Tikkun Daily Blog Archive (https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/category/religion-spirituality/judaism-religion-spirituality/page/39/)
…rather than an ‘either:or’ presentation of the paradigms of Judah and Joseph, the text recognizes the situational need and contribution of both forms of leadership and development, perhaps to be human represents this continuous give and take between ‘certainty’ and the ‘search’…
Al-Khalayleh, Palestinian village near the settlement of Giva’at Ze’ev, outside of Jerusalem – A group of young men are swinging shovels and hammers at the walls of a house – their own house.
…one who is sensitive to these matters cannot help feeling that simply ignoring the most prominently accepted commentator does not heal the added injustice done to Dinah and Leah (injustice one: the actual crime, injustice two: a tradition blaming the victims for the crime). The tradition of using these texts as a proof for the value of modesty is a long one, and it becomes to some degree a third trauma, to all the women who read this, who thus internalize a subtext of personal responsibility for crimes of this sort…
…The dream will be revealed to be the reality we frequently were able to sense, to be tugging at us from just beneath the everyday, a sense of meaning beneath the cruel and unjust “realities” of contemporary existence….
If the spirit of Occupy Wall Street and its home at “Liberty Square” is to survive and have impact, occupiers need a larger understanding of what sacred space is and what it isn’t. Sacred space can be anywhere, any time. It is by definition beyond time and place.
“Homelessness won’t disappear,” Rabbi Lerner said in his keynote speech at the national conference of Family Promise, an interfaith nonprofit helping homeless families, “until people collectively work to end homelessness.” Family Promise has created a national campaign, Houses for Change, to do just that. It is a grassroots educational crafts project to arrange at family gatherings, congregations, schools, scout troops and other organizations. Since its launch a year ago, more than 15,000 kids and parents have made their own unique Houses for Change collection boxes to raise awareness of homelessness and raise funds to help homeless families. Using arts supplies and their imagination, participants decorate pre-ordered boxes to look like houses, take their boxes home and in the following weeks fill them with loose change.
I may be an outlier as a blogger on this site for fully supporting the NATO military campaign to oust Qaddafi. I was gratified that French aircraft stopped his forces cold as they closed in on Benghazi less than two months into the revolution. They would undoubtedly have exacted a terrible toll in death and suffering if they had been allowed to prevail and exact their revenge on the rebel capital. NATO’s ability to help the rebels overthrow this dictator, without sending in an army on the ground, was a triumph for collective action in a humanitarian cause. It also may have inaugurated a new “Obama Doctrine,” which emphasizes some important principles: that the United States lends its military might in a collective effort (in this case, even taking a back seat to France, Britain and other allies) in a limited way, with the support of an international consensus, as expressed in this instance by the United Nations Security Council; the U.S. and its allies need to be aware of their limitations and cannot intervene everywhere.
What now appeals to a niche market and has decreased in popularity over the last few generations, even with what used to be its core fans? If you guessed baseball and Judaism you win. And Judaism loses if it continues to mirror baseball’s path. A fast paced world no longer enjoys baseball’s slow and slower paced game, at least to the same extent it once did. And its players and fans, now largely devoid of African Americans,no longer mirror America’s demographics.
We call for young Jews and allies nationwide to join in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street and with our Palestinian siblings living under their own form of occupation. Let us stand up to the 1% in our own community – the powerful institutions that support Israel’s corporate-backed military control of the Palestinian people and act as the gatekeepers for our community. Throughout history, Jews have been persecuted as the scapegoats for powerful financiers, thus bearing the brunt of economic hardship on multiple fronts. This collective memory instills us with the responsibility to speak out against corporate exploitation and human rights violations, such as the occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, which has politically and economically disenfranchised over nine million people in the name of Jewish statehood. The ongoing colonization of Palestine has concentrated wealth in the hands of the ultra-stratified Israeli elite, as well as multinational corporations like Caterpillar, Motorola, Elbit, Northrop Grumman, and Veolia.
This article was co-authored by Matthew L. Skinner. Picture this: an Iraqi reporter becomes interested in the work of a Jewish student in Israel after reading an article about Jewish-Muslim relations in medieval Spain that the student published online. The reporter contacts the student and interviews him about future prospects for Jewish-Muslim coexistence. As the student in this story and co-author of this article, Joshua Stanton knows first-hand how technology is reshaping the way people of different religions interact. To start with, he and the Iraqi reporter would never have connected without the Internet, which enabled them to bypass regional politics and borders.