Twitter! Facebook! Discussion boards! All of these wonderful social media tools now enable the voice of the individual to be heard, facilitate political organization, foster the people’s revolution, and fight the Power of the Man. Oh brave new world, that has such communication in it! Blog after blog attributes the Arab Spring to new technology as through the Singularity, that anticipated moment of nerd rapture, were only a few upgrades away.

And perhaps that is one side of the story. But you need to know the other side as well. Ani Difranco said, “Any tool is a weapon if you hold it right.” And the governments of the world, those men (and a few women) who have their hands clenched on the mice of power all share a common desire not to let those mice get loose. So they’re using those same tools as well, because on the internet – as the old New Yorker cartoon has it – nobody knows you’re a dog. Or a mole. Or anything really.

We’ll start with Facebook, and link to a memorable piece from The Guardian‘s report on the SXSW computer conference that illustrates that point clearly:

Not long ago, according to the new-media guru Clay Shirky, the Sudanese government set up a Facebook page calling for a protest against the Sudanese government, naming a specific time and place – then simply arrested those who showed up. It was proof, Shirky argues, that social media can’t be revolutionary on its own. “The reason that worked is that nobody knew anybody else,” he says. “They thought Facebook itself was trustworthy.”

Gandhi needs no defense – we do

By Michael N. Nagler

1930: Gandhi leads the Salt March

If the greatness of a man or woman can sometimes be measured by the vehemence of his or her detractors, then Mahatma Gandhi is surely the greatest human being of the Twentieth Century, and perhaps more. Surely he deserves that tribute that Einstein paid him, that “Generations to come, it may be, will scarce believe that such a one as this trod the earth in flesh and blood.”

That is the problem with Joseph Lelyveld’s new biography, Great Soul – or at least with the review by Andrew Roberts in the Wall Street Journal for March 26, 2011. (The book itself is sometimes insidiously suggestive but rarely as bad as this and some other reviews which are spreading shockwaves around the internet). He (Roberts) scarcely can believe that Gandhi could possibly have risen above the reductionist, downtrodden image of humanity into which we have allowed ourselves to be dragged by the culture of modern industrialized and commercially advertising societies. Roberts tips his hand himself when he writes, “Gandhi was therefore the archetypal 20th-century progressive intellectual, professing his love for mankind as a concept while actually despising people as individuals.” What a travesty on a man of whom one follower said “it was as if he was always blessing you with his eyes” and others explained they were happy in the ashram “because we are near Bapu [Gandhi].

No, Gandhi was not Ivan Karamazov. Who was he?

Do the horrific images from Japan – not to mention reports that safety records at the nuclear plant have been faked for years – make you a little frightened when you drive past your absolutely, completely, technologically guaranteed neighborhood nuclear reactor? Perhaps you are certain such a thing could never happen in the U.S. – where corporations and government inspection teams are known for their professionalism and moral responsibility. Then again, you might remember the BP oil spill, just last year, where a good deal of the problem was that BP had cut corners on some safety costs and the government inspection teams were both figuratively and literally in bed with BP staff.

Alongside nuclear leaks and oil spills there’s the looming deficit, terrorism, and the rise in chronic childhood diseases (twenty-two out of 70 million U.S. children have chronic illnesses tied to some degree to environmental pollution). If the current state of the world doesn’t scare you, it’s probably just that you haven’t been paying attention. And you’re not alone. An awful lot of us are scared as well.

So here’s the thing: what do people do when they are scared? Well, some just hide in the corner. Sadly, however, many become aggressive, rigid and very dogmatic.
Could there be a connection between our pervasive fear and the way we talk – or rather don’t talk but scream, hurl insults, and express dismissive contempt at each other? After the shooting of U.S. Representative Giffords in Tucson many called for civility, but I suspect that civility is the opposite of an overwhelming and unacknowledged fear.

Let’s look at this in a little more detail.

