Tikkun Daily Blog Archive (https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/author/guest/page/20/)
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Fahed is one of 122 prisoners held in Guantanamo.
Bitter cold had gripped Washington D.C. during most days of our fast and public witness. Clad in multiple layers of clothing, we clambered into orange jumpsuits, pulled black hoods over our heads, our “uniforms,” and walked in single file lines, hands held behind our backs.
Inside Union Station’s enormous Main Hall, we lined up on either side of a rolled up banner. As readers shouted out excerpts from one of Fahed’s letters that tell how he longs for reunion with his family, we unfurled a beautiful portrait of his face. “Now that you know,” Fahed writes, “you cannot turn away.”
Must we really compete with other victims for attention in a world besieged by so many tragedies? Responding to terrorism with complaints about the amount of attention one group receives compared to another is divisive and counterproductive.
For someone like me, very nearly saturated in “white privilege,” my experience will likely depend on attitude. But, for many of the people I’ll meet in prison, an initial arrest very likely began with armed police surrounding and bursting into their home to remove them from children and families. This unsettling experience is shared by innocent citizens in both the Middle East and the United States.
The kneading is an action meditation, best understood as the performance of commandments and rituals. While meditatively kneading, you can clear the mind for a holy intention and open the channel as a springboard to reach God.
Chai Mitzvah is an international adult Jewish learning initiative which encourages participants to combine group study with a set curriculum and with individual exploration of study, spirituality and social action.
As we observe Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, it’s important to examine a deeper connection between both men: the idea that seva is a force for uplift and bringing communities in from the margins. King, like Gandhi, drew inspiration from his faith to inspire others to serve selflessly.
Every year, on this state-sanctioned day of reflection, we memorialize the Martin Luther King who was a peacemaker, a conciliator, a lover and not a hater. In reality, however, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was the master of the thunderous cadences of righteous rage.
In times like these, when marginalized communities sense the threat of violence for their own livelihood and well-being, words fail.But, as Audre Lorde so importantly reminds us, our silence will not protect us.
There is a “people’s history” of Selma that we all can learn from—one that is needed especially now.