Tikkun Daily Blog Archive (https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/category/politics/page/135/)
Posts about politics and social change, from a spiritual progressive perspective
When Jenna answers you, she furrows her brow slightly and looks beyond you, into the distance. It might seem as though she’s concentrating hard, but you’re not taxing her seven-year-old intellect. No, you’re making her think of things, you’re making her remember things, that no seven year old should have to remember.
Today, Muslim Arab residents comprise 20% of the total Israeli population. According to Kav Mashve’s informational videos, though the Israeli government has instituted an affirmative action policy of employing Arabs in government jobs, has provided financial incentives to prospective employers, and funds and staffs employment guidance centers in Arab towns throughout Israel, the employment rates, however, of Arab Israeli college and university graduates within their respective fields persists one-fifth lower than their Jewish counterparts.
At 6:23pm yesterday, the state of Oklahoma initiated its effort to kill Clayton D. Lockett. Twenty minutes later, after being declared unconscious by a physician, Lockett cried out, “Oh man,” writhing in pain. Addled by this unexpected display of pain, one of the executioners said, “Something’s wrong.” Soon after, the window to the observation room was covered and media were escorted out of the room.
Here we have a note on Fossil Fuels from Bill McKibben, perhaps the most respected activist-environmentalist, and a response from our own Rabbi Michael Lerner.
As spring peers forth from the soil and tree limbs, the annual Easter Egg Roll, sponsored by the President of the United States and the First Lady, thrills elementary and pre-school age children each year. Also, in school classrooms throughout the country, students and their teachers dip hardboiled eggs into brightly colored dyes, and display Easter eggs of pink, yellow, blue, green, red, and lavender. Some students adhere bunny, baby chick, rainbow, or angel decals to their Easter eggs. Some paint flowers or clouds; some sprinkle glitter of silver or gold. An excitement wafts through the classroom as students imagine sharing their treasures with parents or caregivers, as teachers reward the good work of their charges with delicious gleaming chocolate bunnies.
The fossil fuel companies aren’t normal companies. In the last few years we’ve come to understand that they have five times as much carbon in their reserves as we can safely burn if the world is to meet its agreed climate target of limiting rises in temperature to below 2 degrees. That is to say, if they carry out their business plan, the planet tanks. What this means in turn is that if you hold these stocks you in effect are wagering that the planet will do nothing to limit climate change.
What if Christians were known – really KNOWN – for one good thing? So that when most people thought of Christianity they couldn’t help but think of this one thing as central to who we are in the world. What if we saw one thing as essential to what it means to be Christian? What would that thing be?
Yesterday was Israel’s 66th birthday. Rabbi Michael Lerner reflected on the meaning of this day from a Spiritual Progressive Perspective, and his article appeared on the home page of Huffington Post.
It was September 21, 2011. I stood on the grounds of the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification State Prison, holding Troy Davis’s younger sister on one side and his teen-aged nephew on the other, with other supporters wrapping us all in a tight circle of prayer, as we waited in agonizing tension to learn whether Troy Anthony Davis would be killed by the state of Georgia that night. He was.
The Supreme Court has ruled, 5-4, that Greece, New York, can open its town meetings with a prayer, even though nearly all the prayers have contained distinctively Christian language. No doubt advocates and critics of the opinion are scouring American history, looking for proof that their view is correct. If they look with an unjaundiced eye, they’ll quickly discover one basic principle: Whatever position you hold on this issue, you can find some support in our nation’s history. So history alone cannot resolve the ongoing debate. But it can help inform the debate.