I do not consider myself naive, but it still surprises me, in my heart, that the United States of America continues to discriminate against lesbian and gay people and that so many of my fellow Americans are OK with that. In thinking about the issue of same-sex marriage again today, in light of the struggle for marriage equality in Maryland, Delaware, and elsewhere, and the Christian Right’s opposition to that struggle, I would like to make five quick points.

1) The term “marriage” as it is commonly used actually conflates two very different aspects of the conjugal relationship: the spiritual union of two people and the civil contract validated by the state. The political and legal struggle for marriage equality concerns only the latter.

by Hunter King

Middlebury College Student Tik Root

The Syrian government is detaining my close friend, Tik Root. Would you all help me spread the word about this?

I thought to reach out over Tikkun Daily particularly because last summer I was an intern at the Network of Spiritual Progressives. I’ve heard that raising public awareness about a detention such as this — and generating exposure through the media and pressure from the international community — is the best way to help Tik’s quick return to America.

Tik is twenty-one years old and goes to Middlebury College. He has been studying Arabic in Damascus since his Middlebury study abroad program in Alexandria, Egypt, was evacuated during the revolution earlier this year. I first learned of his disappearance after a mutual friend reported him missing on March 18; it is believed that Tik was picked up by Syrian authorities after watching, but not participating in, a political demonstration in the Old City quarter of Damascus. Both Tik’s father, a professor at Middlebury, and I do not believe that he would have been involved in the protest; although Tik witnessed the Egyptian revolution firsthand, he did not believe it wise to participate fully in political affairs of the country he was visiting. He had, however, been keeping a blog chronicling his experiences in the Middle East.

by Melissa Shiff

Excitement is rising in Montreal over matzo as an art construction team prepares for Passover like never before: stocking up on three thousand pieces of matzo, they are set to build a multimedia installation that lets visitors journey out of Egypt and crush oppression.

Matzo Mitzaryim Tunnel. Click on the picture above to see more photos from the art exhibit.

“The Medium is the Matzo” project functions like a three-dimensional Haggadah and brings some of the religious holiday’s central themes into the context of contemporary social action. After viewing the installation at the Bronfman Center at New York University, media scholar Douglas Rushkoff wrote, “It’s a provocative and playful exploration of the real values underlying Pesach, transmitted to its audience through a series of experiential installations that hit all the senses.”

Visitors to the installation depart from Egypt by following a path through a Ten Plagues space and a Matzo Mitzrayim Tunnel to the Passover Projections part of the installation. Through the wonders of video technology, visitors become actors as they are inserted in real time into Cecil B. DeMille’s iconic film The Ten Commandments at the very point where the runaway slaves are crossing the Red Sea. In this way the installation invites them to obey the injunction to “Remember that you were slaves in Egypt.” After the visitors leave Egypt, they enter the liberation spaces of the installation: at the Miriam Bar, they quench their thirst with a fresh glass of water (or a cup of white wine) and in the Elijah Lounge they recline in a sea of four hundred pillows which all have the words “Crush Oppression” silkscreened on top of an image of a piece of Matzo. At the end of the installation (and online at japshopper.com), these pillows are sold to raise money for an organization that fights hunger.

I had a curious conversation with a conservative lately in which he claimed the US Constitution as a conservative document, while I objected that in the 1780s conservatives opposed it, since conservatives then were believers in monarchy and tradition. Yes, he conceded, but today it’s a conservative document. I suggested that this is what happens time and again, that the gains made by progressives of one era against the vehement opposition of conservatives, become the core items that conservatives defend in a later era. So perhaps it would behoove him as a conservative to get ahead of the curve by helping the progressives today!

He wasn’t buying it, of course. And it makes some sense that he wasn’t, because in many ways these labels of progressive and conservative are about contrary emotional responses to the world. We need both responses.

Yup, the pic’s been going around for a couple of months, googling tells me, with the quotes going back to a Saturday Night Live sketch before the Holidays, but maybe, like me, you haven’t seen it until now.

We’ve got a bunch of exciting new videos up from our 25th Anniversary on March 14th!

