Politics & Society

If you are Jewish and want to support Judge Goldstone

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I want to repeat a comment here that was just posted on our website under Michael Lerner’s interview with Judge Richard Goldstone. (Incidentally, that interview is getting around: my former wife in the north of England just emailed me that someone had sent it to her, without knowing she knew anything about Tikkun). This comment is by Carol Horwitz of “Jews Say No!” She writes:
Please read this letter and petition thanking Judge Goldstone for his report, and for his objective reporting of the facts — no matter how much the making making these facts public offends Israel and its often tunnelvisioned supporters. If you haven’t done so already, you can still add your name to the Jewish letter in support of the Goldstone report.

Health

icareforhealthcare.org

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This is great. I wish I had time right now to listen to more of these stories. Let it load, click on the tiny faces on the wall and a video pops up and people tell their health care stories. From the folks who launched the site today:
Read through the stories, add your name to the wall of supporters and then forward the site to your family and friends. We need you to help us spread the word.

Christianity

Rescuing the Catholic-Jewish Dialogue…from (some) Catholics

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Meredith Gould is always worth reading on Jewish-Catholic relations (I first blogged about her Jewish in identity, Christian in faith, and Catholic in religious practice). Today, she comments on an attempt by the U.S. Catholic Bishops (USCCB) to recover from their blunder earlier this year, but in ways that do not touch the core problem. Some quotes:
Despite artfully worded proclamations, anti-Judaism (i.e., hatred of the Jewish religion) and anti-Semitism (i.e., hatred of Jews as an ethnic group) are alive and sick. At least one disturbingly hefty segment of the Catholic population is clue-free about the debt of gratitude all Christians owe to Judaism and the Jewish people. I suppose I should, in some bizarre way, be grateful for validating proof of persistent ignorance about Jews and Judaism.

Politics & Society

The Left: Easily Misled? Or Still Deeply Disillusioned?

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In his first post on Tikkun Daily, Eli Zaretsky succinctly laid out what he sees as the “Obama shell game:” a method that a president committed to “rightist and neo-liberal policies” uses to paralyze and preempt any opposition to his left. The left in Zaretsky’s view is “easily misled.” Obama, who knows the left well from his university days, is a master at misleading it by the occasional speech or promise that holds out hope. He is then free to enact his center-right policies. Is this correct?

Politics & Society

More Conflict [of a kind] Is Needed!

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Peace is not absence of conflict. Peace requires hidden conflicts to be brought out and engaged in nonviolently, so they don’t get repressed and eventually erupt in violence. When conflicts are repressed, injustices do not get redressed. Pain builds. People suffer in obscurity (which is not peaceful for them), unless and until they revolt.
But are we peace types studying the art of fomenting conflict?

Culture

Young People Today…

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So we got our Nov/Dec issue of Tikkun to bed yesterday and the first thing I want to do on this blog is personal. I wanted to write something about my son, Rowan, getting to 21 years old over a week ago, Sept 29, but what to write? It would take thought. I didn’t have time in the deadline madness. Here are two representative pictures, from preschool and from last week, when his band, A World Familiar, played their first real gig, at the Knitting Factory in Los Angeles on Saturday.

Politics & Society

Say Yes to The Yes Men

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If you are anywhere within the vicinity of New York City get on your bike and go down there this weekend for the premiere of “the Yes Men Fix The World.” The fun they are getting up to look enticing. They’re teaming up with the Raging Grannies, Gray Panthers and Granny Peace Brigade, the Green Candidate for Mayor, Reverend Billy, in the 2007 doc, What Would Jesus Buy, plus CODEPINK and I don’t who else. On Thursday Oct 8 they say:
“We’ll be leading a rowdy-as-usual crowd from the 8pm screening across town to a very special “Hijinx” Premiere Party at the Delancey Lounge, hosted by some of New York City’s most revved-up muckrakers. Unfortunately for Whole Foods CEO John Mackey, a massive new Whole Foods store on Houston and Bowery sits smack-dab in the middle of that crosstown march.

Buddhism

True Nature

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From Barbara Bash’s beautiful blog True Nature. Barbara is a Buddhist, a calligrapher, artist and writer of children’s books and of a memoir of a year’s quest for connection with spirit and nature which is destined to be a classic. It’s worth going to her blog just to see what happens to this picture of the tips of the corn. I am tempted to say that if you are short of a present for a special person this Christmas Chanukah Kwanzaa Solstice, you might want to look at that memoir, but we are four hours away from putting an issue to Tikkun to bed in which we are promoting the idea of giving people home made things and services you can perform…. Barbara was a neighbor and dear friend of ours back in the Hudson Valley before we moved to Berkeley so I could work on Tikkun.

Politics & Society

The Rise of Progressive Religious Activists

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We are inching towards our magazine print deadline of tomorrow noon and I haven’t had any time to blog but must throw up this, sent by my friend Elaine Lee. I’m just copying straight from the Center for American Progress email:
The Rise of Progressive Religious Activists
By Valerie Shen, Sally Steenland | October 1, 2009
Progressive religious activists have grown in size and clout over the past four years. Faith groups across the country have gained attention for their work on issues ranging from poverty and the environment to health care and torture. They have organized congregations, trained leaders, created strategic messages, and sought common ground. In so doing, they have challenged the decades-long monopoly that conservative religious activists have held in the public square, as well as the perception that the “religious view” on policy issues is automatically a conservative one.

Culture

Fox Boycott

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I just got this email from my friend Taylor Eskew in New York. She’s a Quaker, an engineer, my neighbor for years, a fun person and a good person. I have no idea how to start this for real but. . .