Tikkun Daily Blog Archive (https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/category/politics/page/7/)
Posts about politics and social change, from a spiritual progressive perspective
Dr. Warren J. Blumenfeld provides some much-needed perspective––and humor––on the Supreme Court’s recent ruling in favor of the Colorado bakers who refused to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding.
Warren J. Blumenfeld has created a list of proposals that, he believes, will serve to substantially diminish the plague of gun violence in the U.S.
Jonathan Zimmerman reminds us that we must base what we say on what we know to be true––”[a]nything less will feed Donald Trump’s ultimate fantasy: to persuade us that the truth doesn’t matter.”
The show of respect in conversations and relationships with those we hate, despise, and fear – or, our talking about such people to our friends, acquaintances, neighbors, and relatives – must hold true for conversations with ourselves in our heads as well.
When the Most Reverend Michael B. Curry, presiding bishop and primate of the Episcopal Church, prepared the address he delivered at the wedding of the now Duke and Duchess of Sussex, he knew he would not only be speaking to the couple about to be pronounced married and to the 600 guests in the building and thousands more outside. He knew he would be speaking to millions of people across the globe, and he did not miss his opportunity to preach the good news about God who is Love. There was no title for his address published in the order of service that I saw, but I say: we can title his remarks the “The Power of Love” or “When Love is the Way.” When Meghan married Harry, the couple brought elements of an African ethos into the proceedings, a way of being in the world born from the history, beliefs, philosophy, and spirituality of a people. An African ethos is one that values community and a spirituality that comes from the participation of the community in ritual.
Instead of mourning privately––a betrayal of Jewish values––Andy Ratto encourages us to follow his example and publicly mourn the death of Palestinians in Gaza in a “not only personal, but also a public act of spiritual and political solidarity.”
Yet another incident of a white person calling the police or security on a black person came to my attention today. In this instance, it was a man walking with his son in a stroller in D.C. #ParentingWhileBlack. I immediately thought of a situation that seemed relevant to this incredible barrage of circumstances in which white people call the police (or security) on a black person for no reason other than being black. One day I was walking into a pet food store (the pet food store shares a parking lot with a grocery store and a few other establishments – I had just come from the grocery store), and I noticed a baby (maybe 6 months old) sitting alone in his car seat in the back of the car. There was no adult in the car or nearby.
We thought our readers might be interested in the Union of Reform Judaism’s statement on Gaza and the response from people aligned with the young people’s activist group “If Not Now.”
In this letter to the editor, Noreen Dean Dresser commends Thandeka for embracing the “white-hot embers of forgiveness” in order to address the spiritually broken White Power Movement, but Dresser goes on to posit an important question: what’s the depth of the wound?
Rabbi Lester Scharnberg delves into how we should look at sacred texts that concern genocide, racism, and hatred of others.