Watch Rabbi Lerner’s moving keynote, Judge Richard Goldstone’s acceptance speech for the Tikkun Award, and the great animation about Citizens United and the need for a constitutional amendment (like the ESRA!) put together by the wonderful people from the Story of Stuff. Co-Managing Editor Alan Yu-lan Price speaks about the atomization of progressive movements and the need to form anti-generational, cross-class alliances in building a caring society. Associate Editor Peter Gabel gives a moving piece on the relevance and importance of Tikkun today, and Founding Publisher Nan Fink-Gefen tells the unlikely story of Tikkun‘s origins. See the amazing spoken word of Josh Healey as well as two poems read by Pulitzer prize winning poet and Tikkun Award recipient C.K. Williams. Watch all the acceptance speeches, including Sheikh Hamza Yusuf, Naomi Newman, Rabbi Marcia Prager, and Congressman Raul Grijalva. All the videos from the 25th Anniversary can be seen here.

Thanks to everyone who joined us on that night and who has helped us get to 25 years!

If the Left is ever to rebuild support for a progressive agenda, we need to persuade more folks to support us. Certainly, we should try to mobilize people who are not currently involved politically, but we should also try to find common ground with people currently on the Right who support a populist economic agenda – those who really should not, on the basis of economic self-interest, be voting Republican, the party of corporate oligarchy.

It’s important to note that when I advocate finding common ground with Republican voters, I do not mean moving to the Center. To the contrary, I mean trying to pull working people who currently vote Republican onto the progressive side by actually generating and working for a Left agenda that they would support. To do this we have to get the focus off of abortion and gay marriage and onto policies that help working and middle class people and their families.

My hope for this strategy deepened this morning, as I read the opening passage of To Serve God and Wal-Mart: The Making of Christian Free Enterprise (Harvard University Press, 2009) by Bethany Moreton:

In 1999, the Pew Research Center announced the appearance of a new force in American politics. The key to electoral success in the new millennium would lie with a voting bloc that Pew called “Populists.” These voters were largely white Southern mothers, conservative Christians trying to care for families while wages stagnated and public services dried up. They staunchly opposed abortion and gay marriage, but overwhelmingly welcomed government guarantees of higher minimum wages and universal access to health coverage. Pollsters quickly assigned Pew’s Populists a more contemporary moniker: The fate of the nation, they asserted, lay in the hands of the Wal-Mart Mom.

Foucault prefaces his book, The Order of Things, with a passage from Borges that leads him to the very same question which motivates this week’s shiur:

…This passage quotes a ‘certain Chinese encyclopedia’ in which it is written that …animals are divided into (a) belonging to the Emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) sucking pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies’. In the wonderment of this taxonomy, the thing we apprehend in one great leap, the thing that’is demonstrated as the exotic charm of another system of thought, is the limitation of our own, the stark impossibility of thinking that…

In this week’s perasha we encounter a taxonomy of “our own”, the classification of the animals permitted for our consumption, and those forbidden to us. A set of lists, with a unique set of inclusionary and exclusionary criterion. It would perhaps be desirable to fully enunciate an “archaeology” of how Jewish thought looked at the concept of taxonomy; my preliminary analysis here I hope will be instructive and useful in at least generating some kind of hermeneutic matrix for further classification.

It seems to me that there are some dramatic meta-category shifts as we go through the centuries of Jewish interpretation. Among the Medieval commentators, we find a profusion of sets of resemblances, akin to that seen in the science of their time (the commentator as chronotrope). Kosher taxonomy is thus based on similarities perceived within the specific animals listed. Thus, in the Ramban, the forbidden birds are birds of prey who are excluded so that we do not internalize those types of characteristics, etc. Rabbenu Bachye presents a treasure trove of correspondences- there are many psychological, historical, and theological messages inherent within the listings of the permitted and forbidden animals. The text tells us which animals to avoid, in other words, the laws of kosher is meant to prevent the danger of becoming transformed by these bad-animal characteristics in a direct manner. The Rambam operates in this mindset in a modified fashion, equating animal characteristics with the danger to our health in the eating of them, but there is one critical difference that will emerge as the taxonomic signifier: the idea that the kosher signifying markers (fins, scales, cud-chewing, etc) are the primary concern, not the specific animals in the list. The central theological concern of the signifying markers will over time become the major criterion for commentary.

