Tikkun Daily Blog Archive (https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/author/craigwiesner/page/8/)
Gosh, it has been nearly three years since you died and I really do miss you. So much of who I am is because of who you were. Here we are again, Mother’s Day, and I can’t send you any flowers, or call you on the phone, or surprise you with a visit… But I can think about who you were and do something you used to love to do… tell a few stories that will make people laugh.
Just in case someone asks (in person, on the radio, or on some news program on TV) “Where are the Muslim voices condemning the attempted bombing in New York?” you can let them know that some of them are right here. First a video from CAIR and then a transcript from a statement by Naseem Mahdi, national vice president of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community in the U.S.
[youtube: video=”2l-Pcrc2CP4″]
Council on American Islamic Relations
(WASHINGTON, D.C., 5/4/10) — A prominent national Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization today welcomed the arrest of a suspect in connection with last weekend’s failed car bomb attack on Times Square. (View video of today’s news conference.)
The Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), along with several other national and regional Muslim groups,* said the alleged actions of the Pakistani-American suspect are not representative of the nation’s Muslim community and urged fellow citizens not to allow the incident to be exploited to advance growing anti-Islam sentiment. In a statement released this afternoon at a news conference in Washington, D.C., CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad said in part: (View video of today’s news conference.)
“On behalf of the American Muslim community, we condemn the attack in Times Square and thank all those who reported their suspicions, disarmed the bomb or are participating in the current investigation.
I’m a total supporter of immigration reform that recognizes the impracticality of deporting nearly 12 million people who are in our country without proper documentation. Let’s find a way to bring them out of the shadows. But, I also look at the immigrants who are here WITH proper documentation, who have been working for years – separated from their families, and I implore Congress to consider and honor those people with reform legislation that helps reunite them with those they love. I’m half Gypsy – half Russian. My grandparents immigrated to this country a very long time ago.
Rob Katz just sent me a link to this amazing video, with music from his CD called Renewal. Wow. [youtube: video=”EdlUg5z8ryw”]
Two weeks ago, my father’s dementia worsened and his legs seemed to be swelling up so I called his local VA clinic and they got me in to see a nurse practitioner the next day. She didn’t like the looks of things so she ordered a bunch of tests and asked me if I could head up to the VA Hospital in SF to get a sonogram. 45 minutes later he had the sonogram, all the other blood and urine tests, and we were waiting in the pharmacy for a prescription. Someone called out my name and I walked over thinking it was time to pick up Dad’s drugs. “The nurse practitioner called and said she thought it would be good for your father to get a chest X-ray too, could you go upstairs right now and get one?”
As I headed into what we hoped would be the last of a long series of hearings, to decide whether our friend would be granted asylum, I wondered what good, if any, our silent witness had been. At each hearing at least six of us sat in the back, listening to testimony, watching exhibits argued over by our friend’s attorney and the attorney for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)… Did it make any difference for us to be there, other than providing support for our friend? A bit of background. Our friend had been a vocal opponent of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) in her country.
While admitting that she hadn’t read the book, Sheila Ward, a Toronto District School Board trustee told the Jewish Tribune that she will “move heaven and earth to have The Shepherd’s Granddaughter taken off school library shelves.” Goodness! What would she move if she actually had read the book? A couple of months ago I got a phone call letting me know that an event at which I was planning to be a bookseller had been canceled. I had ordered around $3,000 worth of books from various publishers and I scrambled to cancel those orders because I would be responsible for shipping all those books back, at my cost.
My friend’s children, who are just about to graduate from college, get to stay on their mom’s health care plan. Yay! Another friend’s son, who is working as an intern and doesn’t have health coverage through his job, can get covered by his parent’s plan again. Yay! Another friend who really wanted to retire from corporate work and get into a private counseling practice in around two years, can start planning for that now, knowing that her pre-existing condition won’t prevent her from getting coverage.
One of my favorite things to do is wander around a school and see how teachers and students have decorated their classrooms. Beyond the basic academic stuff like maps, history charts, word drills, homework assignments, art projects, etc… many classrooms also have posters talking about how everyone should treat each other, character messages, encouragement to work hard and reach out when help is needed. The picture on the left is from my visit to Afghanistan. It was an amazing school that had a central theme of peacemaking in its curriculum. On Saturday March 20th 2010, I got to poke around inside a Muslim children’s school much closer to home in Santa Clara California and was thrilled with what I saw there.
Dr. Rick, as he is known to his patients in Ethiopia, lives his life based on his favorite saying from the Talmud: “Saving one life is like saving an entire world.” For over 20 years, Dr. Rick Hodes has been helping people facing cancer, heart disease, and other ailments, but one of his greatest gifts is helping straighten out people’s spines, going beyond “saving one life” and actually granting his patients new life. I became aware of Dr. Rick after meeting award-winning photo-journalist Mark Tuschman at Synergos, a monthly salon put together by the wonderful people who helped my company with a complete marketing facelift. Mark sent me a link to some of his photographs of Ethiopian Jews, a collection which I found riveting. You can see those pictures by clicking here.