Tikkun Daily Blog Archive (https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/author/galleryeditor/page/16/)
There is nothing normal, natural, automatic, nor inevitable about homelessness. And it is certainly not fair, ethical, nor desirable. Homelessness is a social problem caused by bad social policies, so we can solve homelessness with good social policies.
You claim to be a good and a practicing Catholic Christian but I have serious doubts that you are. Our Christian beliefs include these words of Jesus after all: “What does it profit a person if he gains the whole world but loses his own soul?” These powerful words are surely important for anyone serving in public office or any other places of responsibility, whether in government or business or church or wherever.
Trump is the fascist shadow that has been lurking in the dark since Nixon’s Southern Strategy. Authoritarianism has now become viral in America, pursuing new avenues to spread its toxic ideology of bigotry, cruelty, and greed into every facet of society. Its legions of “alt-right” racists, misogynists, and xenophobic hate-mongers now expose themselves publicly, without apology, knowing full well that they no longer have to use code for their hatred of all those who do not fit into their white-supremacist and ultra-nationalist script.
The dualism between particularism and universalism is a constant fixture in the long and unsettled history of the Jews. On one hand monotheism, human beings at God’s image and the messianic idea express the universal. On the other the concrete existence of the Jews in the Diaspora in secluded and oppressed communities, subjected to the hardship of exile and discrimination until emancipation at mid or late- 1800 has been dominated by the particular. This duality is a distinguishing and dominant feature of contemporary society: how to reconcile equality of rights with the right to difference.
If the goal is to change behavior and have people take responsibility, then we must change living conditions in order to change behavior. Some of the factors that can alter the environment are affordable housing, healthcare, prenatal care, day care, better education and a living wage, thereby changing the causes and conditions that result in crime, poverty, and addiction.
Following the now-famed Women’s March on the day after President Trump’s inauguration, speculation mounted about whether we were seeing a real “movement” or simply a “moment” of reaction from an outraged electorate. Since that day, there’s been no dearth of citizens speaking up, in town halls, airports and on city streets. People who never imagined themselves “protesters” have seized the reins of citizenship suggesting that surely something is galvanizing America. But the question is an important one, does this yet qualify as a movement?
Wikileaks (or perhaps, electronic espionage experts acting on behalf of the “Deep State” that subtly, covertly directs the course of governance in the U.S.) recently hacked into Trump’s TV feed, seamlessly substituting audio streams from PBS, NPR, MSNBC and Al Jazeera America into what he’s viewing, while the images remain those of the likes of Steve Doocy, Dana Perino, Wolf Blitzer, Ann Coulter—and even Nancy Grace.
As a Jewish child growing up in Apartheid South Africa, I saw how many of those who opposed Apartheid were often silenced, shamed, banned, not allowed to organize, arrested, imprisoned and murdered. As a result, we all lived in fear of openly expressing our opinion and too many in my Jewish community and in other faith communities betrayed our faiths by not speaking up for justice and not challenging the denial of freedom of speech.
They’re making off with pieces of the the astronomically costly wall before it’s even built.
The question we struggle with is: Should we boycott this holiday entirely? Is there a way to challenge its hurtful parts without discrediting the legitimate joy our people feels when it is saved from the intended violence against us?