Empathy

Why anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism – but criticising Israel isn’t

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The Labour Party has become embroiled in a row about anti-Semitism. Why the row? After all, the Labour Party is committed to challenging racism and anti-Semitism – which is a particular form of racism. It’s a row because the anti-Semitism in question concerns anti-Zionism – and not everybody in the Labour Party agrees that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism. At the heart of the current row, a tweet re-tweeted by Labour MP Naz Shah, which suggested that Israel be relocated to the United States. For those who shared the tweet, it seemed fair comment, given the support of the United States for Israel – and the fact that the second largest Jewish population in the world resides in the United States. Of the 14.2 million Jews living in the world today, six million live in Israel and over five million live in the US.

Culture

Monotheism as a Moral Issue, Part Four: Borrowing Reason from Hellenism

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There is a romantic story implicit in the way the words s’vara and its related grammatical forms came to be adopted in modern Hebrew. The tale highlights another ray of influence of God’s Image in contemporary thought. It is well known that ‘reason’ is a Hellenistic idea – generally absent from Hebrew thought. This was evident in the drafting of the first criminal code ordinance in Israel/Palestine under the British mandate. The drafts took a code developed by the nineteenth century scholar Fitzjames Stephen for all the British colonies. When it was translated into Hebrew, the drafters had particular difficulty the word omnipresent in English legal discourse – reasonableness.

Culture

Passover, Parenting and Pardons

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This year, I have exhausted Passover’s eight days writing love letters to President Obama. My letters all close with the same refrain: “Let my clients GO!” Is it a prophecy that Passover’s final day – April 30 – coincides with our clemency deadline?
In 2014 the Justice Department announced an Obama initiative to invite inmates with no significant criminal history, a record of good prison conduct, no history of violence before or during the term of incarceration, who have served over ten years on a federal sentence for a non-violent offense to apply for clemency.

Judaism

New Lessons from the Four Children

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We all know kids like these: the wise one with all the answers, the wicked one who disrupts everything, the simple one who isn’t sure what’s going on, and the one who is either too little or too simple indeed to form a question. The first point is that these are children — our children. Even when they act out, the Rabbis could not possibly have meant that we are to cut one of them off while smothering another with praise. All four of them are our future. If we want 100% of a future, instead of 75% or less, then we’d better figure out how to reach each one of them, so that when they grow into adults each of them too will be able to say, “This is what the Eternal God did for me, when I went forth from Egypt.”

Culture

How the latest Bernie Sanders Israel Controversy Over Simone Zimmerman Misses the Point

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Last week, progressives celebrated Senator Bernie Sanders’ appointment of Simone Zimmerman, an activist opposing Israeli occupation, as the Jewish Outreach Coordinator of his presidential campaign. Their celebration would be short-lived.
Right-wing blogs scoured her Facebook page for incriminating information, and institutions purporting to represent the Jewish community demanded she be fired. Just two days later, the Sanders campaign suspended her.

Environment

Passover and Earth Day: 10 Plagues of Fossil Fuels

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Creation is being replaced with destruction. As Jews, we are tasked with remembering, conserving, pursuing peace and justice. On this first night of Passover 5776, which is also Earth Day 47, we recount 10 of the plagues of fossil fuels, which are negatively affecting all countries and most species.

Culture

Wrestling with God: Church Shootings and Gay Wedding Cakes

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The story of Jacob’s wrestling match with God falls between the stories of Jacob’s tricking his brother Esau out of his inheritance and their reconciliation. You may remember that Jacob, the younger son, conspired with his mother to trick his father into giving him both the first born birthright and blessing. Gypped twice by his brother, Esau was fuming, and promised to kill his brother after his father died. Now Esau did alright for himself despite Jacob and is coming with an army. Jacob, hoping for forgiveness and reconciliation, sends out a sequence of offerings to soften his brother’s anger.

art

Fiddler on My Mind

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Fiddler on the Roof has been on my mind these days, the plaintive strains of the violinist leading me uptown to the New York’s Yiddish Theater: From the Bowery to Broadway exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York (MCNY), then midtown to experience the current revival of the musical on Broadway starring Danny Burstein, and finally back to the MCNY on March 28th to hear a lively panel on Reimagining Fiddler.

Judaism

You are Invited to Beyt Tikkun's Liberation Seder Saturday eve April 23rd

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I love this seder because there is wonderful food, music, readings, rituals, inter-connection, sharing, dancing, and having fun! So say goodbye to boring seders that do not seem relevant, this one IS relevant, today more than ever as the world sometimes seems hopelessly stuck. I love hearing and experiencing the way Rabbi Michael Lerner weaves together our familiar and treasured traditions with a vital, always new and refreshing sense that the world can be changed and transformed.

Rethinking Religion

Empire and the Cross: Sowing the Seeds of Hope

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Exactly 3 weeks ago at on March 4, I arrived in Honduras. It was 36 hours after Berta Cáceres had been brutally murdered while sleeping in her bed in the middle of the night. One arm and one leg were broken as she fought her attackers, then she was shot in the forehead, death squad style. It was ironic that they had broken her arm, as she was referred to by the BBC as “the woman who twisted the arm of the World Bank and China,” referring to the year-long protest she organized of the indigenous Lenca community of Rio Blanco against the building of one of the largest hydroelectric dams (without the community’s prior consent) on the Rio Gualcarque, causing China and the World bank to pull financing of the illegal dam construction. This dam would have been used to divert water to gold mining projects and to be part of a regional energy network to take transfer the power of the river to richer countries further north.