Tikkun Daily Blog Archive (https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/category/politics/page/22/)
Posts about politics and social change, from a spiritual progressive perspective
To avoid misunderstanding, I should start by saying that I don’t like Russia, nor do I like Ukraine. I was born in Ukraine, but during many years of my life in the Soviet Union, I had more than enough “pleasant” interactions with Russian and Ukrainian reality and people, along with the nationalism and anti-Semitism of a good portion of the population.
Like Alice in Wonderland when she got bigger and bigger, the story turned “curiouser and curiouser” and here too, odd language was important. This young blond German officer, 28, had been registered in the German states of Hesse and Bavaria as a refugee from Damascus in Syria. He had said he was Catholic but the men of ISIS had persecuted him and killed some of his family because of his partially Jewish background and Jewish name – “David Benjamin”. Strangely enough, he spoke little or no Arabic and was questioned in French – with a German accent. No-one had ever been suspicious, or so it was claimed.
Our universe contains an enormous variety of different forms. All these forms are finite; and the resources for sustaining finite forms are also finite. In order to conserve finite forms, their range of possibilities, or degrees of freedom, must expand, which will allow them access to new resources. Gaining new possibilities requires new properties, that is, properties that have had no prior existence; in other words, it requires an act of creation.
But they cannot be silenced. They are driven by the same power as the resistance movement in the United States: Standing Rock – “Defend the Sacred.” Their challenge, their suffering and their chances of survival are the same there as here. They will never make it on their own, but with the help of a planetary network that recognizes and supports this fight for survival with all its might, we can prepare for the planetary global system change: away from globalized violence toward decentrally organized peace communities that are creating a new foundation for the future on Earth.
Our sages teach us that tzaarat is a condition that only occurred during biblical times. The reason: our level of spiritual refinement then was higher and our tolerance for evil was very low. Over time, our spiritual and ethical sensibilities have become dulled. We are now able to endure corruption at levels that in biblical times were toxic.
Racism, sexism, homophobia, antisemitism, and islamophobia are functional equivalents to each other. Racism manifests with regard to ancestry, ethnicity, national origin, or skin color; sexism with regard to sex and gender; homophobia with regard to sexual orientation and gender identity; antisemitism and islamophobia with regard to religion. The manifestations are different, yet the dynamic is always the same in all cases.
May 4 is National Day of Prayer. In advance of that day, I offer this traditional African-American Christian prayer. My ancestors used their faith to survive the horrors of the Middle Passage, slavery, Jim Crow and every manner of institutional and structural violence with their souls in tact. This was not only a political act, but it was a revolutionary act. Faith and prayer were, and still are, means of resistance:
O God, It is once more and again that we come before your Throne of Grace humble as we know how, head bent and body bowed, empty vessels before a full fountain asking you to be mercy because mercy suits our case.
This past weekend, as we observed both Passover and Easter worldwide, and likely other holy days not given so much publicity; as we asked for freedom and commemorated the death of a free-thinking Rabbi, we watched and listened as Trump and Un of North Korea rattled nuclear sabers at one another, threatening on one side to send “armadas” – sailboats from Spain?
How do two strangers, a Boston-born Jew in Canada and a Gaza-born Palestinian in Australia, come together to choose seven plays for such a groundbreaking anthology about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
You Probably Know Someone Who’d Love This Job as Managing Editor to Tikkun magazine! So spread the word on social media and to your friends, contacts, students, colleagues, etc.