Tikkun Recommends   

A Heart Afire: Stories and Teachings of the Early Hasidic Masters
Zalman Schachter-Shalomi and Netanel Miles-Yepez
The Jewish Publication Society, 2009

Zalman Schachter-Shalomi is the most significant disciple of the Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson and the spiritual leader of the Jewish Renewal Movement. Together with comparative religion scholar Netanel Miles-Yepez, Schachter-Shalomi has prepared for us and for future generations a collection of stories and teachings of the early Hasidic masters that opens to us the wisdom of this most important spiritual/mystical movement in Jewish thought. Drawing upon his own powerful learning in the Chabad movement and from contemporary academic knowledge, Schachter-Shalomi provides the kind of commentary that is at once intellectually solid and spiritually deep. It's a sophisticated introduction to Hasidic thought.

 

The Vanishing Face of Gaia
James Lovelock
Basic Books, 2009

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Living Universe
Duane Elgin
Barrett-Koehler Publishers, 2009

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sun of gOd
Gregory Sams
Red Wheel/Weiser, 2009

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How many times do we have to hear that the universe is alive, that consciousness pervades all being? Unless we change the way we live, treat the planet and the larger universe with the care they deserve, and let go of our narrow selfishness and materialism, we are likely to see the destruction of life on earth. How many times do we have to hear this? Answer: as many times as we need to until we as individuals and as a culture recognize the urgent nature of the crisis facing our planet. The environmental crisis may soon undermine human life on earth! Each of these three books takes a stab at getting us to take the message seriously, and together they add up to required reading for those of us who hope to heal and transform the world.

 

Red Diaper Baby: A Revolutionary Comedy
Josh Kornbluth
DVD from Quixotic Projects, 2009

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Jihad for Love
Parvez Sharma
DVD from Halal Films, 2007

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Video is emerging as an important force in the work of tikkun-ing the world, and these two DVDs are powerful examples of what can be captured in this medium. Yet they couldn't be more different from each other. Red Diaper Baby (available at joshkornbluth.com) is Josh Kornbluth's hilarious rendition of his own process of freeing himself from the pathologies of his communist parents. It is obsessed with sex, politics, and neuroses. You can't help but love Kornbluth by the time it is over, and you can't help but learn a lot about growing up in America in the 1960s. A Jihad for Love provides a window into the problems faced by gay and lesbian Muslims who do not want to abandon their religion and cannot abandon their own homosexuality. It is at once shocking, deeply revelatory of the homophobic distortions that poison all the Abrahamic religions, and humanly engaging. It was filmed in twelve countries and nine languages, and it gives an insightful and compassionate look into the reality of contemporary Islam.

 

The Birthright Lottery
Ayelet Shachar
Harvard University Press, 2009

 

OK, you were lucky enough to be born in one of the wealthier countries of the world. But what makes you entitled to enjoy the benefits of this accident of birth while others in poorer countries are starving to death through no fault of their own? Ayelet Shachar, a professor of law at the University of Toronto, argues that the privileges of hereditary entitlement to citizenship may be legitimate, but so too are the claims to citizenship of those born elsewhere who have developed bonds of community involvement. Birthright citizenship is a special kind of inherited property, and a society has a right to impose restrictions and qualifications on what rights flow from the chance occurrence of "being born here." This book is an important jumping-off point not only for the immigrant rights movement, but also for all of us who would like to see the eventual dismantling of restriction on immigration, or even of all national boundaries.

 

Originally Blessed
Edited by Matthew Henry
Creation Spirituality Communities, 2008
www.originallyblessed.org

 

Christian theologians were burdened by the pessimistic readings on human reality that seemed to flow from the notion of "original sin" until Matthew Fox (at that time a Dominican Catholic priest) wrote his powerful Original Blessing in 1983, a liberation theology classic that helped refocus Christian attention on all that is beautiful and that elicits joy and pleasure in the world. His reward? Cardinal Ratzinger (now the current Pope) silenced him and he eventually was thrown from his denomination and from the Catholic Church. On the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of its publication, Matthew Henry has assembled a stimulating set of essays that further develop many of the themes in Fox's original classic. Among the authors: Riane Eisler on "Sacred Pleasure," Andrew Harvey on "Trust Even Your Heartbreak," Bruce Chilton on "Rabbi Jesus, the Cosmic Christ," Jeremy Taylor on "Aesthetics -- Yes! Asceticism -- No!" and Caroline Myss on "The Soul Serves God."