After the Lurianic revolution, we see a different approach to these categories. If in general, the medieval period’s approach to categorization can be labeled, borrowing a term from Deleuze, as serial and horizontal, concerned with correspondences and similarities between the different types of animal, different types of people, nations, etc, now the dialectic focuses upon a serial vertical axis, where the signifying concern is that between worldly things and spiritual things, in an eternal dialectic between the holy and the not-holy centered upon the elevation or sublation, of all existence. So, in the Ramhal’s Mesillat Yesharim, one sees the laws of kashrut read as vertical preventative, not from the fear of acquiring a bad animal trait, but meant to prevent one from internalizing a negative influence that would draw one down, or impede the upward striving for holiness. In the last chapter of Mesillat Yesharim (cf. Radical Readings: Perashat Kedoshim), we see how the individual who has attained the state of holiness has an inverse relation to the act of eating, as compared to that of eating a non-Kosher animal — the Holy person’s taking in of food is an act of elevation of all that is contained within him, like an altar receiving a sacrifice, as opposed to the downward pull of the not permitted animal.

Within the Hassidic writers and their contemporaries, one sees several approaches present. The medieval horizontal approach, of direct correspondences between animal and human traits, is found in the Mei Hashiloach. The move towards classification by signifying marker is very developed in the Ben Ish Hai: IN his Od Yosef Hai, R. Yosef Haim gives two reason for split hooves and chewed cud, incorporating the imagery of something split and something repeatedly regurgitated:

1. Jews split their money between Gd and their material lives, and give maaser from maser; in other words, the relation between food and money shows several structural similarities, and

2. Jews split their time between spiritual and worldly work, and as a result brings about repeated spiritual refinement, in Lurianic terms- birur after birur on the nitzotzot, the divine sparks contained within the material universe.

However, in many Hassidic thinkers a moving away from concern with classification altogether arises, with a transfer of hermeneutical energy away from the animal traits, instead focused on the human activity involved, that of eating, of ingesting. Now eating comes to symbolize any incorporative activity; in the Degel Mahane Ephraim eating symbolizes Torah study, the proof-texts beings the many midrashim comparing Torah study to bread and to birds. The Tiferet Shelomo links eating to two different incorporative activities- the yihudim, the spiritual meditative exercises central to much of Jewish mysticism, and follows through to a sexual metaphor, explaining that the acts per se, of eating, sexual relations, or meditation, are less important than the spiritual intentionalities that accompany them. If for the previous two Hassidic masters the emphasis was on the incorporative aspect of feeding, in the Meor V’Shemesh, the emphasis is upon the destructive segment of eating, where food must be broken down and devoured to be effective. To the Meor V’Shemesh, the Hebrew term for chewing the cud, maaleh gerah, one of the defining characteristics of kosher cattle, is derived from the term “gerut”, foreignness, alterity:

“so that by eating one is brought to the state of self annihilation at which one feels as a stranger in the land”

The recognition that in order to eat, one must so demolish the apparent form of the animal that it is quantized out of recognition, brings one to a state of anomie at which one can then elevate the spiritual essence within all the material world. I suppose the Meor V’Shemesh would agree with Piaget, who writes that children prefer to destroy structures rather than build them; they thus approach the world not as a fixed system, but as one capable of infinite possibilities. The material world before us, in this reading, is just such a system awaiting transformation- we see that eating, studying, procreation, are all potentially destructive activities in that they destroy a previous existing state, but as a result open them up to the possibility of liberation and elevation under the proper circumstances. The categories themselves are no longer ‘serial’ but, following Deleuze, are now ‘rhizomes’, they serve less to divide than to link together sets of meanings related semantically and theologically.

