Politics & Society
Jesus's Message? It’s Tikkun Olam!
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Poverty is not an individual problem but a systemic or structural problem — a systemic sin.
Healing Israel/Palestine
"Complicated" isn't good enough. It's time for the Conservative movement to address the occupation.
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Instead of nurturing young leaders and teaching them to confront the injustice of the Occupation, I worry the Conservative movement has insulted their intelligence by teaching them the word “complicated.”
Culture
More Charlottesville's To Come – UNLESS!
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However, unless we want to wake up at age 90 witnessing more of the same we must take a new and deeper look at this endless tension, anger, and hatred by too many whites toward too many non-white people.
Culture
A Spot at the Kotel Won't Save Us: A Crisis in American Judaism
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My contention is that these crises signify not the end of liberal Jewish identity in America, but its new beginning.
War & Peace
America's Wars
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If you want a single word to summarize American war-making in this last decade and a half, I would suggest rubble.
Fiction
"HOLY CRAP! and Other News of the New Administration," a story by K. T. Maclay
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In each generation there is one righteous person worthy of being the Messiah. In this generation the Svenssens were certain it was their candidate.
Culture
Haitian Mourning Rituals and Just Don't Wear Red!
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Upon hearing news of the death of an older cousin, I immediately recalled times spent in the lakou (yard) of his late grandmother, whom everyone knew as Aunt Boots – the family matriarch and piercer. I call her that since she had done all our ears at the most tender age to assure the making of girls in Haiti. I remember running around freely with the scent of roasting coffee beans swarming us. She had a coffee and peanut butter business. On Saturday afternoons, grownups sat on wicker ladder-backed chairs, catching up on the latest news, and family matters.
General News
On "Crossin' Over"
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I am blackwoman in America. And, I love being a blackwoman in America. I agree with Zora Neale Hurston when she says:
“I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow damned up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes. I do not mind at all.
General News
The Women's Balcony — a delightful film!
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The Women’s Balcony, a movie which captures a beautiful
slice of Israeli life, is a huge upper at a time when many
people are feeling depressed and saddened by the state of our world. The movie captures the way that Jewish women have been
marginalized in parts of the Israeli Orthodox religious world,
and how they mobilize themselves to achieve power in the face
of rabbinic authority that is dismissive of their concerns. Yet this is
not another of those “religion is evil” or “men are jerks” kind of
dismissals, but rather a sensitive portrayal of how men and
women find a way, even within the boundaries of orthodoxy, to
recapture each other’s humanity, to stand up against irrational
rules, and find a path that is at once affirming of women and
affirming of parts of the Jewish tradition that these Israeli women
wish to retain in their lives. It is, in its own caring and complex way,
a celebration of the actual and potential power of Jewish women, and
it’s highly enjoyable to watch.–Rabbi Michael Lerner, Editor, Tikkun Magazine
General News
A 'cli-fi missionary' with Jewish roots who is fighting global warming
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So what’s ” cli-fi ”? It’s a subgenre of sci-fi, according to some observers, and a separate standalone genre of its own, according to others. I feel that cli-fi novels and movies can cut through the bitter divide among rightwing denialists and leftwing liberals worldwide over the global warming debate. I’m not into politics; I’m into literature and movies.