Some of today’s most interesting, socially engaged, controversial, and occasionally even blasphemous artists are working in the mediums of spoken word, video and performance art. I’m excited to be joining Tikkun Daily as a blogger on the multi-media arts beat. All of the artists I plan to present here are working out of the belief that through their work they have the capacity — even the obligation — to ask the questions that light the spark of change. Whether they are examining issues of social justice, feminism/gender politics, the environment versus consumerism, Israel/Palestine or any other of today’s most complex problems, these artists are trailblazing their way to the cutting edge of both politics and artistic representation.

The first artist featured here is Lisa Vinebaum of Montréal, Québec.

Self-portrait as a Christian fundamentalist cheerleader. From the series "Patriot Acts" (2006-2010). Photo by Ivan Coleman

Credit: http://feministgal.blogspot.com/2009/04/this-year-at-passover.html

by Dan Brook

In the Passover Haggadah, we retell the story of our ancient enslavement in Egypt as well as our escape from that slavery. One of the central parts of this story is the parable of the four children, who each ask their own question with each receiving their own answer.

Like the four children, there are also four citizens. We must approach each person differently, so that each can be reached where they are, while inspiring them to do more, to do the sacred work of a citizen, the job of making one’s life and one’s society better, more civil, and more just. All of these citizens can teach us something, and each of them, both actually and potentially, is inside each of us.

In every generation, we should each and all remember that we were once slaves in Egypt who escaped to become physically and spiritually freer; we should likewise each and all remember that whether in Jerusalem, the Warsaw Ghetto, New York, the San Francisco Bay Area, or elsewhere, the Passover seder has been used to recall our history, strengthen our culture, discuss contemporary issues, and plan future actions.

1) The first citizen is the activist citizen, struggling for both personal growth and social change, who asks “What is the meaning of Pesach, in every way, so that we may apply the lessons to the various Egypts we live in today?” We should both teach and learn from citizens like this, joining with them in social action to make a better world, while encouraging them to learn more about the actions they engage in, thereby making vital connections between theory and practice, faith and action, being and doing.

By Carla Sameth

At age 23, my mom was allowed to leave home in the Bronx to go help her sister, my aunt Charlotte, with her new baby in Seattle. But the Jewish guys in Seattle met all the new girls “fresh off the boat” and she was quickly snatched up by my dad. When my mom decided to marry him soon afterwards and stay in Seattle, her father, my Grandpa Sam, put a curse on her saying her children would “scatter across the globe.”

The author's son, Gabe, at a Haitian Refugee Camp in the Dominican Republic (Global Leadership Adventures, 12/2010). See the end of this article for how to win a scholarship to go on one of these programs.

This was strangely prophetic because my siblings and I somehow ended up living in countries as diverse as Israel, France, Sri Lanka, Mexico, and Japan. Like so many other Jewish youth, we also sought out international travel and community service trips as young adults. For me this was combined with a deep interest in Jewish culture abroad and a fascination for those stories involving Jewish families starting in one country with one generation, say Iraq, then the family moving to India and ending up in Berkeley or going from Syria to Argentina to Israel and ending up with names like Yoko Birnbaum, Ester Rabkin or Uri Santos. Clearly the phrase “Wandering Jew” did not apply only to a plant species.

While we were “cursed” (or “blessed”) to wander, also in our destiny was political awareness and activism, sniffing out injustice in the world and giving to the community. The obligation, as a previously oppressed people to fight injustice as opposed to contribute to it, was intrinsically part of the values I grew up with and certainly the brand of Judaism I was exposed to at Habonim Camp – Machaneh Miriam on Gabriola Island in Canada. I was part of a Chavarah heading for Kibbutz and following a set trajectory: camp, leadership-training and then “workshop”– a year on Kibbutz. Learning to “give what you can and take what you need” and the belief in a kind of socialism went hand-in-hand with the protest marches I went on with my parents. I was not surprised, therefore, to find that international programs for high school students, emphasizing community service and leadership training, such as the one we went on this winter break in the Dominican Republic with Global Leadership Adventures (GLA) are heavily attended by Jewish youth.

My son, Gabe and I traveled to the Dominican Republic to assist with rebuilding a home in one of the worst slums in the area and visited a Haitian refugee camp, playing soccer with the kids there.

