Tikkun Magazine, January/February 2010

 A NOTE ON LETTERS TO THE EDITOR:

We welcome your responses to our articles. Send your letters to the editor to Letters@Tikkun.org. Please remember, however, not to attribute to Tikkun views other than those expressed in our editorials. We email, post, and print many articles with which we have strong disagreements, because that is what makes Tikkun a location for a true diversity of ideas. Tikkun reserves the right to edit your letters to fit available space in the magazine.

We are getting dozens of great letters these days. Below you will find not only longer versions of the letters printed in our January/February 2010 issue, but also readers' responses to Stephen Zunes on the Goldstone Report, Tzvi Marx on Shlomo Sand, Riane Eisler on a new economics, Chet Bowers on academic freedom, Michael Lerner on J Street, and Samantha Kirby on Israel, along with those authors' replies. In addition, you will find letters on nondualism, Afghanistan, Dr. King's God, health care reform, Alice Walker's article on Gaza and Rwanda, and more.

THE LONG PATH OUT OF DENIAL

As the son of a Palestinian farmer and landowner, never absentee, for generations growing the famous Jaffa oranges and forced, with a young family in tow, out of Jaffa in May 1948, I felt I had to write to Kim Chernin to say thank you for your lucid, self-questioning stance toward the relationship between the Jews and the Jews' Jews (in Tikkun, November/December 2009). The title of your book (Everywhere a Guest, Nowhere at Home) echoes Edward Said's (a family friend since the days of Beirut) Out of Place and indeed my own experience of being everywhere a guest, nowhere at home, though I have found this to be liberating rather than a burden.... We love our parents, we love our children, we have a sense of humor. We read, talk, discuss, question, and struggle with alien concepts and ideas, and only the mutual reciprocity of that acknowledgement will extract us out of the mire that is the Middle East. I do not for a moment imagine that the process has been an easy one for you, as I have struggled all my life with the "What would I do if I were an Israeli?" thought. Growing up in Beirut, I have had a firsthand experience of receiving the blunt end of the might of the Israeli army, yet this has never stopped my questing for the "humanity" of my enemy. Hard task indeed, when you are a Red Cross worker in the fresh carnage that was Sabra and Shatila, September 1982.

I hope that your book will slowly help remove the blinkers off the donkeys in both our societies, and only then will there be a tiny glimmer of hope for a future worthy of that name. Again, thank you.

RAJA BEIROUTI

Oxford, UK

I want to thank Tikkun for publishing the excerpt from Chernin's book Everywhere a Guest, Nowhere at Home. What sets this piece apart from other personal reckonings with the Jewish/Palestinian question that I've read is the depth of the author's honesty and the way she painstakingly tracks the slow and arduous process of learning to listen to a narrative that flatly contradicts her own, of taking in a point of view that is inimical to her own identity. The story Chernin tells of how listening eventually wins out over "loyalty to my own side" is instructive to anyone engaged in a political, ethnic, or even personal struggle in which "the other" has ceased to exist as fully human.

LISE WEIL

Montreal, Canada

Kim's essay is a brave, informed, personable, moving, and above all sympathetic presentation of the perspective of an ardent Zionist whose love of truth and the claims of humane values force her to consider the point of view of the perceived enemy to the Jewish state, the Palestinians, whose land a persecuted and almost annihilated culture now would possess. Sympathy for the Palestinians has been anathema for so long that it is a relief to read a well-reasoned, well-researched, well-considered exposition of the questions we who consider ourselves civilized must address. Her essay, adapted from her new book, Everywhere a Guest, Nowhere at Home: A New Vision of Israel and Palestine, will surely introduce what has hitherto been lacking in the debate over rights and power: acknowledgment of the suffering on both sides of the conflict, the solipsism underlying one's opinions and perspective, and the claims of compassion and tolerance, perhaps the most difficult to accommodate and yet, in the long run, the most serviceable of considerations. Surely, I would like to think-and the tenor of Chernin's article gives me hope of its possibility-a resolution the most expeditious and enduring will be discovered in the dialogue between and in the mutual interests of the mothers now suffering on both sides of the conflict.

KIM HAWKINS

Cotati, CA 

REPARATIONS, NOT GENEROSITY

I enthusiastically agree with almost all of Rabbi Lerner's recent article, "Just Say ‘No' to the War in Afghanistan." One of my points of difference concerns Rabbi Lerner's reference to the Global and Domestic Marshall Plan as a strategy of generosity. Generosity seems to imply that there is no debt owed.

Rabbi Lerner points out our "arrogant self-interest and self-aggrandizement." These would seem to call for reparations and establishing just economic relationships with the rest of the world, as does the fact that we have been military and economic aggressors and have done great environmental damage. Not only have our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan been very destructive to the environment, we are also one of the world's greatest polluters, emitting perhaps 25 percent of the world's carbon dioxide pollution (as well as other greenhouse gases).

Internationally and nationally, we should focus less on "generosity," with its implications of noblesse oblige toward those we have harmed, and more on what Rabbi Lerner correctly calls for: a "serious process of repentance." 

Karen Mitzner

Portland, OR

PRAYER AND NONDUALITY

Jay Michaelson's article, "Prayer and Nonduality" (Tikkun, November/December 2009), prompts me to share a little of my own wrestling with this topic.

When I was sixteen and a beginning student of Zen, I sat on the shore of Cape Cod and disappeared. No body, no mind, no "me" at all. When I returned I knew that whatever Reality is, it has nothing to do with the isms that seek to define it. It is what is: Ehyeh asher Ehyeh, the ceaseless I sing of birth, death, and rebirth. To speak of God and Creation was to speak of Ocean and Wave, the former greater than, but not other than, the latter. Can the Wave pray to the Ocean? I didn't think so. I stopped praying.

Then, decades later, I began to experience Shechinah, the presence of God as Divine Mother. I resisted the experience as best I could, but I could not do so for long. So I began to speak to Her and to hear Her speak to me. The trouble was that this clearly dualistic encounter with the Divine violated everything I knew to be true about the nondual nature of Reality.

I was no less Her; She was no less me-and yet we spoke. What She taught me is that if God is All, God must be Other as well. Nonduality when juxtaposed with duality is simply part of a larger duality. True nonduality embraces the Other as well as the One in a greater Reality for which there are no words.

So now I pray. What do I pray? There is little in Jewish liturgy that speaks to me, but what little there is I use as mantra. I chant single lines of Hebrew, the core wisdom of the liturgy, and then I wait. What emerges from this waiting is a conversation: me pouring my heart out to Her, and She mirroring myself back to me in a way that allows me to see through the madness and move beyond it. These are moments of ecstasy unmediated by ritual and decorum. No rising or sitting; no responsive readings; no moments of mumbled pseudo-silence. Just raw, uncensored speech. Just saying "Thou." Just hearing echoes of "I." In time the speech gives way to silence; the Wave returns to the Ocean. I am gone. God is all.

Unlike Jay I don't pray to be transformed. There is no static "me" at all. There is no transformation from one fixed state to another, just ceaseless teshuvah, endless turning from self to Self to self, again and again and again. And with each turning there is expansion: not a going round like a planet in orbit around a sun, but a spiraling out like a galaxy. And with each turn and return my heart opens wider; I am more loved and loving. I pray for nothing. The turning is its own reward.

Can this happen in a formal synagogue service? Of course, but for me it happens when I walk outside, the rhythm of my steps matching the rhythm of my breath, dancing with the rhythm of Life. Can it happen with our heads buried in a siddur, our mouths reciting ancient scripts? Of course, but for me it happens in the far simpler chanting of single lines, the uncensored wildness of unscripted speech, and the greater silence that ultimately engulfs them both.

Thanks, Tikkun, for giving us yet another opportunity to hear Jay's wisdom.

RABBI RAMI SHAPIRO

Murfreesboro, TN

Reb Zalman Hiyyah Schachter-Shalomi (Letters to the Editor, Tikkun, November/December 2009), responding to Jay Michaelson's article "Transformation of Consciousness as Messianic Age: A Nondual, Non-Triumphalist View" (Tikkun, September/October 2009)-which he dubs "excellent"-writes: "We need to surrender our narcissism, in which we see ourselves as prime subject. We need to surrender to being a cell in the organic Melech Ha-Olam, a bio-monism for the planet in which we are all living cells contributing to the planet's life." He writes further of the need to develop "‘files' of our own that are compatible with those of others" and to "write new Jewish software that is intentionally created/designed so that it can read files created in traditional applications and operating systems that are no longer current."

Reb Schachter-Shalomi's vision of "surrender" of "narcissism" seems to me to be a giving up of human unique individuality in surrender to and identification with the Machine, the creation of human beings. This is surely, in terms of Judaism, a form of idolatry, not of monism.

Though Jay Michaelson claims his ideas are "non-dualistic," surely there is a profound dualism-a separation between mind and body, a view of the mind as superior to the body and a vision of the ultimate replacement of the body by the mind-in his approving claim that "the internet, nano-technology, and wearable computers are but the initial stages of a noetic revolution in which nonmaterial information may displace material matter as the ultimate future of the body."

DEBORAH MACCOBY 

In response to Jay Michaelson's article entitled "Prayer and Nonduality," I am writing this letter to the editor. Mr. Michaelson suggests that "G-d is just the way things are or a transcendent moral imperative." In addition, he has pointed out that "G-d does not exist-but is Existence itself." 

Mr. Michaelson describes nonduality as proceeding "from the theological tenet that G-d is infinite.... Logically, if G-d is infinite, then everything is G-d." Furthermore, nonduality may be understood from the human experience as well as "from the perspective of theology."

Michaelson points out that the notion of chair, "and everything else, is an emergent property that usually describes reality as we experience it, but doesn't really describe its actual truth." Similarly, the "self" is "just a useful label that describes how things seem from a particular perspective-not how they are." Michaelson states that "G-d, we might say, is what is left when the self is subtracted from everything else." He explains that pantheism and atheism converge when one asks: "If there's no self, what is there?"

