Tikkun Daily Blog Archive (https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/category/politics/page/88/)
Posts about politics and social change, from a spiritual progressive perspective
An iconography of sorrow disrupts and reconfigures our practices of recognition. It is not our gaze in the form of Western media attention that determines who should appear as the subject of care. Rather it is proximity to Christ on the cross that determines who and what we should see.
Throughout his presentation, Professor Howard repeated one powerful message: speak up on behalf of those affected by discrimination you do not face.
When conflict prevention is examined through a faith-based lens, a different set of factors come to the foreground. Technical fixes seem less important, faddish even. The importance of relationship comes into focus. The approach to time changes. The slow, steady approach I’ve witnessed in many places can yield real results. The tortoise can overtake the hare.
#Cut50 aims to reduce the incarcerated population of the U.S. by 50 percent over the next 10 years by convening ‘unlikely allies,’ communicating a powerful new narrative, and elevating proven solutions such as restorative justice and youth empowerment programs that provide jobs and skills. Recent successes in both ‘red’ and ‘blue’ states prove that it is possible to reduce incarceration rates successfully while achieving better outcomes, saving money, and protecting public safety.
Unlike the little girl in Earle, who had never met an atheist or a Jew or a Greek Orthodox or a Catholic or even an Episcopalian or a Lutheran, I have fallen in love with at least one of each of them in my adult life. I observed how their faiths—practicing or not—had molded their hearts in compassion and the circle of my understanding grew wide and my spirit began to throw off the bonds of exclusivity.
In 2011, the script for Admissions was given to Academy Award nominee and peace activist, James Cromwell, who graciously agreed to play the lead role. Admissions has won 26 international awards, been translated into Hebrew, Arabic, Farsi, and Spanish, and broadcast to 80 million people worldwide. As a result of the positive response, a number of peace organizations coalesced around the film’s message and several efforts were synergized. The result was a new mission to create Ministries and Departments of Peace in governments worldwide.
Only one of the pilots could see paradise; the other pilot landed the helicopter based on his trust in his colleague and, perhaps, his faith in what he could not see. A world of peace is there, in the midst of war, whether we can see it or not How might we help build peace and paradise in this world?
What makes this year’s Passover Seders unlike any others is that a majority of American Jews have been forced to face the fact that Palestinians today are asking Jews what Moses asked Pharaoh: “Let my people go.” A disproportionately larger number of young Jews, will be asking a provocative question at their Seder tables: “If Israel won’t let the Palestinian people have their own state, then don’t we have to insist that the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza be given the vote?
It is time to confront the fact that a Jewish state that maintains a brutal and illegal 48 year occupation over millions of Palestinians and privileges the rights of its own Jewish citizens above those of its Palestinian citizens is incompatible with any reasonable understanding of liberalism. It is time for American Jews to face the fact that liberal Zionism is nothing but a fiction.
Today, the legacy of Khalsa Diwan Society is a reminder that Hindu, Muslim, and Sikh communities have had a longstanding history of cooperation and collaboration in California, providing a model for small and marginalized faiths to share a safe, communal space.