Tikkun Daily Blog Archive (https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/category/culture/page/128/)
Posts about culture, the arts, the media, book reviews, movies etc.
This is a response to Miki Kashtan’s post on Privilege and Needs. Miki, I respond to this kind of large scale analysis very much. I want to respond about one of your binaries: Security/Community. I have a longing for a community that will give me security, and many fears also. And some degree of hope that those fears can be addressed, along with awareness of what a huge and central task that is for us.
What is it that makes us so attached to privilege when we have it? I have seen a lot of polarity in discussions about privilege, with people who have little access to class, race or gender privilege often having disparaging views about those who do have such access, while those who do have the privilege feeling confused, ashamed or guilty, but nonetheless unable to make a decisive stand on it in terms of their own lives. I remember in particular a striking example that happened in 1994. I was at the time part of a group of people who were very committed to a shared vision of a transformed society, similar in many respects to the vision that I am working towards these days. At one point in one gathering of the group, the person who was facilitating the gathering asked the people present what would get in their way of committing a significant portion of their income or savings to the joint project.
My heart and mind are full of this movie today, after my wife and I saw it last night. Until I read this review in our local paper by Mick LaSalle, I was wondering how Tyler Perry, whose Madea movie trailers are enough to make me never want to see the movies, could possibly do justice to this womanist play. LaSalle’s review reassured me. I’m no movie reviewer and what I have to say here is a personal take that will include a possible spoiler, so it would be best to read that review instead if you haven’t seen the movie yet. I do urge you to go.
Which makes one wonder what Bob Spencer thinks of Guy Fawkes. Fawkes’ plot, in relative terms, would have caused much more damage than 9-11 had it succeeded. Many today, including some Catholics, defend Fawkes, the way some “Polictically Correct” people defend Hamas and Hezbollah. So, I ask Mr. Spencer: What’s your position? Do you condemn “Gunpowder, Treason and Plot”, and the current pro-Guy Fawkes fad?
We Europeans find a lot of news of the United States in our media. Many of us follow with interest, much puzzlement and relatively little understanding of the posturing, the insults, the exaggerations. Obama doesn’t look much like a socialist to us… But I was hurt the other day by the nameless Republican figure who sneered that Obama was trying to make the US more like Europe – but that Europe was 20 years behind. Behind what?
In my childhood, I wanted to know everything about everything, which I called “being a polymath”, because polymath was such an impressive word. I read omnivorously, and remembered almost all of what I had read. I was the star of my high school’s Reach For the Top team (short version: a Canadian high school Jeopardy). I knew all the songs on the top 30, every week, and could identify them from the first notes, to the amazement of my parents to whom all rock and roll sounded pretty much the same. Two long-remembered dreams from my childhood encapsulate this obsession.
by Brenda Shoshanna
Many, many questions arise in our minds when someone close to us is seriously ill. It takes a while to realize that these questions do not have one answer. They have many answers, appear in different ways, and may have different impacts on us at different times. In a sense a finger is being pointed in our direction. These questions are demanding a response .
… it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us. — Charles Dickens
There’s still time to work phone banks this weekend for our preferred candidates. But are you going to support the Democrats, the Greens or another outsider party? And whoever wins this week, how do we build hope and momentum for creating a Caring Society going forward?
A tribute to John Lennon, in the wake of these turbulent political times
I hope you like this little web short tribute from the BBC to one of my favorite musicians — John Lennon, z’l (“z’l” stands for zichrono livracha, which is Hebrew for “may his or her memory be a blessing.”) The video is cute and uplifting. Have you heard Lennon’s last few albums, when it was just him, or him and Yoko? They are really amazing. 2010 Elections
Get ready for a massive two-year indoctrination from mass media and the “realists” in both major political parties as they confidently proclaim that the Dems lost badly because Obama proved “too radical” for the American public. Nothing could be further from the truth.
As part of the preparation for voting—and as incentive to vote—we might do well to contemplate this communion, invoke the wisdom of the ancestors to help us keep faith with the descendants.