Within the Sefat Emet’s writings, over the years, we can see these same stages unfold. In 1871 (trl”a, in Hebrew) and the year after, we note a serial vertical categorization. Here, kosher animals are derived from the ‘side of holiness’, whereas forbidden animals come from the “other side”; he explicitly uses the term sitra ahra, a term which does not appear in this context in ensuing years. In these earlier commentaries, his reading runs as follows: The text says that these are the animals you shall eat, and these you shall not eat. Thus, for some animals, their spiritual sublation consists of being eaten, whereas for others, the elevating process is accomplished by not eating them. Even situations where we would reflexively not eat are transformed into spiritual quanta by these categories, as in the case of vermin, which we by not eating we are then following Gd’s command, even though we probably would not have eaten them anyway. The serial schema is still present in trl”d (1874), where the categories dividing kosher and non-kosher animal are equated with the holy:non-holy and Jew:non-Jew divide. In 1881 (trm”a), we see a dissatisfaction with serial categories, and novel approach to the idea of categories and restrictions is presented.

The Sefat Emet now presents an alternative approach, one similar to that we presented earlier relating to the Mishkan (cf. Radical Readings: Perashat Tetzaveh): he begins by explaining that this perasha is temporally later than the sin of the golden calf. Had that sin not transpired, then there would have been no need for signifying markers and categories- all animals would have been potentially sublated and elevated by eating them. However, after the Israelites fell to a lower spiritual state, certain species fell outside of our capacity to rectify, and as such were now off limits as food. In the future, as he states more explicitly in 1888 (trm”ch), when our lower, exiled state ends, currently impure animals will also become pure, as we will be capable of inducing spiritual transformation in all situations; in fact, there is an insinuation that this transformation will pertain to differences within mankind as well (i.e., there will be no difference between Jews and other nations of the world; all will attain to equal purity). So then, what is the meaning of these categories, and why do they demarcate animals more easily or less easily transformable? Rather than any particular quality relating to the animals, i.e. the resemblance model we saw in the medieval thinkers, the meaning of the split hoof and the chewed cud as regards the potential for human spiritual activity is the focus. As he states in 1894 (trn’d), the split hoof, means a hoof that is not closed off entirely, through which some light can shine. This is a sign of the “outside”‘s capacity to be rectified, that is, the exteriority could be made holy, whereas chewing the cud, which in Hebrew is literally “raising the cud”, ‘ma’aleh gerah’, symbolizes the ability for adepts to elevate, transform, sublate also the deeper interiority. Animals which do not have these markers have a deeper, more covert holiness, which is currently less subject and more resistant to upward transformation- but in a greater future, they too will achieve rectification and inclusion within the sphere of the holy.

This transcending of the categories as a desired goal is not idiosyncratic to the Sefat Emet. The Or Hachayim states of the pig, the chazir, most emblematic of non-kosher animals in world literature (i.e. Woody Allen movies), that it will eventually become a holy animal- for verse 11:7 explains that it has a split hoof, but doesn’t chew its cud. The latter clause is couched in a future tense- ‘gerah lo yigar’, implying that it will will chew its cud in the future and be permitted, as Rabbenu Bachye points out, the name chazir itself is akin to the infinitive ‘lachzor’, to return, that is, it will return to being permitted. The Bat Ayin states that the transformation of the chazir will be a sign of imminent redemption, for what this teaching symbolizes is at the heart of world turmoil and non-redemption: deceit. The chazir within mankind, shows an exterior of truth and trust while within the soul all is corrupt and full of lies. However, one of the aspects of the redeemed world is that is one of Truth, of Emet, symbolized by the inner transformation of the chazir.

Thus, in our archeological quest after the meaning of taxonomic categories in the concept of kosher, we find a movement from the serial horizontal and vertical through a rhizomic relationship into a transcendence of the limitations and boundary-setting of the concept of category altogether.

In these rough times it would be wonderful to see boundaries between different peoples be transcended toward a world of peace and truth, if we can get past, in Foucault’s words, ‘the stark impossibility of thinking that.’