Michaelson talks about "the G-d inside the soul, the G-d that fills and surrounds everything." G-d is the "motion and spirit that impels all thinking things, and rolls through all things."

Michaelson writes poetically and eloquently about G-d, the concept of G-d, the self, prayer, prayer and duality, prayer and nonduality. His metaphors are powerful, insightful, and creative. And although I appreciate the beauty of his language, in the end we still part ways. Michaelson's nondual prayer "is the heart dancing, imagining, and of course, projecting. Unlike naïve prayer, it does not assume the existence of a separate Deity who will answer the petitions of the sufficiently pious." Yet I confess that my prayers, like Michaelson's, are the heart dancing and imagining. But they are prayers to a real unknowable G-d. I pray to an omnipresent loving Consciousness that is within and without. I pray to Hashem and believe He knows, hears, and loves me. I know little of His Being. I wish to merge with Him and be part of His beauty and love and wisdom. In this sense, I seek to immerse myself in nondual prayers. 

Michaelson's notions of G-d and prayer do not need the existence of a real G-d. In my private and personal universe, I need my unknowable G-d. Prayer does not make sense without Him. Indeed, I would re-label the act of praying to a nonexistent G-d and call it something else--letting go of the self, deep meditation, union with the universe, transcendental self-talk, spiritual dialogues with oneself, et cetera. 

In the March 31, 1997, issue of Newsweek, Kenneth L. Woodward's article entitled "Is G-d Listening?" explored the nature of prayer and discussed scientific studies of the power of prayer to improve a patient's health. Preliminary results of one study involving patients with rheumatoid arthritis showed that "some individual patients have experienced extraordinary short-term results from prayer. ‘There's something weird going on here, and I love it,' says one patient." I have read other studies that indicate that people get better even when they don't know that others are praying for them. Prayers are powerful. But why? There is no definitive answer.

In the November 15, 2009, Sunday Week In Review of the New York Times, Nicholas Wade's article entitled "The Evolution of the G-d Gene" illuminated the idea that "there is a genetic component to religion" and that "religion was favored by natural selection." These findings do not prove or disprove the existence of G-d. But they certainly highlight man's need to believe in a higher power and the value of such beliefs.

When I sit with my patients and listen to their stories of suffering, and when I think about the Holocaust and modern-day genocide, I question whether G-d exists. For days, weeks, or months, I may sit with these cutting thoughts and devastating emotions and drink the empty cups of atheism or agnosticism. But my craving for G-d is so strong that nothing can separate me from the Void where G-d dwells, too. 

Unlike Mr. Michaelson, I do not use such terms as elite or naive to describe concepts of G-d or prayer. I do not believe that any living person knows more than I about the existence and nature of G-d. Those who claim to speak to G-d are often found on psychiatric wards. Ultimately, we are limited by our perceptions, experiences, interpretations, and belief systems. Some individuals are gifted intellectually. But intellectual knowledge may get in the way of seeing or experiencing religious, spiritual, or transcendent realities. Others passionately embrace the spiritual universe. But passion does not necessarily lead to the truth.

I seek and pray to a real G-d, Hashem, although at times I doubt whether He exists. And when I pray, like Mr. Michaelson, I dance with my heart.

MEL WALDMAN

Brooklyn, NY

THE SWEET VICTIMHOOD OF ISRAEL'S MALIGNERS

David Theo Goldberg and Saree Makdisi, in a Tikkun article (September/October 2009), accuse me of "mis-characterization and fabrication" of the now-famous Gaza Symposium at UCLA (in my essay, "Dust Over Campus Life: UCLA at a Crossroad," LA Jewish Journal, February 18, 2009). Let me state categorically that, before writing that article, I personally interviewed five witnesses who attended that event-two students and three visitors-and I have a record of their testimonies. These people spoke to me because of a genuine concern over the increasingly intimidating atmosphere on U.S. campuses, and, based on what they had to say, we as a community should share their concern.

One of the students documented her experience in a letter to the Chancellor and wrote: "When a Jew came up to ask a question at the ‘Human Rights and Gaza' symposium, one of the speakers, Lisa Hajjar, spewed out the racist comment ‘I think that Zionist hat of yours might be screwed on too tight.' By the end, hundreds of people were chanting ‘Zionism is Nazism,' and ‘Israelis are murderers.' At this point, the Symposium was not a ‘Civil discourse essential to the intellectual climate at UCLA.' It was not respectful, but for the first time in my life made me fear for my safety, because I am Israeli. I was sitting in the back of the room, yet I was surrounded with people showing so much hate that I truly believed they wouldn't bat an eye if someone killed me on the spot. This symposium made me feel more unsafe than I have ever felt in my life, and it was held on the UCLA campus ... Have you ever been in a room filled with people that chanted to your demise? I wouldn't wish that on anyone, not even the people in that room."

According to those who were present, this orgy took place in the Q&A session, which, understandably, was not included in the podcasts, and which Goldberg and Makdisi dismiss as "a bit more heated and contentious."

One of the visitors was a consul general of an EU country, who described the symposium as "the dirtiest Israel-bashing and indeed full-fledged anti-Semitic hate-fest I have experienced in my two-and-a-half years in this city." Although I for one never raise anti-Semitic allegations against Israel maligners (doing so would give them the benefit of a hereditary disease), the impression that neutral outside observers received from the UCLA event should be of some concern to the campus community.

I had (and have) no reason to doubt the credibility of these and other independent eyewitnesses of the UCLA event, though one should find ample reasons to doubt the credibility of Goldberg and Makdisi, who characterize that same event as an academic symposium "meant to restore a sense of intellectual balance and historical context." Seeking the shelter of victimhood, they further write: "insinuation, accusation, and defamation have become the weapons of first resort to respond to argument and criticism directed at Israeli policies."

The UCLA symposium, I hold, barely discussed "Israeli policies" in the conventional sense of the word. It focused instead on the sins of Israel's birth, on the stupidity of assuming that Israel may have a thing to say in her defense, on how peace-loving Hamas was provoked into this conflict, and on the irredeemable qualities of a monstrous, blood-thirsty "white settler colonialist power" obsessed with one and only one aim-the destruction of the Palestinian people and of innocent Palestinian lives.

The intellectual rigor of Goldberg and Makdisi shines through the way they try to convince Tikkun readers that the UCLA panel was "intellectually balanced and historically honest." Their proof: "three of the five participants were Jewish, and one an Israeli."

Perhaps even more revealing is their use of the saintly phrase "criticism directed at Israeli policies," which is repeated 17 times in their article, without one mention of the real reason Israel maligners are resented, disrespected and feared by people of conscience and seekers of peace. The reason of course is their consistent dehumanization of Israel's character, their persistent deligitimization of a people's homeland, and their relentless advocacy of its demise (e.g., Makdisi, "Forget the Two State Solution," LA Times, May 11, 2008; Goldberg, "Racial Palestinianization," 2008). This key reason is meticulously and craftily evaded or covered up in a twelve-page article that pretends to invite honest discourse.

Evidently, Goldberg and Makdisi are not too proud of the moral standing of their own aims and acts to be upfront about them-at least not in the company of Tikkun readers. Perhaps we can take solace in the fact that they still maintain some scruples.

As to the issue of "balance" and "outside interference" [the main theme of the Tikkun article], my essay did not advocate legislating a balance in every academic meeting. Instead, it called for exposing dishonest academic conduct.

I am not against excluding pro-coexistence speakers from one scholarly meeting or another. I am against excluding such speakers as a matter of consistent policy by an academic unit calling itself "Center for Near East Studies."

Students, parents, faculty, alumni, donors and the community at large have the right to know whether the Center of Near East Studies is the same center that they have known for years, namely, a meeting place for ideas of all players in the Middle East, or whether it has been turned into a politicized propaganda center for anti-coexistence forces.

Communities do have this right to know about changing agendas at centers on all campuses, because every community has an investment in such centers, an investment in resources, tradition, expectations and reputation.

It is not surprising that the betrayers of these expectations would be alarmed by recent exposures, but victimhood cannot hide their aims or the damage they have already caused to academic discourse.

JUDEA PEARL

Los Angeles, CA

Saree Makdisi and David Theo Goldberg reply:

Judea Pearl has sent more or less this same letter to every forum willing to print it. In not one of his countless accounts of the event that he has spent so much time denouncing has he ever attempted to (a) summarize a single argument presented by any of the speakers on the panel or (b) offer a counter-argument based on reason and backed up with evidence. Instead, he has resorted to innuendo, suggestion, and clumsily attempted character assassination, backed up with nothing but "evidence" supposedly supplied to him by secret and anonymous sources (which in the absence of concrete evidence we can be forgiven for assuming are figments of his imagination). Anyone remotely connected with a university or interested in intellectual life will recognize at a single glance that Pearl's approach is utterly inconsistent with the basic principles of academic enquiry and intellectual exchange, which demand verifiable evidence, not merely wild assertion. If he resorted to this form of argumentation in his own academic field of Computer Science, he would be dismissed out of hand. More generously, though, we can only thank him for so effectively bearing out the central point of our original piece. If he is interested in carrying on an exchange, one of us would be glad to meet with him in a public forum on ways to resolve the Israel/Palestine conflict, to be held at UCLA, where he can test his arguments and evidence against ours in an open, honest, public setting; we will ask the UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies if such a forum can be can arranged. If Professor Pearl does not agree to a public forum, we can only conclude that it is because he recognizes that he has no credible argument to make and no real evidence to fall back on. There would be no other explanation for why he prefers to resort to unsubstantiated innuendo and anonymous rumor that any first-year student in a course on critical thinking or practical reasoning would recognize as riven by fallacy at every turn.

J STREET AND TIKKUN

Oil and water, J Street and Tikkun, DC consensus building vs. Michael Lerner's search for honest men and women who want to broker peace. J Street could never handle ML's candor. Why try? Why cry?