When I received my copy of Arab & Arab American Feminisms I wasn’t quite prepared for the expanse of thought and emotion contained within its unassuming cover. My expectation was that it would be a collection of ‘get to know us’ stories written by Arab American women, designed to appeal to a paranoid American audience. What I found instead was a collection of some of the most heartfelt stories, persuasive arguments and bold declarations of individuality that I’ve read in any other collected volume.

Arab & Arab American Feminisms brings together writers, poets, scholars, and activists and provides them a space to define themselves individually and collectively as women, Arabs, Muslims, and feminists as well as an infinite combination of other facets each of these contributors embodies.

Writing frankly on topics ranging from politics to domestic violence to homosexuality, Arab & Arab American Feminisms puts to rest any doubt that Arab women are an intellectual force to be reckoned with. This is not an attempt to promote any “kumbaya” interfaith/intercultural dialogue, or to extend an olive branch to those who might view Arabs and Arab women with anything but respect. It is a declarative statement made with multiple voices that the Arab woman’s soul is above and beyond simplistic definitions – and that they do not need anyone’s assistance to claim what is theirs.

"Then Miriam the prophetess, Aaron's sister, took a tambourine in her hand, and all the women followed her, with tambourines and dancing." (Ex. 15:20)

by S.L. Wisenberg

(This piece was officially first published in The Nervous Breakdown)

And Moses was jealous of his brother Aaron because of his fluidity in speaking because Moses lisped. And Aaron was jealous of Moses for his position, his magic, his blindly devoted followers; and Moses coveted Aaron’s Authentic Jewish (Slave) Experience and envied their older sister Miriam’s lightness and music, and Miriam was jealous that Aaron was their brother’s right-hand man. For many years she did not resent Moses because she had been his nurse-maid. Because of the decree that all baby boys of the Israelites had to be killed, Miriam had woven a basket from bullrushes she collected and partially dried. She had lain her baby brother down carefully in it and given him wine to sedate him. She put the cradle into the water and crept away and watched with the fierceness of an animal mother, a lioness, perhaps. She saw the daughter of the Pharoah bathe in the river, and discover the infant, and take it to raise as her own. Because of Miriam’s devotion it was said that she herself was the mother (she was not).

The adult Moses envied her powers of healing and of course wracked himself with guilt because how could he find fault with someone who cured the pain, both physical and invisible?

Doves fly over the Israeli Separation Wall in a graffiti art piece near the military checkpoint in Qalandia.

Abu keeps rabbits on the roof of his family’s home. There are five of them and they’re brown, white and black. He tosses them a handful of yesterday’s pita and they scamper underfoot, nibbling on the edges of the bread.

“You see the fat one?” he points, “She’s the mother. The first one I owned.”

Downstairs, Abu lives with his wife and his newborn daughter. They stay on the third floor; his father and mother live on the second and his two brothers live on the first floor. Abu also has two sisters who live in Jerusalem.

It’s early in the morning, but the sun is bright. I shade my eyes with my hand to look into the light. Abu wants to show me the view from the roof. Ramallah, he explains, is behind us.

“And you see that building?” Abu says, stretching his arm out and pointing to the west. The building that he’s pointing to looks like it’s on the same block, but it isn’t. It’s in another city. “That’s my sister’s house. That’s Jerusalem.”

He takes me by the arm, to the edge of the roof. “And right there is the Israeli wall,” he points down.

This spring Jewish Voice for Peace (I am a founding member of the Seattle Chapter) is sponsoring a tour of young Palestinian activists to speak in over fifteen cities in the US to discuss the challenges facing Palestinian students who live under Israeli military occupation. I was fortunate to hear Mira Dabit and Hanna Qassis speak in Seattle, and I also got a chance to interview them about right to education issues in Palestine, their lives under occupation, and their hopes for a better future.

Mira Dabit photo by Emma Klein

Mira Dabit, 25, was born in Jerusalem to a refugee family originally from the 1948 city of Al Lod. She has been a youth activist and folkloric storyteller for many years. She received her Bachelor’s degree in Psychology and Sociology from Birzeit University. After graduating, she moved to Ireland where she volunteered with community initiatives for three years. Back in Palestine, Mira is continuing her activism with youth and education, including the Right to Education campaign at Birzeit University.

Hanna Qassis, 27, is from the town of Birzeit, Palestine. He graduated from Birzeit University in 2006 with a BA in Business Administration, and is currently pursuing a Master’s Degree in International Studies. In addition to working for the Academy for Educational Development in the West Bank, Hanna is a political and youth activist who volunteers with several Palestinian civil society organizations.

