Tikkun Daily Blog Archive (https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/author/tikkun-admin/page/24/)
Disparaging comments about another group are unfortunately common in many communities. When these kinds of off-hand remarks emerge in our own homes or in the homes of our friends, how are we supposed to respond? Abe’s Babes, a group of six Jewish, Muslim, and Christian women in Sydney, Australia, may have found an answer.
We present to our readers “Israel Provoked This War: It’s Time for Obama to Stop It” with an introduction by Rabbi Michael Lerner and a recommendation of other thoughtful articles.
Young people in Los Angeles held a fast during the fourth week of July to call attention to the welfare of Central American children crossing into the United States. They are asking the Obama administration to take executive action to treat the children as refugees.
One either stands unequivocally by Israel’s actions, or stands in opposition to Israel. There is no in-between. And it is in that liminal space is where David Harris-Gershon and many others stand, a space that stands separated from the community…And that is saddening. One author’s investment in Israel compels him to critique its geopolitical policies.
“This will be the beginning of our country sliding toward, it’s a strong word, but anarchy. How can marriage be marriage for thousands of years and now all the sudden because a minority, an influential minority, has a push or agenda … and totally reshapes something that was not founded in our country.”
– David Tyree, to the National Organization for Marriage, 2011
David Tyree, former NFL wide receiver for the New York Giants, is probably most renowned for his amazing “helmet catch” in 2007 to continue the ultimately decisive game-winning surge against the undefeated New England Patriots in Super Bowl XLI by the close score of 17 – 14. In 2011, though, he announced that he would gladly trade his phenomenal catch in exchange for a law outlawing marriage for same-sex couples. Tyree, who is married, a father of four children, and a devout Christian asserted that homosexuality and marriage for same-sex couples defies God: “I don’t agree with it [gay marriage] because God doesn’t agree with it.
I keep wondering if this is all some test that God is administering to Jews. How will Jews behave when the shoe is on the other foot? – Now He knows. And we know too. If you defend this war, you are defending atrocities because, when it comes to Israel, you suspend all moral judgement. Fine. Just don’t think you are fooling anyone.
I’m struck by how Americans are indoctrinated into ignoring the most significant fact about Gaza. -It is under Israeli occupation, and has been since 1967. Bottom line: this war is the result of the occupation in general and specifically the suppression of the people of Gaza. It is a result of Netanyahu’s deceptions and his determination to never give up a single inch of land.
As the Israel/Palestine conflict reaches new heights of bloodshed and carnage, one author is impacted by Ali Abunimah’s book, “The Battle for Justice in Palestine” and Abunimah’s proposal of a bi-nation state as the only possible and just solution to heal Israel and Palestine.
Rabbi Zalman Schachter Shalomi, founder of the Jewish Renewal movement, and one of the most creative and impactful Jewish theologians of the last forty years, died today (July 3rd). I write with tears in my eyes and love in my heart for this incredible teacher, a source of inspiration for literally hundreds of thousands. I loved this man very very deeply for the past fifty one years that I knew him.
In 2009, using the already-created legal fiction of “corporate personhood,” Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission established that corporations as “people” have First-Amendment rights which, however unintended, have practically diluted the democratic rights of an entire electorate. Now, in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, closely-held corporations as “people” have been granted religious freedoms which essentially trump the reproductive rights of women. This melding of “corporate personhood” with religious fundamentalism reveals a real threat to women’s reproductive rights in this country. If a corporation, with its religious beliefs and court-mandated personhood, can invoke The Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) to deny female employees a narrow range of contraceptive options, there’s no reason to think that such “personhood” won’t be invoked in the future to undermine women’s reproductive rights more comprehensively. While troubling, what’s even more concerning about this melding of corporate interests and religious fundamentalism is that it reveals the potential for this legal concept of “corporate personhood” to expand and dilute any conceivable, protected right.