MICHAEL WOLFE

via email

I was already convinced that J Street is really a sham that attempts to be viewed as supporters of peace. This, however, is only for the PR points that Jewish communities really need right now in light of the horrendous behavior of the Israeli government and the silence of many American Jews.

Tikkun is way above them. J Street is transparent in their feelings for the human rights of the Palestinians. The only peace they want is one that will further the interests of the Israelis. I lived in Israel for 12 years and I well understand THAT type of "peace."

Rabbi Lerner is a man of honor and true purpose, and honestly, he does not belong among the J Street crowd. I would have been disappointed for him to join them in their shallow, dishonest purpose.

PAT CARMELI

Cazenovia, NY

Dave Belden replies:

Honestly, Pat, I don't know enough about J Street to join you in this sentiment: I prefer to think J Street folks are trying but are lacking spine, which is very common among liberals trying to capture the center. All too often they move all the way to the center-right, instead of knowing how to move the center itself towards the center-left. Well meaning but ineffective. I hope both of us are wrong in the long run and J Street's spine gets stronger. But I do agree that Michael has honor and true purpose, and thank you for that.

Rabbi Lerner replies:

I fear Pat may be right. J Street suggested that I and Tikkun were "wild cards," but what did that mean? I know when others have said that about us: (1) When we wrote our first editorial on the intifada-it was entitled "The Occupation: Immoral and Stupid." I think they thought using those kinds of words was way too strong, but the words were accurate then, and twenty years later they sound positively prophetic. (2) When we took a full page ad in the NY Times supporting Refuseniks in 2002. We were told that doing so was irresponsible. I think we were courageous and correct. However, we made a mistake in that ad: Although we had listed in another part of our ad the names of our Advisory Board, not all of them agreed with the ad, and though we said that in small print, some felt that we had misused their names. We apologized deeply. Such sloppiness was a big mistake, but I don't think it showed that we were a wild card. (3) When we took a full page ad in the NY Times during the invasion of Lebanon in 2006 and again during the Gaza war in 2008/2009 in each case calling for an immediate ceasefire while the "pro-Israel peaceniks" kept their mouths shut until Israel itself indicated that it thought it had done enough damage that it could call off the war. 

So, I think Pat may have a point. I believe that what really offends many of the centrists you are talking about, Dave, is that we explicitly repeat that, as spiritual and religious people rooted in Torah, we recognize that in God's eyes the suffering of the Palestinian people is just as horrible as the suffering of the Israeli people, that BOTH sides have been unnecessarily cruel and insensitive to the needs of the other, and that any peace solution must involve not only security for Israel but real justice for the Palestinian people, including those refugees who live in camps all over the Arab world, who have been used as a political football by the Arab states, and whose claims for justice have never been acknowledged by Israel. We also recognize that we publish Palestinians who articulate the desires and needs of the Palestinian people, even if they do so in language that is less loving than we as an editorial committee would support. I believe it is this, our commitment to the humanity and rights of Palestinians, and the fact that we speak not only in terms of Israel's self-interest or Jewish self-interest, but as a voice that cares equally about Palestinians, and indeed the rights of all people on the planet, that we seem to be a "wild card" to J Street.

MORE ON J STREET AND TIKKUN

I am responding to your editorial (in the September/October issue of the magazine) on the rejection by J Street of your formal participation in their conference of this past October. First let me quote what for me personally were very relevant parts of the editorial [where you quote what one of the members of the Tikkun editorial board was told when he spoke to the J Street leadership]:

"Jeremy Ben-Ami ‘acknowledged that you would bring some positives but he is convinced that your involvement would signal that this effort is not the fresh and new approach that he wants people to take as the "brand" of their conference.' That editorial board member reminded us of how the liberals who ended the war in Vietnam often distanced themselves from the radicals who opposed the war from the start.... It was the same dynamic that led many Democrats in the 1940s to remain hostile to and label as ‘premature anti-fascists' those on the Left who had in the 1930s urged the United States to actively oppose the growth of fascism in Europe when U.S. economic and political elites were still fantasizing that maybe Hitler, if left on his own, would attack and destroy communist Russia."

I was one of those early opponents of the war in Vietnam, as a student at the Yale School of Public Health marching on the sidewalks of New Haven, carrying anti-war signs, when most of the curious onlookers didn't know what "Vietnam" meant. I grew up with and was inspired by a group of "premature anti-Fascists," led by the great Dr. Edward K. Barsky. Eddie had been the Commander of the Medical Unit for the whole of the International Brigade in Spain. After the War, he was sent to jail by the McCarthyites-before-McCarthy on the House Un-American (sic) Activities Committee for contempt of Congress because he refused to release to them the names of the contributors to the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee that he headed. What awful thing did what we knew as the "Spanish Committee" do? It sent aid to the refugees from fascist Spain who escaped Franco's death squads and were living in camps in the south of France. So I personally know whereof you speak in your editorial.

I was a supporter of J Street from the time I first heard of it. But then when I heard of their exclusion from their conference of perhaps the most authentic U.S. voice for peace in Israel/Palestine and for the relief of the decades-long suffering of the Palestinian people, I sent Jeremy Ben-Ami the following letter:

Dear Jeremy, I just want you to know that I am resigning my membership in J Street over your persistent refusal to formally seat Tikkun at your conference. You will get no more money from me. I cannot imagine just what it is that you are afraid of. Couldn't be a political Jewish organization that takes the historical Jewish Ethic seriously, could it? Couldn't be an organization that is truly concerned with the havoc that Israel under Right-wing leadership has been reeking on the Palestinians for many years, as that leadership has pursued, covertly and openly, expulsionism for all Arabs in ‘Greater Israel?' Or that perhaps that organization includes ethical Jews who also believe in God? I am a humanistic Jew as well as an ethical one, but I am welcome within their precincts. Apparently Kristol and his cohorts have frightened you. I will continue to support the true pro-peace groups, but not your half-way, let's-not-get-people-really-angry-with-us, one.

Keep up the good fight, Tikkun! The number of truly ethical Jews is shrinking. We desperately need your continued leadership.

STEVEN JONAS

Stony Brook, NY

Rabbi Lerner responds:

Liberal Centrists have often showed more antagonism to people on their Left than on the Right, allowing right-wingers to demean those who have taken the risks for peace and justice. Steven Jonas rightly recounts some other instances of that in twentieth-century history. It will be important to watch how willing J Street is to critique the Obama administration as it backs away from putting any serious pressure on Israel to accept a Palestinian state in the entirety of the West Bank and Gaza (with minor border modifications as envisioned in Yossi Beilin's extremely rational Geneva Accord).

It's important for us as spiritual progressives, both Jewish and not, to try to support centrists, even as we seek to push them toward more courageous positions. Those who support the peace perspective should be supporting each other, not pushing each other away. That doesn't preclude critique of ideas, but it does suggest the importance of continuing to reach out to all those who support a peace perspective. So though they refused to allow us to co-sponsor their conference, we at Tikkun have offered J Street representatives a regular column in Tikkun (as long as it contains new ideas that they haven't publicized elsewhere before our magazine comes out) and have invited Jeremy Ben-Ami to speak at our June conference in D.C. We lead by example. We haven't heard back yet but hope they accept our invitation.

CHILDREN OF ISRAEL?

I feel that Tzvi Marx has NOT adequately met the challenge to Israel's legitimacy posed by Professor Sand's thesis. The issue at stake is not whether Jews can validly be characterized as a "nation" with legitimate interests in self-determination. Rather, the issue is whether such a "nation" has the right to establish and enforce state authority over the land at the eastern edge of the Mediterranean Sea, i.e., the "Holy Land," in a manner that is designed to exclude and discriminate against the indigenous population, in perpetuity. 

If Sand is correct, this beautiful land, with a great climate, sandy beaches, and fertile soil, is not the "ancestral homeland" of the Jewish nation, but rather, the mythological fetish of colonial occupiers who have appealed to this mythology in order to justify their control over the land. Yes, the recent history is complex and there are many ways to tell the story about how Israel came to exist. But the fundamental issue is not the past, but what happens now. 

The Zionist project makes an implicit demand upon the world: "You must accept the validity of our mythology, which states that present generations of European Jews, who have nothing but an imaginary mythological connection to the land of greater Palestine, have a right to establish an exclusive state on this land. If you do not accept our mythology, you are our mortal enemy." By making this demand, Zionism puts the Jewish nation into opposition against those who have undertaken a true spiritual path by seeing the world as it is, beyond conditioned dogma.

Sand has raised serious questions about the validity of the conventional Jewish mythology. In the tradition of Einstein, Arendt, Buber, Kovel, and many others, there is a great opportunity for members of the Jewish nation to renounce their claim of right to exclusive control over the land in question, to make a warm-hearted invitation to the refugees of 1948 to participate as full equal citizens in the state apparatus that controls this land. 

In other words, it is time for Jewish leaders inside and outside of Israel to call for the annexation of Gaza and the West Bank, and to extend equal protection of the laws of Israel to the people who live there. Yes, this means the "destruction" of Israel as a Jewish state, but more importantly, it means the rebirth, the REGENESIS, of the true meaning of the Jewish religion -- that WE ARE ALL THE CHOSEN PEOPLE.

WYLIE SCHEUER

via email

Tzvi Marx replies:

In its Declaration of Independence (May 15, 1948), Israel promises that "it will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture."

Compare this with the charter of the "democratically" elected Hamas, Palestinian governing authority in Gaza: "Israel will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it,... the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgment Day. It ...or any part of it, should not be given up...There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors." (from www.mideastweb). 

Wylie Scheuer, with good will and intention (I'm sure), and with no small amount of naiveté (I'm even more sure), calls for the "the 'destruction' of Israel as a Jewish state," to make way for, in his words, "the rebirth, the REGENESIS, of the true meaning of the Jewish religion-that WE ARE ALL THE CHOSEN PEOPLE." I leave it to the fair and sober Tikkun reader to decide who is living in Never Never Land rather than taking seriously the concrete actualities of the Land (of Israel).

