Judaism
Hillel at the Crossroads: Accusations of Intimidation in Boston
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But was Goldman’s experience — and are his allegations — isolated?
Environment
The Waters of Remembering and Gratitude
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Our well line broke this week. We live far from city water—or gas, or waste collection. We compost scraps, haul our own recycling, burn paper instead of flushing it to some unknown but surely polluted location. The issue coincided with days of heavy rain, welcome in New Mexico but also saturating the ground and thus postponing repairs. We haven’t had running water since Tuesday, especially inconvenient as we planned to host beloved friends coming here to lead Yom Kippur services.
Healing Israel/Palestine
"Complicated" isn't good enough. It's time for the Conservative movement to address the occupation.
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Instead of nurturing young leaders and teaching them to confront the injustice of the Occupation, I worry the Conservative movement has insulted their intelligence by teaching them the word “complicated.”
Islam
Our Own Crimes Are Worse than Those of Our Ancestors: Yes, Slavery Was Bad, But Did You Know You Just Killed 32 Million Muslims?
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René Girard devoted most of his life to exploring one of the darkest secrets of human nature: scapegoating. It seems we have a pervasive tendency to offload our own evil (and the guilt and shame that accompanies it) onto the Other.
General News
Protest is Patriotism
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The 45th president of the United States, in a profane rally rant intended to play to a crowd of voters in Alabama, invited owners of National Football League teams to fire players who took a knee during the national anthem. The ensuring firestorm has revealed that he does not understand what the central idea of the United States is. It has often been said that the United States is a country that is not built on ethnicity, rather, it is built on an idea and an ideal. The idea is that citizens have both a right and a duty to craft a government that insures their human rights among those rights being life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The ideal is that the nation is perfectible.
Judaism
Hillel at the Crossroads: NEU Hillel Protests “Fear-Based Tactics”
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Hence, the question is just how anomalous the NEU Hillel incident actually was?
Politics & Society
A Surprising Realization in America
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But whatever happens in the next Presidential election, it seems very hopeful to me that Trump might have made it possible for African-Americans and progressive white people to come together and feel ever more comfortable with one another.
Culture
Oh Crap! I’m Triggered Again: Part Four, The Renewal of Spirit
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I started this blog series exactly a month ago, saying I “borrowed the title of this series from a shrink who offered it as a way to call in the awareness and acknowledgement that start to diffuse reactivity. You know what I mean by reactivity? I’m talking about that rush of terror or fury or both that overwhelms brain and body when something pokes its finger into an old wound, flooding the inner world with elicited memory, elicited pain.”
Recently several friends have asked for my assessment of the general state of people as I observe them. I travel a good deal for speaking and consulting gigs and spend a lot of time connecting across distance in other ways, so responding to that query entails a quick mental survey of all I’ve seen in recent weeks. So far, my replies have begun with my own state of mind.
Judaism
Hillel at the Crossroads: How Things Broke Down in Boston
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That’s when everything began escalating into open rebellion.
General News
Moving from Fault to Cause: Looking for Systemic Solutions to White Supremacy
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What’s most pressing for me is to hold in the foreground two realities simultaneously. One is the red alert danger of erupting violence leading to serious harm to people who are already vulnerable… The other is the commitment to humanize everyone, including the brutalizers.