Erik Slutsky's Menorah
Montreal-based artist Erik Slutsky is not a religious man, but viewers of his paintings might be tempted to jump to a different conclusion.
Many of his paintings prominently feature Jewish imagery: a colorful menorah, a figure clad in Jewish regalia crying a prayer to the heavens, a woman wearing a star of David necklace. Look more closely, and you will also see Christian crosses and Muslim crescents accompanying the Jewish symbols in his paintings.
In the July/August issue of Tikkun Magazine, which you can pick up at your favorite local independent bookstore or order from the Tikkun web store, Daniel Brook writes about why Jews should seriously consider becoming vegetarians. Rabbi Michael Lerner thought we should add a little something beyond Daniel Brook’s powerful writing and so we are presenting here two video segments provided by PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals).
My dilemma as a modern rabbi is how to answer the very modern question “What kind of rabbi are you?” I haven’t ever had a ready answer for that question. Last year at a synagogue in New York the rabbi (with whom I spent Shabbat) said to me “I thought you were Jewish Renewal until you told me that you don’t eat before you daven (pray) in the morning. Then I realised you were Orthodox.”
He got it wrong both times.
I let Jews and Judaisms merge deeply in me even as I make room for the “Other” also. I’m authentically Chasidic (spiritual/mystical) to Conservative Jews (who tend to be rational, scientific, and “mainline” about their Judaism), authentically Masorti (traditional Conservative) to Haredi (fervently Orthodox) Jews, and authentically a question mark to Jewish progressives, with whom I deeply identify, irrespective of whether they are spiritual or secular.
One of my favorite things about my 3 year old daughter is her warm, convivial nature. Upon meeting someone new, particularly another child, she quickly begins referring to them as her “friend.” “Where’s my friend?” she asks. “Where’s my new friend? And what’s her name?” For her, friendship isn’t bound up in long acquaintances or even name recognition; it often stems from nothing more involved that the mere presence and personhood of the other child. Granted, she gets in your average number of spats with her friends both old and new, but her standard position is one of welcome.
There is something hopeful in this approach to life. In our community we often ask, “What is our reflex? What attitudes and postures are we attempting to cultivate?” If our initial thought about someone is “friend”, our interactions with them will have a fundamentally different tone than if we view them as “foe” or even as a neutral “unknown.” If we normatively grant others the privileged status of one who is included, the very trajectory of our interactions will be realigned.
We have just posted a thorough analysis and presentation of the argument that Jewish social values require economic democracy, also known as Democratic Socialism. Dr. Richard Schwartz writes,
With the United States and most of the world suffering from a very severe recession, with rapidly rising unemployment, falling home and stock prices and a sharp decrease in confidence for many people about their economic future, it is timely to consider which economic system and conditions are most compatible with basic Jewish values.
Judaism does not recommend one type of economic system for all times and places. However, its principles of social conduct are clear. The Torah is opposed to all types of exploitation and to concentration of wealth in the hands of a few, with the resultant impoverishment of the many. The Torah desires that all people should work and enjoy the fruits of their labor.
The article, “Economic Democracy – Which Economic System Is Most Consistent With Judaism?” is on our home page under Current Thinking, and will be permanently here. Richard Schwartz is well known as a prolific writer and activist for vegetarianism and the human treatment of animals, but he also writes on Judaism and other major global and ethical issues: see his bibliography here.
We are coming into Pride weekend here in the San Francisco Bay Area, and I know that many other celebrations of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer pride are happening at the same time around the country. Given that, Seminary of the Street board member Rev. Lynice Pinkard and I wanted to take a few minutes, as lesbians, to reflect on what there is to be proud of. In other words, what is the transgressive potential of being gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, or otherwise queer?
At its heart, we believe that the radical potential of being queer is the way that it demonstrates that anyone can love everyone. As lovers who challenge conventional notions of who may love whom, queer people have the potential to show forth in a particularly vivid way the Spirit-given capacity, given to all people, to love in spite of all obstacles – in spite of homophobia, in spite of state sanctions, in spite of family expectations, in spite of workplace discrimination, in spite of rejection from our religious communities, in spite of all of the accumulated wounds incurred by being people who do not conform to cultural norms. The radical notion embodied in this kind of queerness is the notion that we can get up out of the shame that the culture tells us is our due, that we can get up out of that swamp of shame and love anyway. The Spirit has vested in human beings the capacity to cultivate deep bonds of affection with ANYBODY, no matter how unlikely, and to enter into solidarity with all life. We have the capacity to make a circle with NO ONE OUTSIDE IT, to define ourselves as one interconnected life community. This is a radical act in a culture driven by self-interest.
