Buddhism

Was it the Jonas Brothers? Hannah Montana? No. Those kids were screaming for Craig Kielburger and the Dalai Lama

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Imagine thousands and thousands of teens and tweens in a gigantic auditorium, leaping out of their seats, screaming, applauding wildly…… Is it a Jonas Brothers concert? Hannah Montana? Nope – those kids were going nuts at the We Day gathering in Vancouver as Free the Children founder Craig Kielburger introduced the Dalai Lama to talk about how kids could change the world. If you needed just a bit of hope that the next generation was ready to build a better world than the one we have created, this was the perfect boost.

Culture

Don't Miss the Phone Forum!

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Every Monday night there is a fascinating community meeting near you: as close as your phone, in fact. You can join in from your armchair or your washing-up sink. Better still, thanks to the wonder of the web, you can listen in at any time on your computer or iPod. It’s like a Tikkun radio show for the first twenty minutes, in which I interview some of the people most interesting to spiritual progressives. Then I unmute the lines and you can offer your own questions and comments to the speaker for their response: the Q and A is sometimes the best part.

Culture

Sarah, the Priestess

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As I told you a few weeks back, the “Cakes for the Queen of Heaven” curriculum empowers women in remarkable ways. During last night’s class I discovered that it sometimes empowers in different ways at the same time. Our reading for the evening was a compelling story — the attempted sacrifice of Isaac by his father Abraham (Genesis 22). As told in the Bible, this tale contains no mention of Isaac’s mother Sarah. Instead YHVH tells Abraham to demonstrate his loyalty by making a ritual offering of his one-and-only child.

Culture

Art from My Kishkes, from My Soul

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“With thoughtfulness. And, when relevant, with joy.” — Nancy Katz (on how she hopes viewers respond to her work)
Nancy Katz is a textile artist whose creations hang in museums in Israel, Oakland, and Berkeley. She is famous for her breathtaking chuppot, Ark curtains, and torah covers, and she is a world-renowned maker of tallitot. Visit Tikkun Daily’s art gallery to see some of these beautiful pieces of art.

Culture

Spiritual Wisdom of the Week

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This week’s spiritual wisdom comes from Jonathan Granoff, the author, attorney, and peace activist whose writing we featured earlier this month:
A Flood of Joy
The Earth will ultimately make its claim
The Water lets us know our frailty
The face inside the face of bones
The face we had before the bones
The face we have after the bones
The face of the body of light and limitlessness
beyond claims, beyond frailty
dances across
birthless
deathless
celebration of the eternal essence of life
joyously celebrating our mortality
while we are here
dancing a celebration of the eternal essence of life

Culture

Body of the Goddess

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Today an email arrived that bowled me over. It’s from Shailja Patel. I love the synchronicity of its arrival. Balmurli Natrajan has been blogging about Hindu fascism from a secular perspective. Shailja Patel enlarges that point of view by adding a Goddess perspective.

Culture

Production Time at Tikkun

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We are in the last ten days now of producing the next print issue of Tikkun. We’ve been getting compliments on how good the magazine has been looking graphically lately (for which our thanks especially to Sabiha Basrai, our designer — seen here with her colleagues at Design Action, and don’t neglect to run your cursor over their faces for a tiny surprise). That’s despite the fact that every recent issue it seems I get to a point where I say to myself, OK, well this time we just won’t have time to make it look good so we’ll have a plain vanilla issue, if only we can just get the words right. That’s where I have been the last three days, except we are even further behind than usual. I’m only writing this post because I started to breathe a little easier last night, and am thinking that maybe our amazing team can pull another one out of the hat after all.

Culture

Zeitoun: You Will Really Love this Book

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Dave (peerless leader) Belden writes: And other Tikkun Daily bloggers, please post about your own recommendations now and then if you have them (tag them “recommended novels” so we can find them when story-hungry later). I’ve got my library card. I’m ready. And that’s an offer I can’t refuse. I’ve already blogged about Robert Wright’s challenging and rewarding “The Evolution of God”, which traces how the concept of the divine described in the Bible and Koran evolves in a manner that correlates strongly with the political situations that the writers were in at the time.