CORRECTION

In my review of Shlomo Sand's book The Invention of the Jewish People, I attributed to him the opinion that he offered in explanation of the lapse in Israeli historiography of the Khazars, namely "the wave of decolonization of the 1950s and 1960s drove the Israeli memory- merchants to avoid the very shadow of the Khazar past. There was anxiety about the legitimacy of the Zionist project, should it become widely known that the settling Jewish masses might lead to a broad challenge against the State of Israel's right to exist" (page 236). I understood him to share this concern that others might use that knowledge to challenge Israel's right to exist. I have now learned that Sand does not hold that view, but was merely intending to quote others who have the view. My sincere apologies to him for reading into his text something he did not intend.

TZVI MARX 

PALESTINE AND ISRAEL

Recently I wrote to you about the significance (to me) of the Jacob and Esau story as a model--or even a forecast-of a possible outcome for the Palestine/Israel dilemma. There is one fascinating element of the story I did not include, because I wanted to focus on Jacob's magnificent impetus toward reconciliation and Esau's equally magnificent forgiving response. However, I am so teased by the question of Jacob's wound in his struggle with the unnamed One that I am passing my thought along in case you might find a positive way to work with it.

The mythologist Joseph Campbell pointed out somewhere that a thigh wound in an ancient tale actually signified a genital wound. Two corroborative examples are in the Parsifal story, with the Fisher King who has a severe thigh wound and whose kingdom is utterly barren; another is in the archaic tale of Gilgamesh where the heroes slay an avenging beast and defiantly fling its "thigh" in the face of Astarte, the enraged goddess of fertility. So one must ponder whether Jacob's wound also carries an authority of origin-some indication of a unique and sacred quality that will be passed along, whether literally or figuratively, to future generations. What might this mean for the people in the "Jewish nation" of Israel, who feel the land and its history are theirs? How dignifying that would be, to carry such a sacred imperative of conscience, a spiritual mutation with recognition of both blessing and responsibility in its DNA.

The Middle East brotherly antagonisms, ancient and contemporary, seem to me to be the quintessential conflict on our planet, and in the striving for reconciliation we all might do well to trust the import of our heritage of human experience. 

ROSEMARY H. HAYES

Santa Rosa, CA 

It is time for the majority of Israelis and Jews around the world to speak up. Their silence is signaling the evil men to continue to hurt the future of the Jewish people.

Shame on the congressmen and -women and the senators of the United States; don't they have the GD guts to speak their conscience, if they have one? Our arrogance has no limits; the world votes one way and we the other.

In the long haul, the biggest enemies of Israel are these greedy men and women who are letting Hawks of Israel get away with murders and massacres and compromise peace and security of Israel and Palestine for a long time to come. Justice is the only thing that is sustainable. The short term (in terms of Jewish history) gains for bullying the congressmen and -women and getting the United States to veto the UN Security resolutions is going to hurt the Israelis common people. The idiots have been doing this for sixty years; it is time to wake up and speak up-if not, evil persists.

MIKE GHOUSE

via email

Rabbi Lerner, I should tell you first that I admire you for many reasons. You gave me a radical new insight into the Torah through your book Jewish Renewal. As a progressive and a Jew, you stand for many of the policies and values that I hold dear.

But on one issue I am totally at odds with you. The issue is Israel. I realize we both share the same goal: peace and prosperity for both Israel and the Palestinians. The problem, as I see it, is that the Palestinians do not accept Israel's right to exist. As long as that remains their basic assumption, peace is impossible. How does one make peace with a people who seek your destruction? All the peace initiatives are merely window-dressing, a way for Palestinians to pretend to be peace-loving, while at the same time they send rockets and suicide bombers to attack Israel. The only reason Hamas is abiding by a cease-fire is to re-arm and rebuild. I don't believe for a minute that they have given up their passion to wipe Israel off the map.

Tell me how you negotiate with such people.

I was saddened to read about all your personal difficulties this year. I hope this new year is better for you. One piece of cheer I might bring you is that over the last six years, I refer to Jewish Renewal in my Torah Study class to remind my fellow students that the Torah reflects the psychology of the people who wrote it, not the nature of God. I can't tell you how important that insight is to me.

RICHARD DAMASHEK

via email

Rabbi Lerner replies:

I imagine you'd find it difficult or troubling if someone said "all the Jews believe x or y or z," because you know of the wide differences among Jews. Yet you do this to the Palestinians. Do you not know that the PLO abrogated parts of its charter that called for the elimination of Israel, that the Palestinian Authority has over and over again affirmed that it recognizes Israel and is trying to negotiate with Israel, or that a majority of Palestinians when polled say that they would live in peace with an Israeli state if Israel withdrew from the West Bank and Israel and allowed it to form its own Palestinian state controlling its own borders? Have you been to Palestine recently and talked to Palestinians? When you do you'll find a wide range of views that would challenge your certainty about what Palestinians do or do not want or believe. 

GROWING WARY OF POLITICS

Though I have grown wary of ALL political groups (and especially people who talk about being "spiritual"-what the dickens is that?), I don't see any other groups out there talking plain sense, calling for a return to simple prudence, the way you do. Rabbi Lerner, I read your letter of appeal, and I was very concerned when I learned of your health problems, particularly since you're the lone voice, the only person giving himself to this work. Well, my donation is just a token amount at this point. I am usually a cautious and skeptical person, especially when it comes to my own modest resources. 

I agree 100 percent with your views on dismantling our ludicrous and tiresome imperialist campaigns around the world, on the loathsome corruption in government (usually disguised by nice slogans about rescuing the economy or providing health care); furthermore, it appears to me that our government has encouraged Israel to pursue policies of hounding their minorities to death, which neither do credit to its people nor establish its existence on firm human rights foundations. Where they have been successful in establishing viable quid pro quo with majority communities, Jews and other minorities of whatever ethnicity have done best by encouraging a tolerant pluralism. Maybe that won't work everywhere, but I am generally skeptical that any state in Israel's geopolitical conundrum can succeed in the long run by hounding potentially useful citizens. At the same time, I don't envy them their position and the complexities they contend with. Arabs and Jews have dug themselves so deeply into this hate/vengeance cycle that it will take not only good will but something like divine intervention for them to extricate themselves-but it's the only way to long-term survival, and we ought to encourage rather than hinder the process. For me the bottom line is that the Mideast is more THEIR problem than ours. I don't want any more Americans dying over there, period. If its oil we want, it can be had in the usual way, on the international market-or we can get truly smart and develop other methods of fueling our social and economic lives!

Finally, I have transitioned over the past decade from an active optimist to a passive pessimist vis-a-vis public questions of domestic and foreign policy. I profoundly doubt that we will arrive at any ideal state of peace and comity anytime soon.

Now my meager donation hasn't entitled me to drone on longer than this.

TERRY PICKETT

via email

ROADMAP TO A NEW ECONOMICS

Riane Eisler makes some really important observations in her critique of economics. As it is practiced now, economics focuses on prices and commodities - things you could sell or buy, that have monetary value. As a consequence, family caretakers-primarily women-do work that is thought to have no economic value in our society. They are said to be "economically inactive." Even worse is the fact that many destructive activities-for instance, producing tobacco products or cluster bombs-since they involve commodities bought and sold, count as positive values in the gross national product of a society even though their effects are entirely destructive.

All of this is terribly important and needs repeating. So is her insistence that we move from dominative ways of organizing society to cooperative ones. Many people agree on that: cooperation needs to replace domination. The question of how to move our societies from domination to cooperative structures has long been debated, and solutions have been tried in different communities. The sad fact is that we have not yet managed it. But Eisler is undaunted. She tells us that we must not pay attention to centuries of thinking about these changes. Forget the Diggers and Levelers in 17^th-century England, forget Marx and Engels, forget the socialist kibbutzniks or the flower children of the late sixties, and many, many others. Theirs are "old ways of thinking that we must re-examine and transcend."

What we must do instead is explained in Eisler's 2003 book The Power of Partnership. We must prevail upon existing enterprises to treat their employees as human beings instead of as interchangeable factors of production (67). Eisler has many stories of corporations that have done so and have not only, thereby, done the right thing, but also made a lot of money. Doing well by your fellow men and women and doing well by your bottom line are, in Eisler's new economics, perfectly compatible.

But things are not quite so simple. One of the companies mentioned in her book, Hyatt Hotels, is cited for treating its employees better than many other companies and being rewarded by employee loyalty. A few weeks ago three Hyatt hotels in Boston laid off about 100 housekeepers-women who make beds and clean floors and toilets-some of whom had been with the company for 20 years or more. These housekeepers had a pension plan and health insurance and made $15 an hour-about $30,000 a year. Hyatt replaced them with housekeepers working for eight dollars an hour without any benefits.

How could Hyatt Hotels, committed to treating their employees humanely do such a thing? When they were criticized for their action, Hyatt Hotels justified themselves as follows: In the present economic crisis, the hospitality business is suffering and so is the hotel chain's bottom line. Hence the firings of long-term employees, replacing them with others paid half the wages of the fired workers. As long as we live in a capitalist economy, that is a perfectly good justification. Companies like Hyatt are responsible to their stockholders, who want their stocks to go up and their dividends to come in regularly. The managers of Hyatt hotels are not the owners; their job is to increase stock value, and if that requires cutting their wage bill by firing established housekeepers, that is what they will do even if, personally, they really hate doing it.

There is an important lesson in the story: a capitalist economy encourages the spread of domination. Capitalist managers must do whatever it takes to make ever more money, even if that means expanding domination and restricting cooperation. If that is what you oppose, as Eisler does, then you cannot just ignore capitalism as "another old way of thinking." Replacing domination with cooperation is not merely a matter of trying as hard as you can to be a good person, to change, and to encourage others to do likewise. In our world, capitalism promotes domination; it encourages laying off workers, cutting wages, foreclosing on mortgages, denying health care to the sick and to the poor. Capitalism is a serious component of the problem of domination. Yes, capitalism also promotes cooperation-as long as it earns you money. When it is no longer "cost-effective," as the Hyatt case shows so vividly, cooperation goes out the window.

