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EDITORIALS
The Big Picture—a Movie I’d Love to Make
MICHAEL LERNER
Here’s the outline of a movie that would help us locate ourselves within universal history and empower us to take steps to transform our world.
Chanukah and Christmas 2014: Keep Hope Alive
MICHAEL LERNER
Our task as spiritual progressives is to reclaim the loving and emancipatory messages of our traditions, still shining through in the core of Chanukah and Christmas.
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POLITICS & SOCIETY
Angry Jews on the Freedom Bus
MARK LEVINE
The Freedom Bus regularly exposes Jews to the brutality of the Occupation, enabling them to counter pro-Israel propaganda through firsthand accounts.
Illness and Innocence
RAYMOND BARGLOW
Why do many of us feel guilty when we catch a cold or grow a tumor? Is it because so many religions depict illness as divine punishment?
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RETHINKING RELIGION
Confronting the Corporate Expediter: Building the Religious
Counterculture
ANA LEVY-LYONS
Corporate culture has normalized shameless, amoral acts of self-interest. We need to start calling out acts of injustice—even when doing so is impolite.
The Rabbi Who Visited Death Row
SONIA JACOBS
Rabbi Richter’s prayers, songs, and stories became a lifeline through bleak years of solitary confinement and the sudden deaths of three family members.
Both Wilderness and Promised Land: How Torah Grows When
Read Through LGBTQ Eyes
JOY LADIN
The Torah assures us that whatever moral wilderness our queer identities lead us through, we wander with and toward a very queer God.
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SPECIAL SECTION: DISABILITY JUSTICE AND SPIRITUALITY
Intro to This Special Section on Disability Justice and Spirituality
ALANA YU-LAN PRICE
Deepening Disability Justice: Beyond the Level Playing Field
TOM SHAKESPEARE
We need to change our values, not simply try to integrate people with disabilities into our profit-based economy. Let’s embrace an ethic of care!
Holy Access
DARLA SCHUMM
Entrance ramps and braille Bibles are not enough. Religious institutions also need to rework their theologies if they wish to become truly accessible.
God on Wheels: Disability and Jewish Feminist Theology
JULIA WATTS BELSER
If God wheels through the world, as Ezekiel suggests, then God likely has an access problem. How do we make space for God’s freewheeling chariot?
Crip Time
PETRA KUPPERS
Disability can disrupt the flow of productive, forward-leaning time. What different richness resides in the slow, suspensive “crip time” that results?
The Crisis of Disability Is Violence: Ableism, Torture, and Murder
LYDIA BROWN
UN rapporteurs on torture have condemned the Judge Rotenberg Center, but it is still administering electric shocks. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Who Can Be Commanded? Disability in Jewish Thought and Culture
TZVI C. MARX
Jewish law condemns the exploitation of people with disabilities, but it also poses religious obstacles to their full integration.
Love: A Letter to Ashley’s Father
ELI CLARE
I am furious with you. How can you cite love as the reason for the invasive surgeries you used to make your disabled daughter into a “pillow angel”?
Embracing Difference: Native American Approaches to Disability
LAVONNA LOVERN
Western institutions tend to frame disability as a burden. Native American practices, in contrast, often model ways to embrace the talents of all people.
High Holy Days in the Hospital
BONNIE GRACER
Disability is not worse than death. We adapt and grow stronger. My brain tumor and its aftermath have taught me how to live, enjoy, and appreciate.
When Strangers Read My Body: Blurred Boundaries and the Search for Something Spiritual
WILFREDO GOMEZ
Why is it that—upon noticing my disability—strangers assume that I am either doing the work of God or that I am in need of God’s intervention?
Beyond Wage Labor: The Politics of Disablement
RAVI MALHOTRA
By pushing for the decommodification of labor, disability activists are seeking a system that values people for their humanity, not for their work.
Online Exclusives
Don’t miss the web-only articles associated with this special section on “Disability Justice and Spirituality”: thoughtful contributions from Jennifer Bartlett, Sheila Black, Shelly Christensen, Bill Gaventa, Kathryn Greene-McCreight, Kevin Kling, Michael Northen, Raedorah C. Stewart, Jillian Weise, and more. To read them, click here.
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CULTURE
BOOKS
Spiritual Progressive Faith Formation
Sounding the Trumpet: How Churches Can Answer God’s Call to Justice by Brooks Berndt and J. Alfred Smith Sr. | Review by Peter Gabel
On Violence, Joy, and Justice: The Poetry of C.K. Williams
All at Once, Writers Writing Dying, and On Whitman C.K. Williams | Review by Paul Breslin
POETRY
A Promised Land by Julia Vinograd
TIKKUN RECOMMENDS
Two Perspectives on Justice and Spirituality
Meister Eckhart: A Mystic-Warrior for Our Times by Matthew Fox, Second Wave Spirituality by Chris Saade
Diverse Insights into Jewish-Muslim Relations
A History of Jewish-Muslim Relations edited by Abdelwahab Meddeb and Benjamin Stora
Neoliberalism, Nonviolence, and Society
Empires of Vision edited by Martin Jay and Sumathi Ramaswamy, The Soul of the World by Roger Scruton, Neoliberalism’s War on Higher Education by Henry A. Giroux, Expulsions: Brutality and Complexity in the Global Economy by Saskia Sassen, The Nonviolence Handbook by Michael N. Nagler