An icon is an image, a representation of a sacred person that itself becomes sacred. A living breathing human being becomes an icon when she represents some aspects of the human condition that once we see them, helps us to better understand ourselves. Such knowledge allows us to live life knowing that we are not alone in our joys, passions, loves, grieves and struggles to leave some small mark on the world. The icon becomes sacred because the humanity she represents is sacred.

Elizabeth Taylor was and is such an icon. The stunningly beautiful actor and humanitarian died March 23, 2011, age 79. However, she will live as long as her motion pictures live. She will live as long as the history of HIV-AIDS is told. She will live in the lives of every woman, every human being who finds herself/ himself, winding through life’s labyrinth of triumph and defeat, of adoration and abuse, of acceptance and ridicule, of fame and shame, of love and loss.

Yet, there was an ordinariness about this extraordinary woman. She was married eight times to seven different men. She married Richard Burton twice. No judgment.

Rebels in Bengazi, Libya, unfurl a banner declaring their opposition to foreign intervention. This photo was taken on March 1, 2011. Photo by Al Jazeera with a Creative Commons Licence

How could any right minded person be against the use of force to stop the Libyan government’s repression of dissent? Incredibly brave demonstrators take to the streets, demanding freedom, democracy, and a more equitable share of Libya’s enormous oil/natural gas wealth – and they are met savage brutality. Foreign mercenaries from far away, using the power of tanks and airplanes, assault a poorly armed but politically aroused citizenry.

For God’s sake, let’s give them hand. Enforce the no-fly zone, bomb their anti-aircraft installations, make sure the good guys at least have a fighting chance. If there is some inadvertent damage or death because a few smart bombs land in the wrong place – well, it can’t be helped. This is justified. This is the time.

I must admit that even as an almost complete pacifist I am very tempted by this line of thought. And if it were up to me – and it’s a good thing it isn’t – I would probably go along with this move.

But I also think it’s important to keep a few other things in mind. In no particular order:

1. Who are the mercenaries? We talk about stopping Gaddafi as if this crazed and vicious man were out there on the battlefield with a machine gun. No, the people doing his killing for him, who will die from our bombs, are human beings just like us. Many have taken on a terrible job, in all probability because this was a way out of the terrible social and economic conditions that plague much of Africa. Conditions into which they were born and over which they have practically no control (as we, similarly, have little control over our government’s frequently violent foreign policy, or the effects of our energy use on the world climate). When we attack Gaddafi’s forces these people will die. Do they “deserve” to die, I wonder? Let’s keep in mind that to get to him we have to go through them.

Click on the image for more photos (from the BBC)

From the Jerusalem Post yesterday:

A woman was killed and 39 people were wounded on Wednesday afternoon when a bag exploded next to a bus stop across the street from the Jerusalem International Convention Center (Binyanei Ha’uma), near the capital’s western entrance.
It was the first serious terrorist bombing in the city since 2004, and for many residents it brought back terrible memories of the second intifada.

We are grateful to have received this press release from our friends at the World Muslim Congress (and while we are about it, we include below their last week’s condemnation of the attack on Michael Lerner’s home):

Muslims condemn today’s attack on the Bus in Jerusalem.

PRESS RELEASE

March 23, 2011, Dallas, Texas

Muslims condemn today’s attack on the Bus in Jerusalem.

The world Muslim Congress strongly condemns the attack on the bus in Jerusalem as well as the resumption of the rocket attacks on the civilian population. We pray for God’s blessing for the victims and their families.

Everything that at some point is in the future eventually becomes the present and then the past. I know this is not major news for anyone, and yet the experience of it continues to amaze me each time. For some months now I had been inviting people to come to the Making Collaboration Real conference that took place this past weekend. Now that this conference is in the past, I want to share some of my highlights and what comes next.

