Non-Violent Communication (NVC)

Katya Singer: Holocaust Collaborator or Hero?

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The Holocaust raises issues of moral complexity still being debated over sixty-five years after the end of World War II. Indeed, the discussion acquires greater nuance as more information is revealed about how some people were able to survive while others perished. Perhaps one of the most important figures that the historical record hardly recognizes and who embodied this moral complexity is Katya Singer. She can easily be seen as a “collaborator” in terms of being the Jewish “bookkeeper” for the SS in Birkenau as well as having an SS Nazi lover and special privileges. Yet Singer has been credited by many survivors with saving the lives of countless women in the camp whom she rescued from the “outside details”; finding “inside jobs” for them; and, most importantly, substituting the numbers of the living and dead, so that the SS were deceived about the numbers of women sent to the gas chambers.

art

Sacred Snapshots Brings a Justice-Seeking Connection to the Holy

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On Saturday, April 21, Sacred Snapshots, a day-long Sampler for the Spirit, will invite participants to experience the divine, celebrate spiritual practices from a range of religions and traditions at Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California (9 a.m. to 6 p.m.) Whether exploring religion in pop culture, engaging 12-step spirituality, or experiencing Hindu ritual, attendees will create a multi-religious, multicultural and international community for one day. Rumi wrote that “there are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground,” and at Sacred Snapshots, you will have the chance to try at least a dozen. When I heard about Saturday’s event, I was curious if Sacred Snapshots could deliver a hospitable space for those who belong to a congregation and those who do not to come together and experiment in spiritual practices new to both of them. After talking with the event organizers and looking at the web site, I realized the diversity of the presenters and traditions appearing in the Sacred Snapshots line-up provided an opportunity to dabble in something I have heard of or experience something I never knew existed from a location or community with which I’ve never had contact. There is so much to explore and to taste (and I do mean taste – there is a Flavors of Faith workshop that delves into the relationship between food and religious life.)
Curious?

Culture

No More Blaming

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by Miki Kashtan

Whether in families, workplaces, or courts, finding who’s to blame and what the “appropriate” punishment would be is a central preoccupation when our own needs or those of someone we care about are not met. This habit goes so deep that for many of us it becomes completely automatic to the point of having no awareness that we are doing it. Even when we wake up to the costs of blaming and want to change this habit, it may take much practice over time to be able to recognize in the moment that we have fallen prey to this persistent pattern. Until then, we will likely have no room to maneuver. Even after years of practice, I still recognize that temptation and it takes some conscious choice to pull my energy inward and away from the other person.

art

Why Passover is the Greatest Holiday of All Time

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Why Passover is the Greatest Holiday of All Time
more than the fourth glass of wine
in a family that gets drunk off two
more than the smirk you throw
at your older brother
when you recite the tenth plague,
the killing of the first-born
more than hiding the afikomen
in the exact same spot you found it
fifteen years earlier:
behind the closet door,
under the board games,
stuffed inside a box of tissues so old
it might actually be the same box
more than your Aunt Fran
sitting at the head of the table
like the orange on the Seder plate
so natural you didn’t even know
that’s not how it always was
more than your mom
adding a new section to the Haggadah
called the Ten Modern Plagues:
1. Unemployment. 2. War for Oil. 3-10.

art

How I Spent my Lent

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One day in Lent went like this: another scattered stupid day of laundry, a crazy amount of mediocre cooking, bad feelings about myself and my negligible achievements, and attempts to pull myself out of self-absorbed self-criticism. Scurry, scurry, worry, worry, and meta-worrying about worrying. Tiring. I got simple things done – a haircut, but only after wasting inordinate amounts of time surfing the web for “flattering haircuts for older women,” printing some images, doubting, looking for signs, irked at having to make all these decisions myself without clear divine commands. (Maybe the command I didn’t hear was, “Is this really important?

Culture

When We Want People to Change

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Recently I heard from one of my friends about the challenge of dealing with a 15-year old who was using curse words at the rate of two a sentence. My friend, let’s call her Jenny, was very distressed about this, and wanted my help in figuring out how to get this behavior to stop. This got me thinking. It was evident to me right away that if the same behavior came from her partner, she would have responded differently, and even more differently if this were a neighbor, a co-worker, a supervisor, or a staff person she supervises. What varies, I realized, is the nature of the relationship, not the effect of the behavior itself.

Empathy

Occupy the Haggadah! – Radical thoughts for Passover

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Passover approaches and a fearful angel descends upon the homes of the Children of Israel. But this is not the Angel of Death, sent to take the first born son from every household of ancient Egypt. And this time, no daubing of blood on our doorposts will tell this angel to “pass over” our homes. For this is the Angel of Ignorance and Denial. This is the angel that blinds us to our own ills, that curses us to become the very Pharaoh we say we despise.

Culture

Some Thoughts on Good and Evil

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Seriously, don’t you wonder if anything can be written about this topic that hasn’t already been said many times over? I did, too, until I encountered Nonviolent Communication while I was in graduate school pursuing a doctoral degree in sociology. I wasn’t studying good and evil, at least I didn’t think I was. I had no idea, at the time, that my interest in the relationship between reason and emotion was intertwined with the deepest and most perennial questions of human nature, hence with matters of good and evil which I had set aside for years. I never liked the Medieval belief that human beings are innately evil, bad, or sinful, because I intuitively couldn’t fathom why and how nature would give rise to sinful creatures.