I am delighted to introduce The Immanent Frame and its diverse lineup of contributors to the readers of the Tikkun Daily Blog. As a collective blog publishing interdisciplinary perspectives on secularism, religion, and the public sphere, we serve as a forum for ongoing exchanges among leading scholars across the social sciences and humanities, and feature original essays about controversial issues, major new books, and world events. As managing editor of The Immanent Frame, I will be posting regularly in this space, and on behalf of our entire editorial team and our many contributors, I sincerely hope you will follow and participate in our conversations, both here and at The Immanent Frame.

Most recently, contributors to The Immanent Frame have been engaged in an extended discussion about President Barack Obama, civic virtues, and the common good, called “These things are old.” Drawing on Obama’s complex and powerful political rhetoric – including the Inaugural Address from which this series title was drawn – our contributors have sought to trace his values back to the historical and philosophical traditions from which they are drawn.

Interesting post here on Mondoweiss. Finally the Israel Lobby has reason to worry? We’ll wait and see.

What I look like on Shabbat & Holy Days

The Independence of Jewish Voices

Independent Jewish Voices of Canada (IJV) is a Canadian organisation formed to disagree with Canada’s three primary Jewish communal agencies. This is an important development and one that Canada’s organised Jewish community had better learn to contend with, something it has not yet done.

Mark Fallon

Deputy Commander Mark Fallon objected to the interrogation techniques used at Guantanamo, and raised concerns through NCIS leadership. He refused to participate in the torture of detainees, and made continued efforts to urge Pentagon decision-makers to reconsider more effective and humane interrogation techniques. His concerns, vis-à-vis NCIS Director David Brant, eventually reached Alberto Mora, who took up the issue at the Pentagon.

Check out these stories from Gitmo and sign the letter of commendation to be sent to these brave people in time for July 4 delivery.

Over the last several years–six to be exact–lots of groups and individuals have come our way in order to experience something of life here in Brazil. We’ve received everything from local church youth groups, to seminary interns, to pilgrims on a journey to “holy sites” on the margins.

It’s interesting that almost all of these folks/groups share certain features, such as:

#1) They have a deep desire to connect with and serve others beyond the borders of the own country.
#2) They are committed to #1 because of their commitment to and relationship with Jesus.
#3) They understand #1 and #2 to be part and parcel of something called Christian mission.

#4) They have a sense that commitment to #3 (Christian mission) is part of what it means to be a faithful Christian, yet #3 involves a complex history that weaves faithfulness with much UNFAITHFULNESS.
#5) They want #1 without the problems of #4.

What we hear a lot goes something like this:

“People everywhere (and U.S. Christians, especially) are hungry to get to know their brothers and sisters in other places. We want to relate to Christians “across the borders” because we believe that we belong together. But here’s the thing: It has got to be more than a one-way, top-down, us-to-them attempt to share some of what we have, or to do something for them based on what we think their needs are.”

In a nutshell, what we hear from our friends who come to Brazil is that Christian mission has to be reimagined and performed differently that the (neo) colonial paradigm–even in its most benevolent forms. There’s a growing sense that it’s just not

I want to introduce myself to you in a bioregional way, because as a Wiccan, the land that I live on and relate to and love constitutes a large part of my life. This is the “eco” part of my ecofeminism. Tomorrow or the next day, I’ll introduce the feminist part.

Last Monday was a “mink day.” When my husband Mark went out in the morning, he told me he’d seen a weasel of some sort in the garden. So as I ate breakfast, I checked our field guide to North American mammals and kept my eyes peeled to catch a glimpse of it.

Sure enough, about ten minutes later, I saw a large weasel-like animal crawling through the foliage at the edge of the lake. It was carrying something in its mouth, and at first I thought it might have caught “my chipmunk,” the one that eats out of my hand. But soon thereafter, the mink – for that’s what it was – returned with another small, furry animal in its mouth, and I realized it must be moving its young to a new den. In all, I saw Mama Mink move at least three of her offspring across our yard and into a nearby park.

What a thrill! I’d never seen a wild mink before, although I knew that in the past they had lived on the shores of Lake Mendota. A neighbor I’ll call Dick, whose family owned the original homestead on this land, told us about them when we first moved to the lake 6 ½ years ago. Part of Dick’s mink story was reported in the Wisconsin State Journal in the 1930s. At that time, his father wooed his mother by giving her a stole from two minks he’d trapped on his own land. In the 1950s Dick followed suit by catching a mink in our neighborhood and then buying a second pelt to have a wrap made for his prospective wife. When I called her to let her know of my mink sighting, she admitted that she’d felt ambivalent about Dick’s earlier gift and promised that he wouldn’t set any traps for the mink I just saw.

Rabbi Michael Lerner, Editor of Tikkun, is recovering well from his cancer surgery.

Congratulations on getting to read the very first day of Tikkun Daily!

Do you know what Tikkun really stands for? Have you read our Core Vision at www.tikkun.org?

I am a rabbi, I debuted Caryl Churchill‘s play Seven Jewish Children (7JC for short) in Canada , and so let us please not have any nonsense about 7JC being anti-Semitic – unless you want to dare suggest that I am an anti-Semite? Caryl Churchill is a playwright based in the United Kingdom. She appropriates the Jewish voice for her play, and in my correspondence with her I have told her that she didn’t succeed at it that well. I appreciate the risk that went into her artistic conceit, an artistic conceit that is not anti-Semitic. You would have to make a case for the Torah being an anti-Semitic document to suggest so.