At a talk at Seattle University on April 11, 2010, they both spoke movingly about the role of education in Palestine. Mira posited that education has been important to Palestinians because the loss of their land in 1948 meant that many Palestinians also lost their homes, businesses, and livelihoods. Education was what they had left, and she sees it as a tool for Palestinians to tell their stories and educate people about their lives.

One of the least understood aspects of all major crises is that assumptions are among their very first casualties. They are also the last to be rethought and rebuilt. To be better prepared for the next huge earthquakes and disasters that will inevitably strike, it thus behooves us to examine as many of the assumptions as we can that were made in Japan and elsewhere prior to the recent devastation.

The following are just a sampling of the many critical assumptions that need to be rethought.

First and foremost, my colleague at UC Berkeley Bob Bea has pointed out many times that, “There are no natural disasters. There are only natural hazards. All disasters are human-caused.”

Of course, humans don’t cause natural hazards such as earthquakes and tsunamis. It is how we prepare beforehand and respond to them after the fact that causes disasters. For instance, like the marshes surrounding New Orleans, for thousands of years, huge forests reaching out to the sea protected the coastal cities of Japan. These forests blunted many, but not all, of the major effects of tsunamis. With the increasing population of the cities, the forests were cut down. The decisions to do so were made by humans, not Mother Nature. To repeat, all disasters are human-caused!

If you are following the news, you might know that sometime this week, Fr. Roy Bourgeois is going to be expelled from the Maryknoll order after more than 40 years as one of its leading members. Later, the Vatican is undoubtedly going to defrock – the word is “laicize” — him as a Catholic priest.

Father Roy Bourgeois. Flickrcc/peaceworker46

This rupture comes two years after Fr. Roy participated in an unapproved ordination of a Catholic woman as a priest. At the time, he was excommunicated as a Catholic but not expelled. Since then, some kind of unacknowledged truce seemed to prevail between Fr. Roy and the Maryknolls, even though I know Fr. Roy sent a letter last year to other Maryknoll priests asking them to come forward publicly and support the ordination of women.

Simone Weil Fresco

The great French mystic scholar, Simone Weil, writes: “The poet produces the beautiful by fixing his attention on something real. It is the same with the act of love. To know that this man who is hungry and thirsty really exists as much as I do – that is enough, the rest follows of itself. The authentic and pure values, truth, beauty, and goodness, in the activity of a human being are the result of one and the same act, a certain application of the full attention to the object. Teaching should have no aim but to prepare, by training the attention, for the possibility of such an act” (Gravity and Grace, 173).

I am writing this post on my return journey home from Berkeley (home to Tikkun) where I have been conferring with emerging Unitarian Universalist scholars. Hosted by Starr King School for the Ministry in collaboration with Harvard Divinity School and my own seminary, Meadville Lombard, with generous funding from the UUA, the doctoral students invited to this conference work in some of the most prestigious programs and departments in the country.

From the listserve at a Unitarian Universalist congregation today, a classic Tikkunish rumination, a discovery by a humanist that religious progressives (in this case our good friends at Sojourners) can be inspiring allies:

I find myself connecting to an evangelical Christian organization, Sojourners, even though I’m a died-in-the-wool humanist… because of their message and action around social justice. I subscribe to their magazine as well as their e-newsletter, SojoMail. This group has turned me around from feeling uncomfortable about their theological positions to very appreciative of their social justice positions.

Jim Wallis launches the fast.

Right now they are in the midst of a fast so that they can focus in on what’s really important with our national “budget debate” and that we can turn towards a moral budget. The fast is spreading, including around congress itself. This quote is from today’s e-newsletter. For me, it gets to the very heart of the choices this country must make.

“The message of the fast gets clearer each day — fasting tends to focus you, and the message is that a budget is about the choices we make. This fast is not just about cutting spending, but about the values that will determine our priorities and decisions. Should we cut $8.5 billion for low-income housing, or $8.5 billion in mortgage tax deductions for second vacation homes? Should we cut $11.2 billion in early childhood programs for poor kids, or $11.5 billion in tax cuts for millionaires’ estates? Should we cut $2.5 billion in home heating assistance in winter months, or $2.5 billion in tax breaks for oil companies and off-shore drilling? This debate isn’t about scarcity as much as it is about choices.”

Maybe I should start praying.

Here’s more about the fast, from Jim Wallis at Sojo:

Mr G.

