General News

Walking the Labyrinth of Compassion

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It is 8 A.M., on November 12th. Today is a day of celebration; it’s the day when the Charter of Compassion will be released. That’s a document first dreamed of by religious writer Karen Armstrong, and now created by a collaborative group of religious leaders from around the world. I’ve been inspired both by a number of Armstrong’s books, and by the wonderful talk she gave on accepting the TED prize, where she first shared her vision of the Charter. The idea, which is based on the universality of the golden rule to all religions, is to first create a statement expanding on the role of compassion, and then call on all religious groups to endorse the goal of being more compassionate in the world.

Culture

Review: A Serious Man

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“The fun of the story for us,” say the Coen Brothers, in their gloss on A Serious Man, “was inventing new ways to torture Larry.” He’s the only nice person in the film, and if torturing nice people is your idea of a good time, this might be the film you’re searching for. Or if you have always wondered what self-hating Jews really look like, here’s a matched set of brothers to demonstrate. It’s a natural phase to go through as a child, that when your life is miserable, you take out your toys and torture them. But by the time you’re in your fifties, surely it’s time to move on.

General News

Food, Family, Vegetarianism, the Holocaust: Everything is Illuminated

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I’ve just read one of the most powerful and delightful essays I’ve every encountered. Written by Johnathan Safran Foer, author of “Everything is Illuminated”, the New York Times piece (in their food issue) is about the history of his relationship with his grandmother, with his children, with the Holocaust…. and how those relationships are mediated by the choices people make about the food they eat. It’s a must read article. More stories could be told about my grandmother than about anyone else I’ve ever met – her otherwordly childhood, the hairline margin of her survival, the totality of her loss, her immigration and further loss, the triumph and tragedy of her assimilation – and while I will one day try to tell them to my children, we almost never told them to one another.

General News

Rising Property Values on J Street: Should We Buy In?

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Many people have been saying many things about what the political relationship between different groups of American Jews and Israel is or should be, and the rest of the world (including Israel) has been reacting to what they’ve said, and that statement is probably where agreement stops. I’m going to attempt to show some of the more interesting things that are being said about J Street, as we go into the week of their big conference in Washington. This will hopefully provide some interesting background and context. The selection and the content certainly don’t represent any Tikkun point of view; heck, some of them don’t even represent mine. But if I only looked at things I agree with, how would I learn anything I didn’t already know?

Culture

Jewish SF

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Let’s face it, when it comes to science fiction, Jews wrote the bible. And they wrote a lot else besides. Ursula Le Guin says that the Frankenstein myth (and Mary Shelley) are the mothers of invention of science fiction, and she may be right (she usually is). But the Frankenstein myth is a variant on the Golem story, the story of a man created without a human soul, and it goes back over a thousand years in Jewish folklore before Shelley created her version, on that dark and stormy night in Switzerland. Isaac Asimov, the dean of the golden age of American science fiction, (or (better) speculative fiction, or (best) SF) was of course Jewish, born in a Russian shtetl.

Culture

Repurposing

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I’ve noticed that increasingly I’ve been getting irritated with friends when they refer to me as “retired”. They seem, fairly enough, puzzled by this. Wasn’t it Peter who held a wonderful online retirement party when he stopped teaching high school in 2003, who happily lives on the pension with which the Ontario Teachers Pension fund continues to supply him, and who collect Canadian Pension payments from the federal government? Most of all it puzzles them because I described myself as retired. And now all of a sudden I’m bridling and sputtering that I’m not retired?

Buddhism

Buddha Park

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I’ve been thinking recently of Buddha Park, which Diana and I visited in Laos almost five years ago. There are ways it seems less bizarre now than it did at the time, and ways in which it seems even stranger. I guess some explanation is needed. (And since a picture is still worth over 900 words (the exchange rate has dropped slightly with the advent of digital cameras) visit the Buddha Park page in Tikkun Daily’s art gallery!)
Buddha Park (more formally known as Xieng Khuan) is one of two sculpture parks created by Bunleua, an apostate Buddhist monk who created his own religion, a syncretic blend of Buddhism and Hinduism. Both Buddha Park, built in 1958, and Sala Keoku, created in 1977, (I saw it in 1988, just across the Mekong river in Thailand) feature giant concrete sculptures of major and minor Hindu and Buddhist deities, interspersed with more than a few pinches of surrealism.

General News

Obama vs Netanyahu: At the End of Round One

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We’re nine months into Obama, and perhaps at the end of the first round of his attempt to make peace in the Middle East. That started with his generally well received speech in Cairo, and his attempt to halt any new Israeli settlements on the West Bank, an attempt whose failure was underlined when last week he issued a call for “restraint” rather than a “freeze”. The US notably failed to offer any support to the Goldstone report, a failure that is generally seen in the blogosphere as a necessary step for self-defence: if Israel could be hauled to the Hague for Gaza, so could the US for some of its soldiers’ actions in Iraq or Afghanistan. Reading reactions to the Middle East is a lot like reading tea leaves: you can always find just what you’re looking for. But it is most instructive to see the difference in the perceptions between Israeli and US commentators.

Culture

Zeitoun: You Will Really Love this Book

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Dave (peerless leader) Belden writes: And other Tikkun Daily bloggers, please post about your own recommendations now and then if you have them (tag them “recommended novels” so we can find them when story-hungry later). I’ve got my library card. I’m ready. And that’s an offer I can’t refuse. I’ve already blogged about Robert Wright’s challenging and rewarding “The Evolution of God”, which traces how the concept of the divine described in the Bible and Koran evolves in a manner that correlates strongly with the political situations that the writers were in at the time.

General News

Good and Evil, Us and Them

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Do you know Uri Avnery? He’s the founder of the Israeli peace group Gush Shalom (and so much more), and on their website he’s recently posted a remarkable piece of writing on the Israeli boycott, and on the struggle against militarism in Israel. What makes it truly wonderful is his insight into the dangers of demonizing your enemy during a struggle. Here’s an excerpt:
I HAVE no argument with people who hate Israel. That’s entirely their right.