Collaboration has become more and more of a stated goal or practice in many places. One of the things that became apparent to me during this conference is just how much we need to learn in order to achieve true collaboration. Perhaps counter-intuitively, in order to collaborate well we need to learn how to engage in conflict in a productive way. Sometimes when we are uncomfortable with conflict we end up acting indirectly, which may result in more pain and discomfort for others, sometimes even for ourselves, rather than face the discomfort directly. For example, today I heard from a friend about a former employee who is very dedicated to nonviolence and collaboration, and yet since this person left she has engaged in actions that stir up conflict and may result in punitive action directed at a former co-worker instead of coming to her supervisor to attempt a resolution. What would it take for all of us to learn to walk towards conflict so that we can find ways of working with those who are different from us or whose actions are upsetting to us?

Collaboration means learning more about power, and engaging effectively across power differences. One theme that showed up repeatedly is the isolation of people at the top of organizations, especially those who run the most traditional of them. Because others are afraid, those at the top don’t get full information; they hear more often than not an inauthentic “yes”; they are not challenged enough; and they are seen as the “enemy” which means that actual co-creation is less available to them. Ulrich Nettesheim presented a series of insights and practices for making the focus on human needs relevant to people who work at the top. All in all, I became even more aware than I was before how essential it is to relate to the goals, vision, and perspective of the person at the top in order to establish sufficient trust to get any openness to the power of connection and collaboration.

One week after Jews all over the world nosh on Haman’s hat, dress in kooky costumes and party until we no longer recognize the difference between the ancient Persian equivalents of Hitler and Einstein, our preparation for Passover begins. On Shabbat Parah we study the enigmatic commandment to purify ourselves from contact with the dead through the sacrifice of a young, unblemished, red cow.

In many ways, this reading seems to continue the comedic inversions and paradoxes of Purim, the Jewish Mardi Gras. But surprise and delight at our continued presence on earth gives way to thoughtful reflection on emancipation from slavery and the attendant new-found responsibility we incur as a nation of free citizens. Observance takes a serious turn. Passover swings into view.

Parshat Parah is a pivotal passage. Why does this turning point in an overwhelmingly patriarchal text appear to revolve around menstruation?

It will be most interesting to see how Americans respond to the new movie, Miral, by well-known painter and movie director Julian Schnabel (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly). The movie opens tomorrow in New York and Los Angeles, and on April 1st in some other cities. Miral tells the story of several generations of Palestinian women from 1948. It is based on an autobiographical novel by the Palestinian-born, Italian TV journalist Rula Jebreal, who grew up in the Dar El-Tifl orphanage in East Jerusalem. The idea of a well-known Jewish artist telling a story from the Palestinian point of view has of course raised a ruckus. As an article in the Jewish Journal puts it

In the weeks leading up to Miral‘s release, some mainstream Jewish groups, such as the American Jewish Committee (AJC) and the Simon Wiesenthal Center, condemned the drama as agitprop and, in particular, denounced its U.S. premiere at the United Nations earlier this month.

… Schnabel said he understands why some Jews have condemned his movie – some without even having seen the film: “It comes out of fear,” he said. “The fear that the Holocaust occurred, that ‘we have been [decimated], and we don’t want it to happen again’; that ‘these people, the Palestinians, are against us having a State of Israel, and we must fight for that, no matter what happens.’ But I don’t believe that’s true. I believe a Jewish homeland in Israel is superimportant, and a great thing, but we must have empathy; we have to be sensitive. I don’t think it’s a very encouraging way to look at people, as ‘us and them.’ It isn’t us and them.We are all human beings.And what is good for the Palestinians is also good for the Israelis.”

The Bay Guardian, a Bay Area newspaper, just published a profile of Michael Lerner on the occasion of Tikkun’s 25th Anniversary. In an extensive comment on the article on the Bay Guardian‘s site, Michael describes it as

the fairest story I’ve ever had printed about me in S.F. And far better than the profiles of me in the NY Times Sunday Magazine, the Washington Post, Newsweek, and the Wall Street Journal when they were describing me as “the guru of the Clinton White House,” not to mention far better than anything that has ever appeared in any Jewish magazine. Asaf Shalev did a masterful job of incorporating a lot of information and avoiding the normal cynicism of the media. I deeply thank the Bay Guardian for having such a competent reporter!

