General News

Consciousness-Raising, Faith Communities and Mass Incarceration, the "Moral Equivalent to Jim Crow"

By |

On Friday, May 28, I attended a lecture at St. Paul AME Church in Berkeley, California by Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. It was an interesting chance that Alexander’s lecture coincided with the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling to uphold the mandate for California to reduce its prison overcrowding by at least 30,000 prisoners. While I have been aware of systemic racism within the prison industrial complex thanks in part to the community education efforts of organizations in the S.F. Bay Area and my seminary education at Starr King School for the Ministry, I was alarmed by the facts she offered as well as the links between Jim Crow laws enacted before 1965 institutionalizing social, economic and other disadvantages based on race and today’s mass incarceration. By the end of the lecture, I became acutely aware of what people of faith can gain from understanding racism and mass incarceration as well as sharing with others their reflective milestones.

General News

Understanding Everyone: Empathic Reflections about Osama Bin-Laden’s Killing – Part 2

By |

This is part 2 of a post I started a couple of weeks ago. At that time I was offering my understanding to the people who are celebrating Osama Bin-Laden’s death, as well as to those who judge the celebration. Today I want to explore in a similar manner other positions that people have within the range of responses to his killing that I am aware of. However, before doing that I want to respond to some comments on the previous post. Vengeance

First, to an anonymous person who said this:

“I think you missed a vital point while trying to walk in someone else’s shoes, and that is that some people seemed to be celebrating because they believe in vengeance.

General News

Want to be the new Executive Assistant to Rabbi Michael Lerner?

By |

There is one paid position opening at Tikkun for the Executive Assistant to Rabbi Lerner. This is a one year position starting in late June / early July that involves many various skills and responsibilities as well as an orientation of support, service, and dedication to Rabbi Lerner, his work, and a spiritual progressive worldview. Think you know the right person? Send them to the job posting. We also have many exciting internship and volunteer opportunities with Tikkun, the Network of Spiritual Progressives, and Rabbi Lerner.

General News

The Utne Award and the Future of Tikkun

By |

Former managing editor Dave Belden, Associate Editor Peter Gabel, and I were honored to receive the Utne Independent Press Award won by Tikkun Wednesday night at a ceremony attended by staff from some of the most significant magazines in the United States (Managing Editor Alana Price was unable to attend but was with us in spirit). The awardees were selected from some 1,300 magazines reviewed. Tikkun won in the category of Best Body/Spirit Coverage. The other nominees were: The Christian Century, Commonweal, Geez, Resurgence, Sojourners, Tricycle, and Yes!Magazine. In accepting the award, we want to acknowledge the excellence of the other nominee magazines as well!

General News

My Last Week On Staff at Tikkun

By |

Sadly, Tikkun has run into financial difficulties that are forcing us to make drastic staff cuts now in order to keep going long-term. Two core staff members — operations manager Pete Cattrell and me — are being laid off as of May 1, so this is my last week. Alana Price is staying on as managing editor. The magazine will continue but we are determining on an issue-by-issue basis whether we can afford to print paper copies or whether it will appear as a subscriber-only issue on the web. The summer print issue will only appear online, but the fall issue will be printed; beyond that whether there is a print edition will depend on what funds come in.

General News

New Videos up from Tikkun's 25th Anniversary Celebration!

By |

We’ve got a bunch of exciting new videos up from our 25th Anniversary on March 14th! Watch Rabbi Lerner’s moving keynote, Judge Richard Goldstone’s acceptance speech for the Tikkun Award, and the great animation about Citizens United and the need for a constitutional amendment (like the ESRA!) put together by the wonderful people from the Story of Stuff. Co-Managing Editor Alan Yu-lan Price speaks about the atomization of progressive movements and the need to form anti-generational, cross-class alliances in building a caring society. Associate Editor Peter Gabel gives a moving piece on the relevance and importance of Tikkun today, and Founding Publisher Nan Fink-Gefen tells the unlikely story of Tikkun’s origins. See the amazing spoken word of Josh Healey as well as two poems read by Pulitzer prize winning poet and Tikkun Award recipient C.K. Williams. Watch all the acceptance speeches, including Sheikh Hamza Yusuf, Naomi Newman, Rabbi Marcia Prager, and Congressman Raul Grijalva.

General News

The Bay Guardian's Profile of Michael Lerner

By |

The Bay Guardian, a Bay Area newspaper, just published a profile of Michael Lerner on the occasion of Tikkun’s 25th Anniversary. In an extensive comment on the article on the Bay Guardian’s site, Michael describes it as
the fairest story I’ve ever had printed about me in S.F. And far better than the profiles of me in the NY Times Sunday Magazine, the Washington Post, Newsweek, and the Wall Street Journal when they were describing me as “the guru of the Clinton White House,” not to mention far better than anything that has ever appeared in any Jewish magazine. Asaf Shalev did a masterful job of incorporating a lot of information and avoiding the normal cynicism of the media. I deeply thank the Bay Guardian for having such a competent reporter! In the aftermath of another assault on his home, the article allows Michael to speak for himself.

General News

Communicating Across the Divides

By |

I have only just managed to read Peter Marmorek’s very interesting post “A Chaotic Journey” – about a Muslim who was once his student who has been condemned to life in prison for plotting a terror attack – and the vigorous discussion in the comments. (I only just got to it because we were fully occupied with preparing for our 25th anniversary celebration which happened beautifully Monday night). Reading the post and comments now, I see it is a genuine discussion between people of very different outlooks of the kind that I have always hoped would happen on Tikkun Daily (and that often has). But it’s also one that I would like to think is only in its beginning stages. Whether we can move into more productive stages on these kinds of discussions is unclear to me: I don’t have much skill at doing so myself and feel in truth that few of us do.

General News

Apology for the website being down today (a very strange day)

By |

We do apologize that the Tikkun website was down for several hours today. We were at first told it was a cyber attack, but it wasn’t clear whether it was on us or on our provider, a Japanese company. Eventually it appeared this company was being besieged on the phone by many customers, preventing us from getting through; when we did, they restarted our server and all was well. That’s all I know so far, and hope we were just one among many affected by the Japanese devastation and not the objects of a targeted attack on Tikkun. We had two genuine such attacks today.