Meet Mr. G. He’s been teaching high school in Santa Fe for twenty years.

You might ask,”Is that a neck brace he’s wearing?”

Now that you mentioned it, yes. Mr. G. is wearing a neck brace.

This is the story of how, after an excruciating year of teaching, Mr. G. discovered he’d been standing at the blackboard with multiple neck fractures.

And stage 4 cancer.

He kept teaching until he was unable to stand on his feet.

Martin Nowak

OK, so the actual article in the New Scientist is headlined “The mathematics of being nice” but I’m suspicious enough of what is, nonetheless, my favorite science mag to see that word “nice” as a slightly snide diminution of what the article actually says (as in a pandering to anti-religious sentiment, but, hey, they ran the article!). Here’s a quote from the interview with Martin Nowak, professor of mathematics and biology at Harvard University:

So how do you see religion?
I see the teachings of world religions as an analysis of human life and an attempt to help. They intend to promote unselfish behaviour, love and forgiveness. When you look at mathematical models for the evolution of cooperation you also find that winning strategies must be generous, hopeful and forgiving. In a sense, the world’s religions hit on these ideas first, thousands of years ago.

Now, for the first time, we can see these ideas in terms of mathematics. Who would have thought that you could prove mathematically that, in a world where everybody is out for himself, the winning strategy is to be forgiving, and that those who cannot forgive can never win?

This is a continuation of yesterday’s post.

Can Facts Settle a Controversy?

When emotionally charged controversies are at play, even when agreement on the facts is possible, it’s unlikely to lead to any settling of the real issues, because beyond the facts comes the meaning we assign to them.

For example, I have been in an ongoing conversation with a colleague about the healthcare situation in the US. We have absolutely no disagreement about the basic facts of there being dozens of millions of people who have no or limited access to adequate healthcare. However, the meaning of this fact remains fully divided between us. Is it government stepping in that has created this, or government stepping out? Is it more important to provide care, or more important to support autonomy?

To come back to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, whatever facts we can possibly agree on are always seen through the lens of the framing story. That story informs what we see as cause of anything, how we evaluate the actors, and how we want to respond. A bomb explodes inside Israel. Is it a terrorist act designed to kill Israeli civilians and demoralize the people who are trying to live in peace in their land, or is it an act of a courageous freedom-fighter who believes no other way exists to call attention to the plight of Palestinians? If you believe the former, your response is likely to be doing whatever is necessary to protect life. If you believe the latter, you are more likely to want to be in dialogue to end the conditions that make life hard for Palestinians.

Given this wrinkle, I would much rather focus on attempting to create mutual understanding about matters of meaning than about the facts. I simply don’t see that facts can serve that big of a role in reaching across an opinion difference, a point to which I will come back momentarily.

Forget Ben and Jerry’s ice cream or Godiva chocolate, there’s no sinful pleasure like that delightful sense that “we” are so much “better” (more developed, more moral, more spiritually advanced) than “them.”

At least two recent items in the news gave me that seductive pleasure, big time.

First, there is the report that a new biography of Gandhi has been interpreted by some people as suggesting that the Mahatma had a homosexual relationship with a long-time German follower. Even though the author denied that he was claiming this, the Indian state of Maharashtra banned the book, and many have called on the Indian government to make the banning national.

Could anything be more ironic? Gandhi’s whole life was dedicated to the idea of truth. He used the word “satyagraha” — literally “truth force” — to define his non-violent approach to politics. He subtitled his autobiography The Story of My Experiments with Truth. So to honor this man we ban a book because we don’t like what it says. We don’t seek to disprove it, we just try to wipe it out our minds.

The second example is much more serious, one to be greeted with horror rather than irony. In Afghanistan, enraged by the burning of a Qur’an by a Florida pastor, whipped up into a frenzy by local clerics, people went on a murderous rampage that left (at this count) around twenty dead.

When I told friends back at home in the states that I was moving to Ramallah, they didn’t know exactly how to react. “Be safe,” someone said. “Don’t get blown up,” another friend warned.

Few people had a clear idea of what life in the West Bank was like, or even where Ramallah was.

Don’t worry, I would say. Ramallah is peaceful. It’s a small, bustling Palestinian city, full of coffee shops, clothing stores and restaurants. It’s the most liberal and progressive city in the West Bank and is also the seat of the Palestinian National Authority. It’s the de facto capital.