The project of replacing domination by cooperation is a very ancient one. Human beings have tried it in many different ways and found it extraordinarily difficult. It has not become any easier. We must not misrepresent the difficulties of this task. To overlook centuries of thinking about capitalism-about the private ownership of productive resources-and to make the whole project one of goodwill and personal change does a disservice to all of us. Well-meaning reformers, if they believe Eisler, will try to change themselves and others, only to find that good will does not take you very far in times of economic crisis. Eisler's followers will, most likely, be discouraged, blame "human nature," and give up trying to change society. Eisler's oversimplification will in the end only produce frustration, cynicism, and political passivity.

Her advice to ignore ideas of past generations also dishonors many, many generations of persons of good will who have struggled against domination and for cooperation, sometimes sacrificing their lives. It completely overlooks the most striking efforts to replace domination by cooperation-the Mondragon cooperatives in the Basque country of Spain, or the large and complex cooperatives of Emilia Romagna in Northern Italy. These and myriad other cooperatives, here and abroad, function well because they are self-consciously opposed to domination, that is, to capitalism.

Overcoming domination and fostering cooperation is very, very difficult. If you refuse to think about capitalism, it is impossible.

RICHARD SCHMITT

Worcester, MA

Riane Eisler replies:

I am puzzled by Richard Schmitt's letter. Most of what he critiques is not in my article. At the same time, he ignores its central themes, including specific proposals for changing economic structures and rules for no longer rewarding the predatory policies and practices he decries.

He claims that by pointing to the need for a new economic perspective, I propose we dismiss earlier thinking and efforts, including Marx and socialism. In fact, the article specifically states that building a more equitable and sustainable economic system does not mean we should discard everything from socialism. What it does say is that "to effectively address our problems, we have to go much deeper, to matters that conventional economic analyses and theories ignore."

One of these matters is the urgent need for an economic system that gives visibility and real value to the most important human work: caring for people, starting in childhood, and caring for our Mother Earth. But while this is a major theme, Mr. Schmitt says nothing about it, simply lauding cooperatives and arguing against private property and capitalism. This not only ignores barbarous traditions of economic domination that go back to pre-capitalist economies (tribal, feudal, monarchic); it ignores the fact that the two large-scale modern experiments with socialism, in the former USSR and China (which abolished private property and instituted cooperatives) resulted in still another domination system (top-down rule, severe violence, male-dominance)-and huge environmental problems.

Neither does Mr. Schmitt have anything to say about a central theme of the article: that to change cultural values and social and economic structures we need a systemic approach. Nor does he mention that for fundamental change we must pay attention to matters ignored in both capitalist and socialist theory, such as the social and economic implications of how gender roles and relations are constructed. Here are just two examples mentioned in the article: Statistical studies show that the status of women can be a better predictor than gross domestic product of a nation's general quality of life. And in nations with low poverty and a generally high standard of living, such as Sweden, Norway, and Finland, women are 40 percent of national legislatures, and stereotypically feminine values and activities such as caring and nonviolence are supported by government policies voted for by both men and women.

I would like to invite Mr. Schmitt to please re-read the article, and better still, read The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics.

MISUSE OF ACADEMIC FREEDOM

Chet Bowers (Tikkun, September/October 2009) expresses skepticism concerning academic freedom. His concern is that traditional ideas and teaching are so prominent at a time when our world faces major changes and challenges like those from global warming. However, it is exactly academic freedom which allows younger professors to challenge old ideas. Most of the analysis of the dangers from global warming and ecological degradation has come from researchers in universities. It is the Congress, limited by its dependence on vested interests, that lags so far behind.

Bowers states that "academic freedom has been used to justify developing new weapon systems." It is true that there are some professors who defend new military programs. However, it is exactly in the universities where there is academic freedom that the analyses showing the uselessness of proposed missile defenses and other weapons systems have been carried out. A particular issue is that of prejudice against some group, particularly anti-Semitism. In fact the powerful Israel lobby has crusaded against professors who dare to tell the truth about Israel, demanding they be dismissed for anti-Semitism. Since this campaign is so insidious it is essential that universities insist on academic freedom and declare that under no circumstance will any professor be dismissed or punished for anti-Semitism.

Academic freedom is an essential pillar of a democratic society. As one says of democracy so we must say of academic freedom: it is not perfect but every alternative is much worse.

LINCOLN WOLFENSTEIN

Pittsburgh, PA

Chet Bowers replies:

The first sentence in Professor Wolfentein's critique of my September/October 2009 article on the misuses of academic freedom totally misrepresents the issues I was raising.  His use of the word "skepticism" suggests that I am generally skeptical about the value of academic freedom.  If he had paid attention to what I actually wrote, he would find that I acknowledge the importance of academic freedom even though academics have often used it in ways that are morally, politically, and ecologically problematic. If I had limited my discussion to the conventional wisdom Professor Wolfenstein reiterates, there would have been no need to publish it. What eludes Professor Wolfenstein's conventional and thus culturally and historically uninformed view of academic freedom is that I was making a point very much in line with his view that academic freedom allows old patterns of thinking to be questioned and revised. That is, what I intended to bring to the discussion of academic freedom is how most colleagues in the social sciences, humanities, and a number of professional schools justify, on the basis of academic freedom, their right to forgo examining how the long established interpretative frameworks of their disciplines, which are still based on deep cultural assumptions taken for granted before there was an awareness of environmental limits, may be at the cultural roots of the ecological crisis. In effect, my criticism is that they are using their academic freedom to justify their state of denial.

"NO" TO THE WAR IN AFGHANISTAN

I applaud Rabbi Lerner's idea of using the South African model of Truth and Reconciliation, not only globally, but also within the United States, focusing on groups including Native Americans and African Americans because of our history of exploitation and oppression. I believe that, as a country, the United States also needs to make reparations and establish just economic relationships with such groups using a Domestic Marshall Plan. In an article in The Oregonian (August 12, 2009), psychiatrist Dale Walker, a Cherokee, said, "What Indian country needs is a Marshall Plan." Dr. Walker also mentions that the Indian Health Services and the Bureau of Indian Affairs need to be represented, in combination, in a "Cabinet-level" post.

KAREN MITZNER

Portland, OR

I enthusiastically agree with almost all of Rabbi Lerner's recent article "Just Say ‘No' to the War in Afghanistan." One of my points of difference is Rabbi Lerner's reference to the Global and Domestic Marshall Plan as a strategy of generosity. Generosity seems to imply that there is no debt owed.

Rabbi Lerner points out our "arrogant self-interest and self-aggrandizement." These would seem to call for reparations and establishing just economic relationships with the rest of the world, as does the fact that we have been military and economic aggressors and done great environmental damage. Not only have our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan been very destructive to the environment: we are one of the world's greatest polluters, emitting perhaps 25 percent of the world's carbon dioxide pollution (as well as other greenhouse gases).

Internationally and nationally, we should focus less on "generosity," with its implications of noblesse oblige toward those we have harmed, and more on what Rabbi Lerner correctly calls for: a "serious process of repentance." 

KAREN MITZNER

Portland, OR

‘THE ONE THAT KEEPS ME UP'

My question to Ms. Kirby, regarding her statement (in Tikkun's September/October 2009 issue): "But as an American Jew, I can't pretend I think the Jewish claim to a homeland is unreasonable or unfounded."

Is it reasonable to gain a homeland at the expense of other people already on the land? Is it reasonable to brutally treat those people on the land with the destruction of their homes and agriculture, and building a wall preventing these people from travel, medical care, et cetera?

I believe the argument has been made over and over again, especially by Americans as they took over all the lands from indigent inhabitants under the guise of saving or bringing Christianity to the heathens.

This sense of tribalism extant is the cause of countless wars where one tribe or country thinks they are superior and have a right to land based merely on their military power or occupancy of the land. Land is a piece of dirt that should belong to all and not be owned, especially when other people on the land are treated like pariahs.

DENISE D'ANNE

San Francisco, CA

Samantha Kirby replies:

Dear Denise,

I think that the best answer to your question lies in the statements before and after the one you quoted in your letter. They are, respectively:

"As an American Jew, I can't speak for the government or people of Israel, and I won't defend the killing of innocents or the defacement of mosques."

"And above all, as an American Jew, I won't accept the common narrative that for my people to have a place in this world, others must suffocate. Loving Israel doesn't have to mean sacrificing the inherent dignity, humanity, and right of Palestinians to their homeland."

The issue is not the erroneous perception of inherent superiority of one tribe over another, nor is it the question of military or occupational power.

The issue is that there are two peoples whose identities are based in a powerful and deep narrative rooted in the same piece of land. These are two peoples who, as I affirm above, should be treated with the dignity and humanity that they deserve.

It is without doubt that the Israeli government's treatment of Palestinians should be criticized.

But to ignore any semblance of right of the Jewish people to this homeland is as mistaken as denying the same to Palestinians.

The issue is messy. It is complicated. The point of my article is that while we are entrenched in this debate, we only make it messier and more complicated by not treating one another with the civility that may someday show us a new way forward.

ATTACKS ON GOLDSTONE

Your email came across my desk, and I was horrified!

Horrified that people like you and your despicable organization are undermining my future, and that of my children, in Israel.

I don't care that you apply your twisted left-wing logic to the US internal affairs, but when you take a stance that endangers me and my family you are walking on the fighting side of me.

How dare you, obviously an armchair non-Zionist, take a stance that adversely affects those who live in Israel?

Goldstone (another left-wing, armchair non-Zionist) had a choice-head up the report commission or not. He chose to because, he said, anyone else heading it would have come up with a scathing report. How more scathing could his report have been? (I have read it all). I would have preferred some Israel-hating goy to come up with such a report, because that is their nature. For a Jew, and one who claims to love Israel, to do so, is treason in times of war, punishable, in my book, by death. And you, by supporting him, are no less guilty, and deserve the same fate.

