide to come: Rosh HaShanah (1st eve: Sept. 4, 1st and 2nd day: Sept 5& 6) plus Yom Kippur Sept.
A Poem by Spiritual Progressive Kenneth L. Meyer
www.drkenmeyer.com
A personal reflection on life’s purpose:
To cultivate the courage and willingness
necessary to live fully,
embodied in our fragile human form,
to be fully forgiven and forgiving,
non-defensive and open hearted,
and reciprocally empathic in relation to all that is. This is the ordinariness of a divine dimension
from which we all emerge. The very love we were born to express as humans,
from within and without,
from bones to heart to spirit,
and as soul to soul,
journeying and returning to and fro,
from earth dust to stardust
— all seeming to occur in a lived space-time
of a perceived universe. There is no real time or absolute space. There is only Love.
It is deeply troubling and sad to watch not only Israelis, but also the major institutions of American Jewish life remain in complete denial of the pain caused to the Palestinian people by the continuation of Israel’s occupation and its still effective blockade of Gaza. Yet I witness a new generation of Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox rabbis who seem completely blind to the contradictions they embody when they pray for the welfare of the State of Israel and for the IDF (a separate prayer) but never the welfare of the Palestinian people over whom Israel rules. They ignore the contradictory position of Israel: occupying another people and refusing to give them citizenship or the vote inside Israel. Thus Israel and its supporters openly accept the systematic call of Torah, not only to “love the stranger as yourself” but also, as in last week’s Torah portion (shelach lecha) Numbers (Bamidbar) chapter XVI, sentences 15 and 16: “One law shall there be for you and the stranger (Other) who dwells with you—it shall be a law for all time throughout the ages. You and the stranger shall be alike before the Lord, the same ritual and the same rule shall apply to you and to the stranger who resides among you.” And in dozens of other places the Torah reminds us variants of the following command: “When you came into your land, DO NOT OPPRESS THE STRANGER (THE OTHER).
Uri Avnery, chair of Israel’s peace movement Gush Shalom in Tel Aviv, challenges those lefties and righties who repeat the mantra that “the 2 state soluiton is dead.” If only the “One State” solution is on the agenda, he points out, then all those Israelis who have been demonstrating against new settlements have no case whatsoever, since in a one state solution both Israelis and Palesitnians should be able to build anyplace they want within that state and settlement construction should be viewed as a step in that direction! He seems to be saying to peace people: you can’t have it both ways–if you want one state then you have no good grounds to oppose Jews building wherever they want in that supposedly emerging one state. I have one disagreement with Avnery’s piece below: I think if Palestinians and peaceniks around the world were to embrace one state and switch their demands to a simple one: “One person one vote throughout Israel/Palestine” this prospect might seem so overwhelmingly scary to Israelis that it would create the political pressure inside Israel to seriously negotiate a two state solution. It might be that asking for one state is the only way Palesitnians will get a two state solution. Just a possibility to consider.
The author of this article ignores the environmental threat to the survival of the human race that global capitalism has become, but his thinking about its destructive impact on the ethical climate is significant (and in part it is the decline of the ethical climate which has contributed to the sad passivity manifested even by that majority of Americans who understand the urgency facing us and yet who feel unable to act in concert with others to challenge the upcoming disasters). –Rabbi Michael Lerner
Capitalism is killing our morals, our future
Commentary: In a Market Society, everything is for sale
Paul B. Farrell
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/capitalism-is-killing-our-morals-our-future-2013-04-27
April 29, 2013
(reprinted from Market Watch)
SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. (MarketWatch) — Yes, capitalism is working … for the Forbes 1,000 Global Billionaires whose ranks swelled from 322 in 2000 to 1,426 recently. Billionaires control the vast majority of the world’s wealth, while the income of American workers stagnated.
The Russians Came
Uri Avnery
http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Russians-Came-by-Uri-Avnery-130428-758.html
April 27, 2013
WHEN THE huge immigration wave from the Soviet Union arrived in 1990, we were glad. First of all, because we believe that all immigration is a good thing for the country. This, I believe, is generally the case. Second, because we were convinced that this specific group of immigrants would push our country in the right direction. These people, we told ourselves, have been educated for 70 years in an internationalist spirit.
Drones Over there, total surveillance over here
by Saskia Sassen
19 Feb 2013 http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/02/2013210114231346318.html
The massive surveillance system built up over the last 10 years is the domestic companion of overseas drone killings. There are at least 10,000 buildings across the US, with a massive concentration in Washington, DC, engaged in ongoing surveillance of all residing in the territory of the US [AP]
The big story buried in all the commentary about the US government’s drone policy is that the old algorithm of the liberal state no longer works. Focusing on drones is almost a distraction, if it weren’t for the number of men, women and children they have killed in only a few years. What we should focus on is the deeper condition that enables the drone policy, and so much more, and that is the sharp increase in unaccountable executive power, no matter what party is in power. The 1960s and the 1970s saw the making of laws that called for the executive branch of government to be more responsive to basic principles of a division of power and accountability to citizens.
Gideon Levy’s article, Israeli Doctors Who Betray Their Training, http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/israeli-doctors-who-betray-their-training.premium-1.513345 in Ha’aretz, no longer shocks because of the way the US has gotten used to torture by American intelligence agencies and the collaboration of psychologists in the American Psychological Association. Israeli doctors who betray their training
by Gideon Levy|April 4, 2013|Ha’aretz
From the prison guards and from Shin Bet personnel nobody expects any measure of compassion or humanity. But where are the doctors? They studied medicine. Perhaps their parents pushed them to be doctors or perhaps they had a burning desire to enter this profession from the time they were children.
The New York Times ran a major story when the rabbis of B’nai Jeshurun synagogue in New York City sent a note to thousands of congregants applauding the UN resolution of November 29, 2012, which admitted Palestine to the UN as an “observer state.” The story focused on the anger of some (no numbers were given) congregants who were outraged that their rabbis would take such a public stance in support of the right of Palestine to be considered a state. In contrast, the Union of Reform Judaism (the Reform Movement typically and rightly praised for its progressive stance on many other issues) denounced the vote and praised the Obama administration for voting against the UN resolution. {{{subscriber}}} [trackrt]
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I pray that voices of sanity will prevail and that, instead of trying to take out Iranian nukes, Israel will concentrate on outstretching its hands in generosity toward the Palestinian people, thereby neutralizing the one card Arab and Muslim extremists have continually used in the past decades to show that the real enemy is not poverty and ignorance, but Israel and the United States.