In February, I moved into an apartment in Lower Ramallah. In my neighborhood there are four hummus restaurants, one coffee shop, a bakery and a handful of fresh vegetable stands. Every day, I can walk onto the street, make friends, and practice my Arabic.

There’s a mosque next door and five times a day I hear the call to prayer, broadcast over loudspeakers. It used to wake me up in the morning, but now I’m used to it. Next door to the mosque is a Greek Orthodox Church.

“Ramallah is safe,” a Palestinian friend tells me the first day I arrive. “We’re not as close to the conflict.” Unlike places like Nablus, Hebron, or East Jerusalem, Ramallah doesn’t see violence regularly; there aren’t clashes with settlers or Israeli soldiers. Some places, this happens weekly.

“It’s an oasis,” my friend says. He pauses, and lets out a short, dry laugh. “Or maybe it’s more like a mirage.”

You’re never too far from the conflict here.

The fires of democracy continue to burn brightly in Wisconsin.

With a Smile, Photo by Rebecca Congo

Recall campaigns are racing along, and a recent community meeting in Milwaukee, usually a sleepy, ill-attended affair, boasted several hundred attendants. When their representative, Chris Larson, one of the “Wisconsin 14″ showed up, they jumped to their feet in a standing ovation. Neighborhood listservs are boiling with activity.

Photo of and by Rebecca Congo+Friend

On Facebook and in a thousand union and church meetings, people solidify their connections with each other and their commitment to recover and strengthen our precious democracy.

Meaningful Individual Acts, Meaningful Collective Acts

April 4^th and 5^th, there were dozens of opportunities to participate in democracy both publicly and privately. At least five activities were planned for the South Bay (Please comment and post photos if you attended one of these.)

Judge Richard Goldstone

What are we to make of Richard Goldstone’s partial retraction of the UN report on the Gaza war of 2008-09? There are some very thoughtful reactions that preclude any need for me to comment in my own words. This first one is by Bernard Avishai (the Canadian-American-Israeli political economist, author and blogger–see Tikkun Daily’s Blogroll). Avishai is both insightful and pithy:

Goldstone’s Reconsideration

Bernard Avishai (photo by Amy Thompson)

Richard Goldstone is a good man in need of a good editor. His report would never have attracted so much lightning had it not started off the way it did, trying to chronicle the terrible events of the Gaza operation, along with all the preliminary allegations of war crimes, before getting to context, testimony, caveats, and definitions (see especially pp. 10-26). By the time you got through the first section, you either had to be furious with Israel or with him.

Now Goldstone says in the lead of his Washington Post op-ed piece what everybody will remember, but which he does not really go on to prove, that to have known then what is known now would have meant a materially different report, hence, a different reaction to the Gaza operation.

In effect, he is apologizing for reporting that Israeli soldiers intentionally harmed civilians. …

Hamas missiles, he adds, were of course war crimes. Hamas has not investigated its own actions at all. As to Israel, “our fact-finding mission had no evidence on which to draw any other reasonable conclusion.” You get the idea that Israel was wronged.

… Sadly, what Goldstone does not regret is a report that distracted from the wrongness of Cast Lead in the first place.

In response to my blog piece In Appreciation of Complexity, I received 6 comments on my own blog and 5 on this blog. I read them all with great curiosity and interest. I am grateful to everyone who wrote back. I have no capacity to explain to myself, let alone others, why one comment caught my eye enough to want to respond.

Here’s the original comment from Susan B. posted on March 6th:

Well, no, actually, those arguing against the Goldstone report are not asking for recognition of millennia of suffering.

Rather, they are objecting to the gross mis-statements of fact, which have been pointed out in various other documents, including reports and information that were available to the Goldstone commission before their report was published.

by Peter Gimpel

Concerning Art and Religion, No. 9, by Junko Chodos. To see more, click on the picture above.

Are there “sacred values” capable of dissolving the borders between art and religion?

That question pulsed at the heart of the recent Art and Religion Symposium organized by the Foundation for Centripetal Art and co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Religion and the Center for Jewish Studies at UCLA.

Rafael Chodos, the foundation’s director, opened the symposium with a riddle:

A group of people gather in a certain place, where they all focus on the same thing. Some of them are moved. All of them feel that their experience is important. They are all quiet and many of them seem to be looking inward. After the gathering has dispersed, one or two of them come back to that place alone and weep. Where did this gathering take place? In a theatre, a concert hall, an art gallery or museum, or in a place of worship?