Why is this blog different from all other blogs?
by: Dave Belden on June 24th, 2009 | 4 Comments »
"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.
Great…It’s good to have a blog. However, Can you explain the need for the rating system. Every comment or contribution should be valued if it pasts your censorship.
Stan, the rating system comes as part of a package with the WordPress software, and it’s used as another form of interactivity so that readers can approve a post without having to go so far as to write a comment: that way the most approved posts can be posted in a box like the Editor’s Favorites at right, so readers can have a quick way of seeing what other readers think are the most interesting posts.
I use the same system on the NYTimes website all the time: it’s such a big site and I have so little time to trawl through it, that I often scan the “most emailed” box to see what other people think is good and get to some great pieces that way. It’s yet another way that readers are able to make choices and affect content in ways that in older technology only editors could do.
Here’s a toast to Tikkun’s new blog! Cent’anni (as we say in Italian).
–Liberata
wow, awesome post, I was wondering