As civilization advances, the sense of wonder has declined. Such decline is an alarming symptom of our state of mind. Humanity will not perish for want of information, but only for want of appreciation. The beginning of our happiness lies in the understanding that life without wonder is not worth living.
– Abraham Joshua Heschel, God in Search of Man
Monday evening at 6 pm Pacific time we welcome Lynn Feinerman as our guest on the Tikkun/NSP Phone Forum, to talk about her article “Life After Torture and Torment” in the May/June Tikkun.
Today is United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture.
Anniversaries can be important. This Friday [today] marks the 22nd anniversary of the U.N. Convention against Torture, ratified and signed under President Reagan. Last Friday marked the 150th day of the presidency of Barack Obama, who is trying to put a definitive end to the torture approved by the Bush-Cheney administration.
That Obama has not been able to do so is our collective shame. Worse still, the president has apparently concluded that he lacks the support to deter future abominations of this sort by launching a proper investigation and holding to account those responsible.
That’s from an article in the Mercury News by Diana Gibson and Ray McGovern promoting this event, for those who live in the Bay Area:
“Torture is a Moral Issue” panel and conference will be conducted Friday and Saturday in Palo Alto. Programs are 7:30 p.m. Friday at First Presbyterian Church and 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday at First United Methodist Church. For more information, see www.councilofchurches-scc.org/notorture or call 408-297-2660.
Good one, Bill! This letter to a local paper argues that it puts an intolerable burden on nineteen-year-olds to be ordered to fight an illegal war. The range of comments for and against show where we are at as a country right now. Bill Distler is a vet working tirelessly against our current wars. He was a guest on the Tikkun Phone Forum (scroll down to his name on that page to listen to the audio).
BBC veteran John Simpson’s report on Iran (hat tip: Andrew Sullivan) includes this point:
But while the idealistic young people rally behind the slogan: “Death to the Dictator,” I am not fully convinced that a Rafsanjani Iran necessarily offers the more open form of government they are risking their lives for.
This after he has said that the current crisis could be as huge as the Islamic Revolution of 30 years ago. The enthusiasm, hope and anxiety many of us in America have felt witnessing the Mousavi protests, which Sullivan captures well, e.g. here, must be tempered with this understanding of how corrupt Rafsanjani is, as explained by Imam Zaid Shakir in our Phone Forum on Monday.
My mother had died in October and my father was acting a bit strange. He was seeing people that weren’t there and driving to his bank at 3am…… His doctor figured he was just depressed, sent him to an HMO psychiatrist, and she prescribed some pills. Soon, Dad was crawling around searching the bushes for my mother, who he was convinced had just jumped from the third-floor balcony……..
Emergency mental health professionals got him back into the apartment, and after examining him were convinced that the drug he was on was the wrong drug.
The advertising on TV for that drug said that older people with dementia could die if they were taking that medication. “Ask your doctor…….”
I asked his HMO psychiatrist about this and she told me that she was “the doctor” and I was annoying her with all my pestering about my father.
What do American Muslims think about the conflict over the election in Iran? Or about Obama’s approach to the Muslim world? Many different things, no doubt, but for a thoughtful analysis from an African American Imam with wide knowledge of American Islam, you could not do better than to consult Imam Zaid Shakir.
Imam Zaid Shakir is one of the most thoughtful and dynamic teachers about the true nature of Islam in America today. He teaches at Zaytuna Institute, and lectures and writes about both the ideals and the history of Islam. His article “Obsessed with Defamation and Slander” in the May/June Tikkun corrects the widespread depiction of Islam as the current bearer of “fascism” in the world today, and as historically complicit with Nazism.
Imam Zaid talked with Tikkun readers for an hour Monday night — on a weekly phone call with Tikkun authors that is free to our subscribers (and if you truly can’t afford to subscribe but wish you could, please join us anyway) and to members of the Network of Spiritual Progressives. You can listen to my 20 minute interview with Imam Zaid followed by questions from Tikkun readers here. Imam Zaid first talked about his teaching since 9/11 and his recent visit to Africa, to visit development work being supported by American Muslims in Mali, and then discussed President Obama’s speech in Cairo and his approach to the Muslim world.
In analysing the Iranian situation, he said he thought Ahmadinejad had probably won the election but not by anything like the margin announced, and the regime was probably bitterly regretting having cooked the result and alienated so many people. At the same time, he pointed out that many people voted for Ahmadinejad because they did not trust Ayatollah Rafsanjani, the former president who had come from lower class origins and vastly enriched himself through corruption in office, and who had personally picked the opposition candidate, Mousavi, to run. It’s a complex situation and I can’t do justice to Imam Zaid’s views here, so tune in and listen.
