General News

On the Road Again

By |

Did you ever have one of those moments when you were having a discussion with people you knew, loved, and respected, and one of them said something that made your jaw drop, or, in the case of our friend Julie, something that left you standing there with a clicking noise in your head? Have you ever found yourself wondering “How did this person come to think this particular way, especially when I see things SO differently?” That clicking sound, or the jaw dropping, also represents a moment in many cases where we STOP really listening to each other. We dismiss the other person as being misguided, wrong, out of touch… different.

Healing Israel/Palestine

Overcoming High Holiday Hypocrisy

By |

We have been hypocritical in supporting equality at home but injustice in Israel/Palestine. Growing up, I learned of Jews marching for civil rights for black communities in the American South, standing with Cesar Chavez and the Filipino and Chicano farm workers’ boycott, and working to end apartheid in South Africa. I was never told that Israel maintains a separate system of military law over millions of Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, who are subject to separate courts and prisons with a nearly 100% conviction rate. When I learned how Israel “rescued” Ethiopian and Yemeni Jews, I was never told of the deep racial hierarchies present within Jewish Israeli society.

General News

In Loving Memory: The Yizkor Booklet

By |

No – what gives me pause is the yizkor (memorial) booklet that’s compiled for the afternoon service on Yom Kippur. For a small donation to my synagogue, I can include the names of my parents in this booklet.Given that I’m a longtime congregant whose parents are both deceased, this would appear to be a straightforward matter. Yet I struggle each year as if newly faced with a baffling choice.

Culture

The King is the Field – Chabad Insights on the Divinity of Creation

By |

During the High Holidays, we strive to fashion our heart to become a dwelling place for God in the physical, earthly realm, a dirah batachtonim. However, the earliest aggadic (storytelling) midrash, Genesis Rabbah (4th or 5th century), taught that “the root/essence of God’s presence was in the lower creatures / `iqar Shekhinah batachtonim haytah.” (19:7)
If the Shekhinah, the indwelling presence of God, was essentially in all creatures, how did we arrive at the idea that the primary dwelling place of God was within the human heart?

Healing Israel/Palestine

Israel Demolishing Homes

By |

We looked as they pointed to all the places that used to make up Al-Araqib — where the trees and houses stood — before the village had been demolished for the first time in 2010 and 98 times since.
A few days after we listened to Sheikh Sayah speak, Al-Araqib was demolished for the 100th time.

Culture

A Family Story: John Singer Sargent’s Mrs. Carl Meyer and Her Children

By |

Still, there is one moment where the viewer ponders the Jewish question. An ink and wash drawing in the exhibit of Carl Meyer by his friend Max Beerbohm (1910) highlights Meyer’s head and mustache as well as his prominent large nose. We ask ourselves: Was this a common perception of Jews in England? But, the wall text reminds the viewer, that although Carl’s nose might be read as reflecting an anti-Semitic undertone, Beerbohm had many Jewish friends. He once remarked that “he would be delighted to know that we Beerbohms have that very admirable and engaging thing, Jewish blood. But there seems to be no reason for supposing that we have.”
Beerbohm’s disclaimer aside, the inclusion of his caricature of Carl Meyer is an important one. However perfect the Meyers’ world seems to be, the specter of anti-Semitism remains.

Politics & Society

Rewriting The Star-Spangled Banner — Send Us Yours!

By |

[Note from Tikkun and the Network of Spiritual Progressives: We stand in alliance with African Americans and others who are challenging empty rituals like The Star-Spangled Banner written by a racist slave owner. We share this rewrite in that spirit. We welcome others sharing their rewrites of The Star-Spangled Banner with us and if you are ok with us posting yours on this site orTikkun.org, send them to us atari@tikkun.org. This post has been updated with changes by the author.]
 

O say can you see
Why we’re stuck in this plight
Look close at who’s jailed
Or whose stocks are still gleaning

Whose broad stripes behind bars
Shout to challenge the “right”
Of a system so botched
“Free at last” is just dreaming

Will our sharp racist glares
Ever burst in mid-air
Let’s prove that this night
Will not end in despair

O say can you imagine
A star-spangled revolution
Where we’re ALL truly free
And with Kindness be brave
– Drue BeDo

Drue BeDo is a theatre artist, writer, and educator who makes her home in the PNW. Check out her adaptation of an ancient theatrical attempt at world peace: Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, A Woman’s Translation (playscripts.com).

Culture

Come Celebrate High Holidays with Tikkun and Rabbi Michael Lerner in Berkeley this October

By |

Would you be interested in experiencing High Holiday services that combine a Judaism of Love and Justice with deep spirituality? Rabbi Michael Lerner, our spiritual leader, leads our community in a serious teshuvah process (which we understand as both inner transformation and societal transformation). He teaches that the prayers are only cheerleading for the process—the real work has to happen in our own lives in the ten days from Rosh HaShanah (which starts Sunday night, October 2) to the conclusion of Yom Kippur (on Wednesday, October 12th). This combination of services plus engagement in teshuva is such an extraordinary experience that I’m willing to give you your money back if you attend all the services, do all elements of the teshuvah process that Rabbi Lerner lays out, and don’t feel that it was really amazing and transformative! And please tell your non-Jewish friends about this as well—you don’t have to be Jewish to get a huge amount of psychological and spiritual nourishment and even have a transformative experience by going through the process with us. True, some of the prayers are in Hebrew, but there’s enough English so that non-Jews who have come in the past have told us that the experience was just as powerful for them as it was for the Jews who participate.