Tikkun Daily Blog Archive (https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/category/culture/page/123/)
Posts about culture, the arts, the media, book reviews, movies etc.
This week’s spiritual wisdom on unconditional love comes from Joyce Rupp’s “Fragments of your Ancient Name: 365 Glimpses of the Divine for Daily Meditation.” Rupp is an author, retreat leader, and spiritual midwife. For more information on Rupp, visit her website. Unconditional Love
You are Love like no other. Love so large you contain our smallness.
We got word today that Borders was declaring bankruptcy. I’m the co-owner of a small business and a partner in a small publishing cooperative and I was wondering what would happen to all the books, DVDs, CDs, and other products Borders had “purchased” from publishers but hadn’t yet paid for. Would Borders return those products to us? Would they pay us if they wanted to keep the products? Or, would they hold onto them and sell them and get whatever money they could for them without ever having to pay us?
By Edward Cherlin
Sharing in Gaza
For my 64th birthday last year, I played Beatles Rock Band with my family- I played drums while we sang, appropriately enough, “When I’m 64.” What made this birthday infinitely more memorable were the thousands of presents from a multitude of people I don’t even know– Palestinians, international charities, the UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East), and the government of Israel. These presents were XO education laptops. On this birthday, April 29th, after ten months of delays, the UNRWA’s One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) celebrated the beginning of its program in Gaza. The UNRWA’s core team of administrators, parents and the children of Rafah Co-Ed Elementary School D joined OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte and UNRWA Commissioner-General Filippo Grandi for the donation.
I always think about Timmy around Valentine’s Day. He was my first boyfriend, or he would have been had he not gotten his head bashed in with a bat. Tim came into my life late one night through my bedroom window. We were twelve. Tim, like my ten year-old brother, was short, blond and scrappy.
Recently a pro-gay ad from Israel popped up on my Facebook feed. It used the metaphor of the closet to push Israeli parents to accept and support their queer kids. I’m queer. I’m Jewish. And I care deeply about queer issues.
The protests in Egypt have captured the world’s attention since tens of thousands of protestors began gathering in Cairo’s Tahrir square on January 25th. Footage of the sheer numbers of protestors in the square has provided a sense of both how widespread and how peaceful is popular opposition to the Mubarak regime. Millions of viewers have seen these images thanks to the reporting of Al Jazeera’s English-language service. American news anchors preface news on Egypt with “Al Jazeera reports,” and those who want live, streaming footage can get it online at Al Jazeera English’s (AJE) Live Stream or on Al Jazeera’s YouTube channel. [youtube: video=”V3FYooOO9lQ”]
Jeff Jarvis writes at The Huffington Post that “vital, world-changing news is occurring in the Middle East and no one — not the xenophobic or celebrity-obsessed or cut-to-the-bone American media — can bring the perspective, insight, and on-the-scene reporting Al Jazeera English can.”
Harriet Fraad forwarded us this beautiful email from someone she knows in New York this week:
I experimented yesterday with a Steve Colbert-like agitprop stunt, the purpose of which was to mock the absurdity of Bloomberg’s and Cuomo’s refusal to tax the rich and their preference for budget cuts that penalize working people and ordinary citizens in the city and the state. I wrote up a text, which I attach, which I then performed three times in subway cars. The results were quite encouraging. People laughed, and my girlfriend, who was with me at the time, was impressed by people’s receptiveness, their attention, and the fact that they accepted and carefully read the text of the speech, which I distributed after I was done. The text is a bit long, so my performance usually omitted the middle paragraphs.
Lilly Rivlin is a New York-based filmmaker who tirelessly works against the odds to create documentary films that illuminate her passions for women’s rights, peace, and a secure, progressive Israel. She combined these concerns several years ago in a work narrated by Debra Winger, Can You Hear Me? Israeli and Palestinian Women Fight for Peace. (I know Lilly from Meretz USA, which she continues to serve, after taking her turn as president a few years ago.)
In The Tribe (1983), she documented a reunion of 2500 members of her enormous extended family in Jerusalem, where many have lived for generations. She, herself, was born in pre-State Jerusalem.
“If I were there [meaning in Germany, during WWII, I would likely be one of those who would go along without asking questions until it was too late.” So began an extraordinary conversation with a woman I recently met when I was in England. I had never imagined hearing anyone say this, so I had nothing but respect for her. “How can you know this about yourself?” I continued.
Does the “Real Housewives” franchise have anything to tell us about American politics today? I have been pondering this question for a while, but my thoughts began to congeal this morning in a bit of a circuitous way. It all started as I was perusing the Christian Right websites, thinking about what to write for my weekly post covering the Christian Right beat. While every newspaper is covering the uprising in Egypt, that was not even mentioned on any of the websites I checked. Instead, opposition to the health care bill and abortion were featured on almost all the sites, including Concerned Women for America, The Susan B. Anthony List, Traditional Values Coalition, Focus on the Family’s Citizen Link, and the Family Research Council, as well as the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family, and Property.