To find out about future Tikkun/NSP Phone Forums go here. You can subscribe to Tikkun here!
I’m delighted that some of the most interesting Christians in America today are joining Tikkun Daily as a group. Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove just did the first post, on Interdependence Day.
Welcome to all New Monastics!
These are people who are exploring the experiential dimension of their faith in radical ways that frankly, we are not used to seeing. But I imagine that their movement founder, Jesus, would like what they are doing. You can find them at their website. And they will explain what they are up to through their posts here. Our WordPress software gives them each a byline and at least for the moment we are adding the New Monastics heading so you can identify them.
A few years ago I was invited by an evangelical campus ministry to speak on the campus of a liberal arts college. My topic was Christian peacemaking, and the Christians advertised my talk on campus by sharing the story of how I learned what God’s love looks like when Muslims in Iraq offered me and my friends life-saving hospitality just three days after our country had bombed their hospital. This story caught the attention of a Muslim group on campus and they invited me to meet with them for a meal before my talk.
After telling my story, I asked the Muslim students to share about their own experiences of practicing their faith in America. “We have a lot in common,” one of the students said to me. “The individualism that makes it hard for you to be a Christian also makes it hard for us to be Muslims.” Reflecting on each of our traditions, we swapped stories about the challenge of being an authentic faith community in a culture that sometimes seems to worship independence.
I thought of that conversation with Muslim friends when my friends at the Englewood Review of Books sent me their list of “40 Ways to Celebrate Interdepedence”-a wonderfully subversive call to action for people of faith on July 4th. Like any good list, it’s a countdown. I’ve listed the first ten here. To read the others, click on the link below.
40. Shop only at locally-owned merchants or restaurants.
39. Write a note of appreciation to a mother; thank her for raising a child.
38. Look through your clothes. Learn about one of the countries where they were manufactured and commit to doing one thing to improve the lives of the people who live and work there.
37. Take a digital recorder out into your neighborhood and do “field recordings” of your neighbors showing off their talents (singing, playing instruments, telling jokes/stories). Make a cd of these recordings and distribute it freely in your neighborhood.
36. Gather some neighbors, walk around your neighborhood and do asset-mapping, noting key places in the local economy: local businesses, restaurants, parks, community gardens. Make a map that highlights these assets and distribute it freely in your neighborhood.
35. Learn where your utilities come from-the source of your electricity, gas, and water.
34. Dig up a bucket of soil from your garden or yard, examine it, noticing all of the elements of organic matter, sand, clay, and the organisms that make your daily meals a possibility.
33. Host or plan a neighborhood produce exchange, where gardeners can barter the fruits (and vegetables) of their labors with one another.
32. Spend the 4th of July baking cookies or bread. Give your baked goods to the person who delivers your mail or picks up your trash the next time you see them.
31. Host a rain-barrel making party and teach your neighbors how to make and use rain-barrels to recycle rain water.
For full list go here.
"Moses Gathering the Broken Tablets" by Ben-Zion, on our first cover: 1986
Because our intention is for it to be:
Jewish
Interfaith
Political
Spiritual
Humanist
Biophilic
Progressive
Prophetic
Intellectually deep
“Unrealistic”
Inspiring
All that!!
No wonder I’m feeling simultaneously jazzed and exhausted. In need of spiritual practice… I’m off for an evening hike in the hills.
These words are open to multiple meanings, of course. The only real way to find out what we mean by them is to read the blog. But, nothing in them is intended to exclude atheists or agnostics or believers. And no way are we saying to other blogs, “we’re more spiritual than thou” or “more intellectual than thou” or anything like that: this is about intention and reaching for love and depth and joy, not about thinking we exemplify them.
We think this list makes us different from all other blogs, but we hope and expect to be proved increasingly wrong about that.
At the same time, this blog is unique in the way it draws on the wisdom of twenty-four years of Tikkun magazine and its founder and editor, Rabbi Michael Lerner. For Rabbi Lerner’s thinking, explore the Tikkun and NSP websites, especially the Core Vision, Spiritual Covenant with America and Global Marshall Plan, and for the magazine’s archives, which some heroic interns are currently rebuilding after a disastrous website meltdown, go here. Oh, and don’t miss Michael Lerner’s take on God.
To read more about what we are trying to do with this blog, written as prose not a list, look at the editor’s favorites in the right hand column.
