Tikkun Daily Blog Archive (https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/category/culture/non-violent-communication-nvc/page/10/)
Social movement history has proven that people with different self interests, and indeed with different tactics, can work towards the same goal. But J Street’s desire until now to remain inside the mainstream pro-Israel camp has caused them to actively work against Palestinians and their allies who are using nonviolent tactics
On Yom HaShoah, let’s honor all who have died by not perpetuating fear and hatred, by overcoming mutual suspicions and reaching out to “the Other,” by using civic engagement and social action to resist the forces of hatred but most of all let the facts set us free.
At Mt. Sinai again Moses is given a message — this is not a message for Moses alone, this is a message for all peoples: how to live an ethical, spiritually rich, just, and environmentally sustainable life.
Whatever your tradition may be, the Passover story reverberates with relevance in our modern world. It is a story of resistance, struggle, self-doubt, and crises of faith, the attempt to destroy a people perceived as the Enemy. Just as we remove drops of wine from our cups to commemorate the Egyptian firstborn sons who were slain, so should we hold dear the thousands of Palestinian children killed in the name of Israeli “security.”
The open Internet protects the future of interfaith cooperation in America. It’s where we can engage people who are different from us and hear their story, even when we can’t make that first step in the real world. The FCC’s vote opens the door for greater innovation to come.
Benjamin Netanyahu and all the others gave no real alternatives to Obama’s negotiated settlement – even in advance of all the terms coming out – other than war. I believe that Obama and his team have now earned the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to him in 2009.
“Captain, I have an emergency. The annual Passover Banquet is about to happen or was about to happen but everything is locked down. Nothing is moving. This event took me six months of negotiating with all levels of the executive staff; memos signed off even by the Warden himself, God bless his soul. There are sixty-three inmates waiting to observe this religious holyday. Is there any way you could help in this situation?”
Now that we’ve sipped our chai and eaten our samosas…Let’s put aside our grievances, respect our differences and celebrate our shared spiritual progressivism to make the change we wish to see in the world. We take heart in our progressive scriptures and the leaders who championed social justice long before it was called social justice.
We understand God in part as the Transformative Power of the Universe – the force that makes possible the transformation from that which is to that which ought to be, the force that permeates every ounce of Being and unites all in one transcendent and imminent reality. And you are welcome at our Seder even if you think all of this makes no sense and there is no God.
When conflict prevention is examined through a faith-based lens, a different set of factors come to the foreground. Technical fixes seem less important, faddish even. The importance of relationship comes into focus. The approach to time changes. The slow, steady approach I’ve witnessed in many places can yield real results. The tortoise can overtake the hare.