I respect the left-wing loons in this country who are trying to erode the very foundations of state with their anti-Israel rhetoric and action, far more than I do you, who from the remote sidelines sprout your hate for my country without having to shoulder the consequences of your actions.

Be warned. You are able to disseminate your vile ideas because Israel protects you to a great degree. Should the demise of Israel occur, largely due to the undermining of the Jewish State by you and the likes of you-you, even in the United States, will be the first to be dragged into the street and brutally killed by the goyim, especially Muslims, because they despise traitors more than they do Jews.

Take a long hard look in the mirror, and ask the person you see there whether you really are promoting the interests of the Jewish State, or just pushing some radical policy that benefits you and a small select group. If you can lie to yourself in the mirror, keep on with your loathsome and disgraceful activities. If you cannot lie to yourself, cease and desist forthwith.

Better still, pack your bags and come here to live. Then you will see and feel the true picture. If you then still elect to push despicable left-wing policy, I will respect you. Be warned: I will, however, fight you and your ilk relentlessly to the bitter end, and will be prepared to die in the process. Are you prepared to die for your twisted agenda? I think not. As long as you appease the goy, you are OK. But be required to put your ass on the line, and we surely will find you cowering behind the left-wing media and demanding that the State protect you, just like the lily-livered coward you are.

May you and your shamefully contemptible conspirators rot in hell and be shunned there by other, more righteous souls, as you rightfully should be here on earth.

And you call yourself a Rabbi. The Catholics have excommunication; we (good Jews) have God on our side. Your fate is already sealed. Sleep well at night, if you are able. 

ROBBIE DOLEV Tel Aviv, Israel

Mr. Zunes hasn't a clue. Not only did the mission mandate of the Human Rights Council focus on Israel, which was accused in advance of war crimes and aggression, not only did Judge Goldstone and his three colleagues ("a reputable and experienced team??) all issue their guilty verdict on Israel before undertaking their "fact-finding," but they were selective in the testimony they heard, ignored the exculpatory evidence regarding Israel, and downplayed Hamas' role in human rights violations. The recent resolution adopted by the Human Rights Council endorsing the Goldstone report focuses only on Israel, while it raises other irrelevant issues having nothing to do with Gaza. Even UN-US publicist Barbara Crossette, the former UN Bureau Chief of The New York Times, has called the resolution "a tragedy." 

Mr. Zunes should also know that Hamas is incapable of conducting a fair investigation of itself and Islamic Jihad, both of which took measures to inflate civilian casualties. It would be like asking the Hutu genocidists to undertake an investigation of their conduct in Rwanda in the spring of 1994. And a "careful, objective, and plausible public exploration" is precisely what Goldstone should have done. As for giving support to the right-wingers in Israel, the Gaza effort to stop the thousands of rockets and missiles fired at Israeli civilians was carried out by a left-of-center coalition that is in the political opposition right now, under Tzipi Livni. 

Mr. Zunes also does not understand the difference between the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and a Zionist organization.

HARRIS SCHOENBERG

Stephen Zunes ("Democrats' Attacks on Goldstone," Tikkun, November-December 2009) writes that Goldstone's report accuses both sides of committing war crimes. But while the report strongly criticizes Israel, the Hamas de-facto administration and its leaders are never accused of responsibility for terrorism and firing rockets. Rather, nebulous "Palestinian armed groups" are responsible.

Zunes ignores the fact that the Human Rights Council is well known for its malevolence toward Israel. Most members harbor deep hatred for Israel, and wish for no less than its destruction. Goldstone should have been warned off by the refusal of several people before him to accept the job, including former Irish president Mary Robinson, who is not known as an admirer of Israel. She said: "This is unfortunately a practice by the UN Human Rights Council: adopting resolutions guided not by human rights but by politics. This is very regrettable." 

Goldstone allowed Prof. Christine Chinkin to remain a member of his four-person commission even though, back in January, she had already publicly found Israel guilty, referring to its "prima facie war crimes" in Gaza. Goldstone thus seriously, even fatally, undermined the commission's credibility.

It is clear that the UN Council targeted Israel and Goldstone delivered it.

In his interview with The Forward, Goldstone said: "We had to do the best we could with the material we had." "If this was a court of law, there would have been nothing proven." And: "I wouldn't consider it in any way embarrassing if many of the allegations turn out to be disproved."

Nothing proven? Allegations? The air of tentativeness that hung over Goldstone's remarks that day was surely missing from the stark and disturbing legal conclusions in the report, in which Israel was told flat out that it had violated international law by targeting civilians-"the people of Gaza as a whole."

Here is an example-one of many-of the way the Commission did its investigation:

Paragraph 9 of the Report deals at very great emotional length with the unfortunate shooting of Amal, Suad, and Samar, daughters of Abed Rabbo, and accepts, without any attempt at corroboration, testimony that they walked out of their house carrying white flags to find an Israeli tank. The report describes two soldiers sitting on top of the tank, one eating chips, the other eating chocolate. One cannot but wonder how the witnesses in such tense circumstances were able to distinguish what the soldiers were eating. Without warning, the report says, a third soldier emerged from inside the tank and started shooting at the three girls. All very incriminating, creating an emotional picture of callous Israeli soldiers eating chips and chocolate while another mows down innocent children carrying white flags. It is not inconsequential that none of these types of emotional descriptions are used when Hamas' infractions are mentioned.

BUT! Most importantly, the writers of this report failed in their bounden fact-finding duty to check the accuracy of the information they purveyed. With just a little attention to detail, they would have read the report by Palestinian News Agency Ma'an, and MECA, the Middle East Children's Alliance, that the unfortunate girls were killed in collateral damage from an attack by Israeli planes. No tank, no soldiers eating chocolate (or chips), and no white flags are mentioned.

The report is indeed as one-sided as it can be, and the U.S. Congress was correct to denounce it.

JACOB AMIR

Thank you, Stephen Zunes, for your conclusive point-by-point and entirely appropriate condemnation of HR 867. Though I have little to no confidence about the effect of communicating with members of Congress, relative to the effort of doing so, this is important because it affords a chance to break through and against the domination of AIPAC over the Democratic Party, in contrast to the war-risking (even nuclear war-risking) perniciousness of HR 867 passing. I don't know (as I have expatiated at length to your editor about) if I'm a spiritual activist (just what, truly, is the MEANING of that-no one at Tikkun should waste time trying to clarify it for me further), but I'll pitch in on this. On one point I ask additional help. You write, at the end, "Perhaps most seriously, there is the final clause of the resolution which endorses Israel's right to attack Syria and Iran because of their alleged support of Hamas." Unless the body-blow passage of this would strike against international humanitarian law and justice, this is indeed the most serious thing in the resolution, especially regarding Iran, though Syria's hardly a zip. Please provide me the language in question, as I wish especially to challenge it (I think I'll write an op-ed on this).

RONNIE DUGGER

Stephen Zunes replies (to Ronnie Dugger):

The phrase:

(5) reaffirms its support for the democratic, Jewish State of Israel, for Israel's security and right to self-defense, and, specifically, for Israel's right to defend its citizens from violent militant groups and their state sponsors.

Earlier in the resolution, another clause defines Hamas' sponsors as "the Government of Syria" and "the Government of Iran."

Also, earlier in the resolution, it defines the war on Gaza as "defending its citizens."

KING'S GOD

With regard to Scofield's article on the Christian beliefs of Dr. Martin Luther King (Tikkun, November/December 2009), I would say that while Dr. King was a significant social reformer, he is not the person I'll be taking my cues from about Christianity. You can certainly find many other people of equal or greater intellect and integrity who would argue for a more traditional view of Christ.

I myself am not a biblical inerrantist, and wish the book had fewer flaws than it does. But while I don't believe that every word is true, I would say the overall picture it paints is correct.

I would say the opinions expressed by King and echoed in the article probably match pretty closely those held by your readers. What your readers therefore need to do is seek out reading that supports the traditional Christian views; the evidence abounds when you stop to consider it. Lee Strobel has an excellent series defending the Christian faith (The Case for Christ, etc.); C.S. Lewis is also invaluable. And the best thing one of your readers could do is attend worship at a spirit-filled church; sometimes these churches have doctrinal errors, but the real presence of God, answered in your own spirit, is unmistakable and not found anywhere else in my experience.

I was raised Jewish (Reform) and did not start to seek out Christianity until my mid-thirties. I now feel it is a shame that my fellow Jews are so bound by their beliefs they cannot find the whole truth; not that Judaism is a bad thing-it is an excellent thing-but it falls short of the whole truth.

We need a Savior, Redeemer, and Guide; surprise, our heavenly Father sent one. Those who have the courage to question their own beliefs and seek Him out will be glad they did.

DAN HOCHBERG

Seattle, WA

Thank you so much for publishing Scofield's article, "King's God ...," delineating Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s theology. It is quite accurate and brought back deep and loving memories. Dr. King was God's prophet in my life and in my calling and was my Pastor in 1960 as I struggled with my calling while in a very conservative and deeply racist Presbyterian Seminary in Atlanta. Further, he aided me in my first three arrests in sit-ins there, beginning my career in crime! I was with him in demonstrations, meetings, and conferences from 1956 on until his assassination, and brought him to Boston to visit the Boston Army Base in 1967, protesting the violence and cruelty toward draft refusers there - I was then Co-Chair of the Greater Boston Coordination Committee to End the War in Vietnam (the overall peace movement in Boston, the largest in the United States behind New York City and San Francisco). I went with Dr. King to visit ex-Governor Jimmy Carter, asking him to oppose openly the war against Vietnam - Carter told us that he knew too little about international relations to take a position. 

Dr. King was my spiritual and intellectual resource in 1960, and was always there to visit and discuss. I visited him often, and once, after visiting him at home one afternoon, I stayed and babysat for their first children so that he and Ms. King could go out for the evening. 