In the aftermath of another assault on his home, the article allows Michael to speak for himself. For example:

While criticism of Israel coming from non-Jews is often dismissed as anti-Semitism, Jews who express dissent often get called “self-hating.” But Lerner said the illogical conclusion that Israel is the same thing as the Jewish people, and that if you criticize Israel you hate yourself has become less effective in silencing dissent. “It simply isn’t true that people are angry at Israel because of some internal psychological deformation,” Lerner said. “[Increasingly] people are saying ‘If being ethical is the same as being a self-hating Jew, then I choose to be ethical.’ “

The piece and Michael’s comments on it can be found here.

When I first picked up Floodlines on assignment to write a review for Bitch magazine, I thought I knew something about what went down in New Orleans after Katrina, but after reading this firsthand account of surviving the storm, I realized I didn’t know much at all. It reminded me of the first time I read a leftist account of the history of Zionism. Only then did I realize how much the US mainstream media had framed my perception of Palestine by focusing on individual acts of violence by Palestinians taken out of context from the larger frame of Israeli state violence.

Similarly, while reading Floodlines, I was forced to confront how my understanding of New Orleans has been shaped by mainstream media reports that focused obsessively on individual acts of violence while ignoring the large-scale state violence imposed on mostly poor communities of color. I was moved by how Flaherty, a white journalist and organizer based in New Orleans, manages to tell a story that encompasses both the staggering injustice of structural racism and the inspiring grassroots activism of New Orleanians.

He juxtaposes first-hand stories of communities helping each other survive the storm with the mainstream media’s racist depictions of their struggles. For instance, while the media portrayed African American men in New Orleans mainly as criminals, Flaherty describes how, in the wake of abandonment by official rescuers, groups of working class African American men travelled through neighborhoods, rescuing people and delivering supplies in the first days after the storm. Meanwhile, African Americans who needed help were treated like criminals: the National Guard placed many of them in militarized evacuee camps and eventually forced them to leave the state.

Flaherty explains how such inequity continued throughout the so-called recovery efforts. Money did not go to the people and local community organizations who needed it. Instead, it flowed to corporations who profited from rebuilding contracts, security firms who made money from criminalizing the victims of the storm, and large-scale corporate charities with high overhead costs. As Flaherty describes, “living in New Orleans in the first years after Katrina, it was as if the sky were filled with money. I imagined it thirty feet up in the air, clearly visible, but out of reach” (121).

Rather than exclusively blaming Arabs or Israelis, I pride myself in explaining how both sides, for a variety of complex reasons, have kept their conflict going. There’s plenty of blame to go around, as I contend to the distaste of some fervent pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli voices alike (as illustrated here and there).

I’m engaged in an ongoing email debate on the Meretz USA Blog with Prof. Werner Cohn, a retired professor of sociology who expresses himself energetically and acerbically in opposition to my dovish brand of Zionism. He has asserted that I’m committing the “Tu Quoque” logical fallacy by deflecting the problem of widespread Arab antisemitism with Israeli transgressions against the Palestinians. The following is an online definition of this concept:

Tu Quoque is a very common fallacy in which one attempts to defend oneself or another from criticism by turning the critique back against the accuser. This is a classic Red Herring since whether the accuser is guilty of the same, or a similar, wrong is irrelevant to the truth of the original charge. However, as a diversionary tactic, Tu Quoque can be very effective, since the accuser is put on the defensive, and frequently feels compelled to defend against the accusation.

We get into a chicken or egg argument here, because–by invoking the issue of Arab antisemitism–Prof. Cohn deflects from criticisms of Israeli policies on settlements, housing demolitions and other discriminatory practices brought up by our pro-Israel/pro-peace camp. He accuses me of doing what old Stalinists did, when they would fend off revelations of the murderous purges and other crimes of the Soviet era by citing the lynching of African Americans in the South.