Sunny Schwartz, photo by Ruth Morgan
It’s a small beginning, a program for sixty men at a time in one big city jail as against a vast prison-industrial complex. But it works. I saw it yesterday in operation. I was humbled and stunned. I am talking about the work of Sunny Schwartz which I wrote about here before. This program got started because San Francisco Sheriff Michael Hennessey had the vision and guts to promote something that many of his own cops thought would be unworkable.
This is the work of restorative justice. This is about how, when a man (let’s talk about men to begin with) commits a violent crime, we, the whole community, help that man to understand the impact on the victim, from the victim’s point of view; challenge him to take responsibility for the suffering he caused; help him understand how his entire male conditioning fed into his use of violence, the way he learned emotional and sexual violence along with physical violence;help him understand the role of social violence (such as poverty and racism) that he has suffered without using those facts as excuses; help him recognize his triggers and practice alternatives, over and over again; give him the training he needs in work skills and relational skills to earn an honest living (or at least a legal one–how many of us are lucky enough to earn a truly honest one in this commercial civilization?); and then, when he’s done his time, help him integrate back into society and make real contributions as a citizen.
As I was opening my mail yesterday I discovered a rather ominous looking envelope from the United States Bankruptcy court which upon opening included some rather more ominous looking “orders” that I was to follow to the letter, or else…..
Letter from Court
Beyond being completely dumbfounded by the jargon describing what I was supposedly being ordered to do, or not to do, it struck me for the first time that as an owner of a few hundred shares of GM stock I have some responsibility for the direction the company took and the casualties of this economic disaster.
I bought the shares about a year ago, so I can’t take responsibility for the decades of mistakes the company has made, but nonwithstanding the forgoing (since I’m totally into legalese right now), I do think that as an owner of GM I owe a lot of people an apology. So here’s something you probably won’t hear from any GM executives or board members, but wouldn’t it be great if any of them were willing to chime in and join me in this apology?
To the world, and certain specific groups mentioned below:
My GM stock, best I can tell, is worthless now and if I understand the order from the Bankruptcy Court of the United States, I’m not allowed to do anything with the shares which, for the moment, still appear in my portfolio. The court didn’t order me not to talk though, thus this post.
What do you think? What stocks do you own? Do you even know? If you have a pension fund, a mutual fund, or your own stock portfolio, are the companies you OWN doing good by you, your community, our nation and world? If not, what’s your responsibility?
OK – Now I’ve got to get cracking on my letter to Krispy Kreme’s board of directors…… we need some low fat donuts, don’t you think?
Bonnie Nelson in Alaska sent my post and her comment about the Atul Gawande article in the New Yorker around to a number of activists saying she agreed with my take. (I had written that while we at Tikkun are fully in favor of single payer, Gawande “makes a very strong case that it is not ultimately who pays (private or public insurance) that matters: it’s whether the delivery of health services is coordinated for the good of the patient, and with accountability. It’s actually about putting the care back into healthcare”).
Jim Sykes
Jim Sykes responded to Bonnie that he disagreed, and gave me permission to quote him. Jim was the founder of the Alaska Green Party and has done very well as both a candidate for Governor and US seats. It’s a long post and the last paragraph is worth putting first so you know where he is going with it:
Get angry, get organized and make sure your members of Congress understand that the Obama/Congress/drug/insurance/health provider proposal is not acceptable. Even though these industrial behemoths are on board with Obama, it is precisely their weight and special interests that will guarantee failure. We desperately need a low cost universal system that is as good or better than the single payer systems that have proven themselves effective.
Jim’s comment in full:
“The articles in question were well written, but they left out and skirted important issues that need attention. While greedy doctors may be a problem, many are simply trying to pay off their medical school debts and are also victimized by insurance companies in a world where liability could have reasonable limits. While I hope that doctors work together for the benefit of their patients like they do in Grand Junction, but there is little incentive for them do do so (other than better patient outcomes). Far larger and more powerful forces that deserve the same kind of in-depth examination.
“Our health care non-system is in such bad shape that a myriad of huge problems need to be dealt with at about the same time. The real challenges are to provide access to health care for all Americans (including education and prevention programs) at similar costs to those of other countries who already do this at 1/3 to 1/2 what Americans pay.
“The phrase that “it doesn’t make any difference who pays the electrician” when building a house is not a good analogy. A better analogy is that we all pay for the fire department, but we only get service when it’s needed because community fire safety is important to all of us just as community health should be.
“It makes a difference who pays because the government should negotiate the lowest possible drug prices with manufacturers, the way that the VA already does. One standardized form would replace the 1200 that are out there now among insurance companies to save administrative costs. Several physicians have reduced administrative costs by seeing fewer patients longer and computerizing their records. A consumer review process could largely replace the huge medical insurance costs that many doctors now face.