Yes, he had visited Unitarian Churches in Boston, and he told me that it might be the place for me to land, since I was looking for a safe haven after the Southern Presbyterians. He did say, though, that he found that he needed the open relationship with Jesus that the Unitarians did not have. 

As I looked for a place to continue my education, possibly as a Unitarian, he pointed me to Meadville Theological School, telling me that Wieman was there (87 years old then and going strong) and that it had not been announced, but Paul Tillich would be coming to teach at the University of Chicago Divinity School, with which Meadville was affiliated. The presence of these two giants along with Gibson Winter (The Suburban Captivity of the Churches) and Mircea Eliade convinced me that this was the best of theological schools, so I applied and went there. 

Here are two points that Scofield did not quite understand: Tillich was not a process theologian. He considered himself an existentialist (and I considered him a German idealist). Wieman was in fact a process theologian, but in his never-ending development, Wieman, during my time, was saying that God is "creative interchange between people." That is not an impersonal force, but a vital involvement between persons. 

Regarding King's being a Baptist, it must be remembered that he was part of the black church, which was deeply involved in the understandings of struggle and was a leader in the struggle for liberation. This was not the Southern Baptist Church! 

I write this, not to criticize Scofield's work, but to supplement it. Thanks to Scofield and to Tikkun for this article. 

JACK ZYLMAN

Birmingham, AL

HEALTH CARE "REFORM"

The antiabortion amendment was not a throw-away to Republicans (as you suggest it was). It also (and more importantly) netted enough blue-dog Democrats to get the bill passed.

Also, for the following reasons, that amendment is not as bad as you (and many other progressive writers) are saying:

1. Nowadays almost all abortions can AND SHOULD be had for the cost of a few pills, and-better yet-birth-control measures can be used to avoid the whole problem.

2. The amendment does not prevent abortions-it only prevents FEDERAL FUNDING OF abortions via federally financed insurance. We liberals/progressives simply have to quit crying in our beer, and instead get moving right away on collection of PRIVATE money for funding abortions (and abortion insurance). Piece of cake.

3. The antiabortion folks are, by and large, well-intentioned and principled activist Americans who sincerely believe that abortion is evil. Rather than trying to make them look stupid, we should be cultivating MORE compromises with them, making common cause with them, to move things forward. The abortion amendment is NOT "outrageous."

Kucinich's opt-out scheme also has clear downsides, but if I understand correctly, it is likely to be brought up in the Senate/House joint committee-so that idea is not really lost.

As to the insurance, pharmaceutical, and other health-care profiteers, let's not be so hasty-let's wait and see how things turn out.

PETER LIPPMAN

EMPTY RHETORIC

Rhetoric should have meaning. Language should have value.

What then is meant by the phrase we are now hearing so often from the politicos, "We have a moral obligation to pass this legislation"?

Morals must be based on some standard. Among the most frequent standards used as a basis for moral values are scripture, tradition, reason, and experience.

Most of our government officials have totally rejected scripture. They have also rejected traditional values. When scrutinized, the legislation they are trying to pass does not hold to sound reason. And, when you compare the policies being put forth by those in power to the experience of history, you find that experience teaches that big government and total government control don't produce anything good.

So, other than just being persuasive words, what value, what basis, do these so-called "moral obligations" have?

In recent decades, contrary to traditional values, we have been taught that when it comes to morals there are no absolutes. So why is the government that has propagated the educational system that teaches no absolutes telling us that we absolutely have a moral obligation to do what they are demanding?

Added to this reasoning without rationalization coming from our government, is the "duty" on our part to pay the bill for all their dictated moral obligations!

I guess my point is simple. Listening to our present leadership talk about moral obligations is about as logical as listening to Larry Flint and Hugh Hefner talk about chastity!

Steve Casey 

Stonewall, LA

ALICE WALKER'S GAZA AND RWANDA

I confess I have only just now gotten around to reading Alice Walker's article in the September/October issue. I cannot believe David Stolow (letters, Tikkun, November/December 2009) read the same article as I. "Vitriolic screed"? I confess I am neither a Jew nor black, but I am a woman.

It seems to me that Mr. Stolow himself "left home with his mind made up" before he even read the article. I saw no vitriol anywhere. None! What I saw was incredible pain Alice witnessed in many places which brought back to her the incredible pain of her own experience as a black person in the United States before the civil rights movement. Given her own experience, she can hardly be described as living in or coming from a narrow or prejudiced world, except as that was itself inflicted upon her.

Apparently Mr. Stolow needs to read some more recent and fuller historical accounts, both of Africa and the United States, since he accuses Ms. Walker of making accusations that are, in fact, documented facts, but apparently ones he finds too difficult to accept. Furthermore, he made no reference to the many Jews who were with her and supporting peaceful efforts in the Middle East. It is attitudes such as his that preclude, dare I say prejudice, the various efforts of so many people for peace. I was compelled to wonder if his remarks were racist.

Walker ended by talking about overcoming awful tragedies with the resolve not to become overwhelmed by hatred. I was moved to tears, not hatred, by her article, and stung by the vitriolic hatred that seemed to spew from Mr. Stolow's letter. I was depressed by his addition to world hatred that results in such atrocities. I pray something might so touch his heart that he might be freed from such deadly hatred to live more lovingly and then work, himself, to reduce that hatred so there might indeed be some hope for peace in the world.

BEVERLEY BURLOCK

Port Mouton, NS, CANADA

MAKING REPARATIONS

I recently started paying reparations to the Black community, but in a rather unique way: 

I informed my credit card company that I will no longer be making monthly payments on my outstanding balance of $4,413.23. Instead, I started sending that money to the United Negro College Fund, which has recently acknowledged receipt of my first reparations payment.

I am a Caucasian American citizen, a civil service employee of Northeastern Illinois University for twenty-eight years. I have benefited all my life from our national legacy of slavery. Since the United States Senate and our own president have decided to ignore the issue of reparations, I figured it's up to me as an ordinary, powerless citizen to take action. And so I did by sending the following letter (please scroll down) to Barclays Bank on September 8, 2009. 

I also posted this letter to my internet blog, with additional comments, at:

http://bpa-cinc.gaia.com/blog/2009/9/say-no-to-visa-card-say-yes-to-reparations

TEXT OF LETTER FOLLOWS: 

Barclays Bank Delaware   September 8, 2009

P.O. Box 8804

Wilmington , DE 19899-8804 

RE: Steven Searle, Chicago, IL 60640 

SUBJECT: Refusal to payback the outstanding balance on my credit card 

Gentlemen: 

I am canceling my credit card with you and will no longer be making payments on my outstanding balance of $4,413.23. My next scheduled payment of $100.42, which is due on Sept. 11, 2009, will not be payable to Barclays but instead to the United Negro College Fund.

I will continue to make monthly payments of at least $100.42 to the UNCF until I have "donated" the entire $4,413.23, which I owe you, to their cause. You may consider this to be a payment of reparations to the black community that I am making on your behalf.

I am also disavowing any interest yet-to-be-calculated on my outstanding balance. I will regard the amount of that interest, in effect, to be a payment of my aggravation fee. Since I'm extremely confident your organization will attempt to aggravate the hell out of me to force payment of all principal plus interest, I feel entitled to withhold this interest and consider it to be payment for what I am about to endure at your hands.

I received your recent notice which states, "We are increasing the Annual Percentage Rates ("APRs") on your account ... [to] 30.24 percent..." That's an increase of 20 percent, which is absolutely outrageous, especially given my outstanding credit history. This unconscionable greed on your part inspired me to take action based on a recent article by Naomi Klein: 

"Minority Death Match: Jews, blacks, and the ‘post-racial' presidency," appearing in Harper's Magazine, September 2009. 

Someone has to take action to atone for the wrongs resulting from the institution of slavery in the United States. And it looks like that "someone" will be me, acting as your agent by making payments to the black community on your behalf. When our government and major corporations won't Do the Right Thing, that leaves it up to We-the-People.

STEVEN SEARL

via email

REMEMBER TOLERANCE

As a subscriber to Tikkun magazine, and a member of my local Vedanta Society, I would like to make people aware of the ecumenical history of the Vedanta movement. Swami Vivekananda, who brought Vedanta to the west, and is a hero to even the Hindu nationalists, said:

"I am a disciple of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, a perfect sannyāsin whose influence and ideas I fell under. This great sannyāsin never assumed the negative or critical attitude towards other religions, but showed their positive side--how they could be carried into life and practiced. To fight, to assume the antagonistic attitude, is the exact contrary of his teaching, which dwells on the truth that the world is moved by love." -- Interview. London, 1896. Complete Works, 5.190.

Sri Ramakrishna actually practiced religions other than his original religion, to see if they would lead to the same goal, and he found that they did.

Hinduism in general has probably been the most respectful toward other religions of all religions in existence today. Let's not lose sight of this.

CHARLES FELDMAN

Providence, RI

THE MYTH OF GOD, THE MYTH OF AMERICA

Prophecy emanates from the heart of God, is received by people, and is delivered to the society that the people live in and to the world. Tikkun claims to speak with a prophetic voice, but that is not true. Barack Obama continues to kill people in Iraq. In Afghanistan he has increased the killing of civilians and now the military is asking for even more troops to further the slaughter. This is an enormous evil. Even the laws of the nations condemn it. The Geneva Conventions show that the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan are crimes of aggression, which are the worst of all crimes because it is from these crimes that all other crimes stem. That Obama continues these atrocities shows that he is no less guilty then George W. Bush. But far more important is that it is horror in the eyes of God. To the prophets, invasion and murder are not policy to be debated, they are actions to condemn. Of course the reasons that the invasions took place were because of the oil in the region and expansion of American power. All empires act in the same way and ours is no exception. Along with the crimes there is of course massive propaganda saying that we are doing this for great and good reasons and it somehow is for the benefit of the people that we are killing. When one is engaged in crimes that horrify God, the answer is not a three-year plan to slowly withdraw troops while at the end of that time leaving thousands of troops in place. Even the thought of that is blasphemy. God demands that we withdraw immediately and pay massive reparations for our crimes.

