Culture

Disagreeing as a Necessary Step for Peacemaking

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by Leonard Felder
In the visionary teachings of Isaiah, it says the repair of the world will require that the wolf will dwell with the lamb, while the leopard will lie down with the goat. Woody Allen once joked, “The wolf can lie down with the lamb, but the lamb won’t get much sleep.” But seriously, overcoming the tension between a wolf and a lamb, or between a leopard and a goat, is a clue to the kind of peacemaking that needs to happen between humans who hold clashing points of view. In order to heal this broken world, we need to open up our hearts and minds to envision the possibility of hawks and doves, right and left, fundamentalists and progressives, moderate Democrats and radical Greens, sharing ideas and building teamwork where there once was snarky-ness. How is this possible, especially in our polarized current world?

Judaism

Finding Refuge: Why Palestine?

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A reader of a draft of my article, “Hannah Arendt: From Iconoclast to Icon” (published recently in Tikkun’s new online edition), asked me something that triggered my elaborate response, which evolved into another article. It begins with Arendt, but it’s really not about her. “Finding Refuge: Why Palestine?” was published in the March/April 2011 issue of Outlook: Canada’s Progressive Jewish Magazine. I am making it available on Tikkun Daily because Outlook did not choose to publish it on its website.

Gender and Sexuality

The Fast of the First-Born

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For many years, as the frenzy of last-minute Passover preparations gave way to the countdown to the first seder, I would find myself thinking ever more fondly of that first sprig of salt-water dipped parsley. I was hungry. Though I didn’t come from an observant family, I chose to observe the Fast of the First-Born – a special fast for first-born males (in some communities, the fast is observed by both genders) commemorating the fact that when God jump-started the Exodus by slaying all the Egyptian first-born males, those of the children of Israel were spared. No one else I knew kept the fast, but the moment I read about it, I knew that it was mitzvah I had to add to my intermittent observance. My mother had had a miscarriage before I was born – a male fetus whose life I obscurely felt I had usurped.

Christianity

Coming Together to End Prisoner Abuse

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I attended my elderly aunt’s funeral in the Deep South last week and met some of my cousins’ children for the first time, which was great. Over dinner one of them, a young man in his 20’s, starting sharing with me about his “walk with Christ.” At first, I was worried, being a progressive Jew by choice and all, which none of them knew. Well they knew about my politics, just not my religious affiliation. It turned out to be a good conversation, and I did end up sharing with him that I am Jewish.

art

The Art of Revolution: Spoken Word, Video, and Performance Art to Change the World

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Some of today’s most interesting, socially engaged, controversial, and occasionally even blasphemous artists are working in the mediums of spoken word, video and performance art. I’m excited to be joining Tikkun Daily as a blogger on the multi-media arts beat. All of the artists I plan to present here are working out of the belief that through their work they have the capacity — even the obligation — to ask the questions that light the spark of change. Whether they are examining issues of social justice, feminism/gender politics, the environment versus consumerism, Israel/Palestine or any other of today’s most complex problems, these artists are trailblazing their way to the cutting edge of both politics and artistic representation. The first artist featured here is Lisa Vinebaum of Montréal, Québec.

Judaism

The Four Citizens: A Passover Meditation

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by Dan Brook
In the Passover Haggadah, we retell the story of our ancient enslavement in Egypt as well as our escape from that slavery. One of the central parts of this story is the parable of the four children, who each ask their own question with each receiving their own answer. Like the four children, there are also four citizens. We must approach each person differently, so that each can be reached where they are, while inspiring them to do more, to do the sacred work of a citizen, the job of making one’s life and one’s society better, more civil, and more just. All of these citizens can teach us something, and each of them, both actually and potentially, is inside each of us.

Inter-Culturalism

Wondering Why We Wander: Jews and Global Community Service

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By Carla Sameth
At age 23, my mom was allowed to leave home in the Bronx to go help her sister, my aunt Charlotte, with her new baby in Seattle. But the Jewish guys in Seattle met all the new girls “fresh off the boat” and she was quickly snatched up by my dad. When my mom decided to marry him soon afterwards and stay in Seattle, her father, my Grandpa Sam, put a curse on her saying her children would “scatter across the globe.” This was strangely prophetic because my siblings and I somehow ended up living in countries as diverse as Israel, France, Sri Lanka, Mexico, and Japan. Like so many other Jewish youth, we also sought out international travel and community service trips as young adults.

Judaism

Pass Over: the Narrow Place—a midrash of sorts

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by S.L. Wisenberg
(This piece was officially first published in The Nervous Breakdown)

And Moses was jealous of his brother Aaron because of his fluidity in speaking because Moses lisped. And Aaron was jealous of Moses for his position, his magic, his blindly devoted followers; and Moses coveted Aaron’s Authentic Jewish (Slave) Experience and envied their older sister Miriam’s lightness and music, and Miriam was jealous that Aaron was their brother’s right-hand man. For many years she did not resent Moses because she had been his nurse-maid. Because of the decree that all baby boys of the Israelites had to be killed, Miriam had woven a basket from bullrushes she collected and partially dried. She had lain her baby brother down carefully in it and given him wine to sedate him.

Culture

Listening to Palestinian Voices: The Fight for Education Tour

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This spring Jewish Voice for Peace (I am a founding member of the Seattle Chapter) is sponsoring a tour of young Palestinian activists to speak in over fifteen cities in the US to discuss the challenges facing Palestinian students who live under Israeli military occupation. I was fortunate to hear Mira Dabit and Hanna Qassis speak in Seattle, and I also got a chance to interview them about right to education issues in Palestine, their lives under occupation, and their hopes for a better future. Mira Dabit, 25, was born in Jerusalem to a refugee family originally from the 1948 city of Al Lod. She has been a youth activist and folkloric storyteller for many years. She received her Bachelor’s degree in Psychology and Sociology from Birzeit University.

art

Where Art Meets Religion: A Mystical Space

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by Peter Gimpel

Are there “sacred values” capable of dissolving the borders between art and religion? That question pulsed at the heart of the recent Art and Religion Symposium organized by the Foundation for Centripetal Art and co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Religion and the Center for Jewish Studies at UCLA. Rafael Chodos, the foundation’s director, opened the symposium with a riddle:
A group of people gather in a certain place, where they all focus on the same thing. Some of them are moved. All of them feel that their experience is important.