Tikkun Daily Blog Archive (https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/category/culture/page/80/)
Posts about culture, the arts, the media, book reviews, movies etc.
As every case of nonviolent resistance shows, those who find themselves unable to continue what they want to do experience those of us who lovingly stop them as exercising immense force and power-over, regardless of the love. Still, the love matters.
At a time when too many people are out of work and too many others are holding down two or three jobs just to survive, it might seem a bit frivolous to lament the lost art of leisure. But leisure – restorative time – is a basic human need. And fewer people are getting the benefit of it, apparently even when they’re on paid vacations. A new Harris survey finds that more than half of all U.S. employees planned to work during their summer vacations this year – up six percent from the previous year. (Email is a prime suspect in this crime against leisure.) Soon enough, all of us will be taking presidential-style vacations like the one starting tomorrow.
The documentary “Commie Camp” about Camp Kinderland, the summer camp that the right wing loves to hate, has its West Coast premiere at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival this Sunday in Oakland! Its director Katie Halper—a standup comedian, filmmaker, and blogger—spoke with Tikkun’s editor-in-chief and founder, Michael Lerner. The two debated whether a secular Jewish culture really exists, disagreed over which Jews were more active in social justice, agreed about the indoctrination of children, and discussed walking like a duck.
Have you ever felt that the social justice work you’re involved in is merely addressing symptoms rather than the underlying cause of what ails us? At its core, the problem we face is values-based. I’d like to make the case for embracing a very different set of values I call “decency” and practicing them “radically”–at all times and in every area of living. Radical Decency could be an approach to living that speaks with special force to the central challenge we face as we seek to create better lives and a better world.
While race, culture and religion shouldn’t affect the care provided to older adults, the reality is simple: It does. The country’s heralded melting pot is quickly becoming a complex racial stew at both ends of the nation’s caregiving spectrum: for those needing care–and for the family members and hired workers providing it.
This May, I had the joy of taking part in the first International Conference on Faith and Reconciliation in Peja, Kosovo. Little did I realize that in this corner of the Balkans, social media would have such an impact. Posting on Facebook about an upcoming dinner at the conference, I quickly received a reply from a friend in Washington, D.C. telling me that her father would be present. About an hour after that, her father came and sat down with me at a table full of diplomats from around the globe. It was a wonderful evening of dialogue.
Human beings seem to come with certain built-in spiritual inclinations, and gratitude is chief among them. Parents and teachers think we have to be taught to say thank you, but maybe it just comes naturally. Still, like any spiritual inclination, gratitude can be cultivated into a more fulsome flowering.
The subversive potential of authenticity: The more I think about it, the more it seems to me that the smooth fabric of human relationships that is sustained by the norms of social interactions – what it means to be nice or polite – is part of the mechanism that keeps systems of oppression in place.
At the age of eighteen years, four months, and six days, I was cast into the SHU where I stayed for two and half years, alone, without a window, a television, or a radio. How can I make anyone understand what it’s like to cling desperately to the hope of someday being heard because that’s the only hope left? That’s one reason why the hunger strike going on across California’s prisons matters.
In May, Bishop Katharine—the first presiding woman bishop in the Anglican Community—gave a sermon so provocative that it led critics on the Christian right to charge her with possession by the devil. I think that much of the Roman Catholic Church’s opposition to the ordination of women comes from a deep-seated fear of content like Bishop Katharine’s: human life-affirming and focused on the kingdom of God.