During the last Democratic Convention, Bill Clinton took the stage accompanied by whooping and hollering and massive applause. As he pranced up and down the stage the delegates became even more frenzied in their acclamation. During his administration, Clinton killed hundreds of thousands of children through the embargo of Iraq. Hundreds of thousands of other Iraqis were also killed. In an interview, Madeleine Albright, the secretary of state, in response to a question, stated that the killing of these children was "worth the price." This is a statement that, except for its public utterance, could have been made in Nazi Germany. That the United States and its allies are responsible for this is proven by reams of documents and much public testimony. There is no greater doubt for this than there is for the Holocaust. If the standards of the Nuremberg Tribunal were applied to Bill Clinton, he would be executed. I would not support this because I do not support the killing of anyone. I include it only as a matter of comparison. Also, this was a bipartisan slaughter. It was started under the first George Bush, continued under Clinton, and was finally ended by the second George Bush after he invaded the country and made the situation for the Iraqis much worse. Congress was also responsible for the embargo and the invasion. In all, the embargo exterminated around 500,000 Iraqi children and probably 1.3 million Iraqis.

While the delegates, who like many of us did not know about the embargo or did not want to know or did not care, continued in their grotesque spectacle, someone remembered. Maybe the delegates were so overwhelmed by the elixir of the possibility of electing a democratic president that they could consider nothing else. But the one who forgets nothing was also watching, the name of every Iraqi victim being written on his heart. And as God watched the spectacle and remembered the children and adults killed by deprivation and lack of medical care tears flowed from his eyes. After the tears came rage. 

If one thinks that the above are anomalies or "good intentions gone bad" an excellent book to read is Ward Churchill's On the Justice of Roosting Chickens. In it he goes into the controversy caused by his writing about 9/11 but this is not what I am referring to. He also goes into the record of American military actions in a year-by-year basis from 1776 to 2003. Hardly a year has gone by that the United States did not use its military for the promotion of business interests. The American myth that the United States promotes democracy and acts for the interests of others is false. It has acted to overthrow democratically elected governments in Iran, Indonesia, Chile, Guatemala, and other countries. It has acted in still others to either stop elections or to make sure that they are fraudulent. Included is the slaughter of millions and millions of people either by the military itself or its proxies. This also God does not forget.

In the Sept/Oct 2009 issue, on page eight in an editorial, Michael Lerner states that, "Sure, we would be cautious anyway to critique the first elected African American president, because we are well aware of the racism that he continues to have to fight." He then goes on to say that they are doubly cautious because of Republican intransigence and their desire to make sure that Obama's programs fail. He lists some of the forces in the country that are trying to derail Obama's agenda. He does go on to criticize some of Obama's positions regarding health care and the environment. In an article entitled "What Obama Should Say" he writes about Americans on the frontier helping each other build homes and barns and also about American sacrifice to defeat the Nazis. He states that it is only in the last thirty years that the kind of caring that he describes has been replaced by selfishness, self-indulgent materialism, etc.

Tikkun does not speak with a prophetic voice because it does not tell the whole truth. It tells more truth than the mainstream media and at times it tells very important truths. Unfortunately there are strict limits to how far Tikkun is willing to go. In regard to the frontier, of course people cared for and helped each other. At the same time there was great lawlessness and brutality. And more importantly the frontier was populated by the people that Lerner is referring to because of the extermination of Native Americans. It is hard to see a great deal of caring in the slaughter of these people. As far as the Nazis are concerned the United States entered the war after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and after it became clear that Germany had become a threat to larger American interests. Also, American corporations profited from deals with German business interests not only after anti-Jewish policies had been institutionalized but right up until American involvement in the war. One of the primary objectives of the Marshall Plan was to keep Western Europe in the sphere of capitalism and to have a trading partner and consumers for American corporations. This is not to say that people do not want to help people. It is to say that the policies of powerful nations are not guided by altruism but by expansion and the pursuit of ever increasing wealth and power.

Often the prophets, in their relationship with God, spoke a truth that was destabilizing to the societies that they lived in and extremely offensive to the people who heard it. If instead of the Tikkun version of the truth we were to, with God, speak the actual truth the result would be the same. Later in the "What Obama Should Say" article Lerner writes about the sense of community and responsibility that we have lost. Every society had people who were generous, loving, sacrificing and gracious. And in some societies people got together to do good or even great things. But God judges a society on the entire thrust of its history and on what it is doing today. By that criteria America looks very much like those societies that God condemned. If we were to speak the truth about Obama and the government we would have to speak of criminality, lies, murder, and terrorism. If we were to speak about Clinton, the Bushes, etc. we would have to speak in the same way. This is especially true considering that America is, through the state department and its military and intelligence apparatus, the main guarantor of the global predatory economic system. If we were to speak in the way that is so common, about misguided policies and good intentions gone wrong, we would not only be insulting the victims but we would be lying to God. What Lerner promotes is the American myth. The criticisms in Tikkun are sometimes sharp but they always stay within the bounds of the myth. The myth will admit to lies and wrongdoing but basically sees America the Good that has strayed from the path and needs to get back to it. What God sees is the mountain of bodies and what God smells is the stench of death. The prophets promoted the myth of God, which crushes all false myth.

The myth of God includes people living in authentic human community. The basic unit of humanity is around ten to fifteen to twenty people. These communities, or circles, are where, with God, the people share and make decisions about their economic, spiritual, social, and political realities. Of course Americans don't want to do this because it is completely opposite to the way the American myth tells us to live and what the American myth tells us we can have. Each community will have its own covenant with God. This will be worked out between God and the members of the community and will define the expectations on both sides and will determine how the community lives and what it does. The center of the community is God and the loyalty of the people to God and each other and God's loyalty to them. It is because of the deep relationships that develop with the others in the community and with God that the people are willing to physically die for each other and for God. And it is because of the relationships that the people have with each other and with God that they are willing to die for others they don't know so that they can live. Although each circle is different those that have similar covenants can be part of the same tradition. It is interesting that when religious peace people speak of resistance to the powers they rarely if ever speak of the willingness to give one's own life. The willingness to give one's life for the sake of others lives is in the heart of every authentic religious tradition. It is the rare person who will be able to do it without coming from a very strong group of people who are dedicated to each other and to God.

The central fact that we face in our life on earth is the possible extermination of humanity. This is not only a crisis for us but it is an even greater crisis in the life of a God that desperately wants humanity to survive. The problem with organizations is that they may be good at rallying people to functions and demonstrations but when people go home they remain separate. If people are called to do civil disobedience and go to jail or make even greater sacrifices it may be hard to do so because of financial obligations or lack of moral and material support from others. Circles provide this in the nature of their existence and help the person search through these questions with God so that even if the person does go to prison he or she is never alone. This is not to say that circles exist for functional reasons. Circles exist so that the love of God radiates throughout the world. Circles celebrate and heal and have liturgies and engage in prophesy and open themselves to others so that the love of God can be known and so that people can support each other. Circles exist because this is the way God wants people to live. This cannot come out of the mainstream church. This is true whether the church is liberal, conservative or apolitical. The mainstream church worships a domesticated god and serves the same purpose that the Roman religion did in that empire. It is about civic virtue and order and passive homilies that do not speak about God's concerns. While there are those from the church who do radical things the movement will never come out of the church. The mainstream church is in fact afraid of the God of enormous power who is free to turn against the church if he does not like its ways. God, in fact, calls his people out of the church. 

Tikkun in its rhetoric likes to write about "love and caring, kindness and generosity, and ethically and ecologically sensitive behavior, as well as enhance our capacities to respond to other human beings as embodiments of the sacred and to the universe with awe, wonder, and radical amazement at the grandeur and mystery of all that is." I believe that the above is a little schmaltzy and they repeat it too many times but that it is basically correct. But there is another side to all of this. The prophesy that God inspires and demands can be incredibly harsh. It directly and explicitly exposes the murder and lies not only of individuals but of the society as a whole and our participation in it. It looks at our history not as a fable of American goodness and righteousness but from the point of view of those driven into poverty and murdered for the sake of power and wealth. 

I do not believe what the church teaches about the theological claims concerning Jesus but I do believe that he was filled with God and is an extremely important person. I also believe that he is the greatest warrior that ever lived. Jesus the warrior obviously rejected violence and this is the kind of warrior that God calls us to be. But make no mistake about it, God does call us to be warriors. It seems that the realm of religious witness has been taken over by those who think that the way of God is always to be accommodating and gentle. But God is still the Lord of Hosts, even though there are those who think that they should be eternally polite.

There are those who think that politeness is the way while there are those like the fundamentalists who believe that the way is made of harshness and judgment. It is common for people to live out a part of the reality instead of the whole thing and thereby get even that part wrong. Perhaps the most important thing to say about Jesus and the prophets is that they lived out their humanity and their commitment to God fully. They knew that there was a time to be gentle and a time to be harsh, a time to heal and a time to afflict, a time to be accommodating and a time to stand strong, a time to be silent and a time to speak. They did not allow the standards of the societies they lived in or even the feelings of their closest friends get in the way of what God wanted in the moment.

There is the myth of America and the myth of God and one cannot live out both. One has to decide. The myth of God crushes all false myth. America is already spiritually and morally dead. The structure and the myth remain. For everyone in the world to live as Americans do, it would take five times the resources of the earth. The continued destruction of the earth, the enormous American debt both public and private, and the fact that we are running out of oil are together the perfect storm that will devastate the nations of the world including America. The enormous technological progress that has been made is only possible through the enormous energy released by the burning of oil. And then there is God's judgment. It is time to turn away from the American myth and all other false myths and embrace the myth of God. It is time to create the circles that can stand against the storms that are coming.

DON WHITMAN

Seattle, WA