“Significant medical costs will never be covered until everyone pays into othe system like social security. Younger and healthier people, who tend not to buy insurance, would pay into the system and also get benefits.
“Private insurers only want healthy people or those who can pay. Everyone else can go to hell. Even the insured get regularly denied benefits they paid for. The government can provide cheaper better insurance, because government doesn’t need to make a profit. Removing the corporate welfare will put 2% to 3% of the enormous health care billions directly to health care, education and prevention. Insurance companies can still make plenty of profit insuring cars, homes & boats, as well as additional health benefits that are not covered in a national plan.
“Obama’s main flaw is that the proposal doesn’t cut costs significantly. It continues to transfer our taxpayer federal funds to corporate welfare for drug companies, insurance companies and for-profit health care providers (and so called nonprofits too). So instead of getting those scarce dollars into actual applied health care, education and prevention, the Obama plan keeps the corporate welfare in place which means that significant cost savings cannot be achieved.
“The major undiscussed problem is enormous campaign contributions from drug/insurance/health providers to most members of Congress. Until MC’s care more about their constituents health instead of their campaign coffers, little will change.
“Single payer systems have largely accomplished health and cost-cutting goals in most industrialized countries and all of them have better general health than the American public. We need to remain open minded about the best system we can design, but if it doesn’t beat single-payer at least we know that single-payer works. So long as the insurance/drug/health care co.’s continue in their current role–they will never voluntarily cut their costs or their profits.
“So if Obama and the 535 MC’s don’t have the guts to take on the health/drug/insurance cabal that essentially keeps us from having a decent system, then it is up to the people. And I don’t yet see the level of anger–but that’s what it will take. Obama needs to meet or beat the lowest cost of the world’s single payer systems.
“Patients are treated as a business commodity. Only the government can guarantee that the funds will be applied directly to health care the way that the fire department applies it to fire prevention and fire fighting. If we privatized the fire department like we do health care I imagine there would be a lot more fires and chaos that would be unacceptable to communities. So why do we let the purveyors of corporate welfare abscond with dollars that belong on our health care? We shouldn’t.
“Get angry, get organized and make sure your members of Congress understand that the Obama/Congress/drug/insurance/health provider proposal is not acceptable. Even though these industrial behemoths are on board with Obama, it is precisely their weight and special interests that will guarantee failure. We desperately need a low cost universal system that is as good or better than the single payer systems that have proven themselves effective.”
Has to be, when hundreds of thousands are protesting the suspicious Iranian election result.
And when Pelosi is still having trouble getting a majority to vote for war. “House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the White House will try to muscle through a $106 billion war funding bill today, hoping to quell a rebellion among liberal Democrats against further support for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan…. Today’s vote is expected to be close. Democratic leaders need as many as 18 of the 51 Democrats who opposed the war funding in May to reverse themselves. The legislation has twice been pulled from consideration for lack of votes.”
Lynn Woolsey
Quote from Lynn Woolsey, co-chairwoman of the House Progressive Caucus and a fierce opponent of the war:
“I see no reason to be keeping our troops in Iraq that much longer and to start into Afghanistan when there’s no end in sight,” Woolsey said Monday. “If we were voting on funds to bring our troops home from Iraq, I’d vote for it in a minute. … I just hope we’re not repeating the mistake we made in Iraq.”
So it will really be a good news day when Iran is democratic and so is the US (recall that most people are against the wars), but there is no progress without courageous stands, and any day with two like this is a good day.
The Gulabi (Pink) Gang
I love this story in the San Francisco paper about a group of women in a remote and poor part of India who are standing up for justice. They take on abusive husbands and corrupt public officials, wielding a big stick.
Sampat Devi
Checking on the web, the first story I found about them was one from two years ago on a reproductive health site that discussed the use of increasingly cheap and easy-to-use American sex determination kits. These kits make it much easier for parents to abort girl babies and try again for a son, a choice arising in part from the dowry system that makes a girl more expensive than a boy, as well as other reasons. It’s a calculated choice for many people in an unreasonable situation (and I might have known American business was making it worse). The author cited the Gulabi (Pink) Gang as one of the signs of hope that women were themselves trying to change the culture.
Bottom 2 photos: by Sanjit Das
The BBC has the best article on them I have found. A quote from the founder of the gang, a mother of five, Sampat Devi: “Nobody comes to our help in these parts. The officials and the police are corrupt and anti-poor. So sometimes we have to take the law in our hands. At other times, we prefer to shame the wrongdoers.”
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