Craig and Derrick in Their San Mateo Shop

Two decades ago someone like me wasn’t allowed to serve in the U.S. military openly, so after eight years of service, I left. Back then someone like Derrick wasn’t allowed to openly serve as a deacon, elder, or minister in the Presbyterian Church USA, so he joined a congregation that fought against that ban. That congregation, the First Presbyterian Church of Palo Alto, had a long history of working for peace and social justice. Along with fully accepting Derrick and me for who we were, the people there also introduced us to the power of nonviolent resistance against injustice in all its forms, and opened our eyes to the many ways we were called to make the world a better place. By truly embracing us as individuals AND as a couple, they also set us on a path to where we are today.

It is 2011 and gays and lesbians can serve in the military and in the Presbyterian Church USA. My prayer is that my GLBTQ sisters and brothers, and all of the allies who have tirelessly worked for inclusion, will celebrate these victories and then join the global quest for peace, justice, and equality.

Credit: Creative Commons/g_kovacs

It is a cold spring here in Chicago, all rain and anticipation, and, like everyone in the city, I am still pretending that eventually things will change, that if we hope hard enough, and have enough faith, the world will warm up and bloom.

Our good intentions haven’t brought it yet.

But, I’ve lived here for sixteen years of cold springs. And, as you might notice from that history, I am happy here among my neighbors waiting for flowers — partly because I adore people of good intentions who believe fervently that they are capable of making the world a better place.

I love the Shakers, whom my father revered. I think of them stooped in their fields, cultivating seeds, and thinking always of how better to put their hands to work and hearts to god. I love the Unitarians I share the sanctuary with on Sunday mornings, the way they pledge to heal the world. I love the earnest, deliberate meditating of people all over the planet who send compassion into the wind to make sure that it exists, and that, hopefully, it lands somewhere and takes root.

And, among the pantheon of the earnest that has taken up residence in my heart, I love the scientists who have built an ark for frogs in the Panamanian rainforest.

by Ervin Staub

The Israeli government reacted with hostility to the reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah. If Prime Minister Netanyahu were to give the right speech when he addresses the U.S. Congress later in May, the resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict could move onto a fast track. Here’s the speech I propose:

Credit: Creative Commons/Truthout.org.

The beginning of reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah should inspire us, Israelis, and you Palestinians, to make peace. We have been harming each other, and we both have missed many opportunities to bring our hostility to an end. We wish you had been ready to come to an agreement when we made substantial offers to you in the past. We wish we had been wiser when Hamas won the 2006 election that we and the United States both wanted to take place. We should have waited to see if having the responsibility of power would moderate Hamas, rather than immediately responding with hostility.

Contrary to our initial reactions, the government of Israel is now prepared to see what unfolds, as reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah begins. Peace between Hamas and Fatah makes peace between us more realistic. An agreement would be less likely to be sabotaged by terrorist attacks. There are questions, of course, whether an agreement is possible with Hamas involved. But Hamas has expressed willingness in the past to accept a binding peace treaty, if approved in a plebiscite.

With Hamas a part of the peace process, we realize that initially a peace agreement may not bring all we want, such as the recognition of Israel. But we also realize that as people, including groups and nations, begin to move in a positive direction, they change. We have faith that as we walk on a shared path, our relations will improve and true peace will become possible. As a start we must engage in negotiations and not stop, as we have done again and again in the past, but continue until we reach an agreement about the issues we must resolve for the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Tony Kushner

The New York Jewish community largely rallied against the City University of New York’s initial decision last week not to honor Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tony Kushner over his alleged views on Israel. My journalist friend, Doug Chandler, broke this blockbuster story in an online news article in The NY Jewish Week newspaper. In a followup, he reported that the CUNY board would reverse this ill-considered action [which it did] and that Ed Koch, New York’s outspoken and very pro-Israel former mayor, called for the “resignation or removal” of the CUNY trustee who attacked Kushner.

Also on the Kushner affair, in his Political Insider blog, James Besser (The Jewish Week‘s Washington correspondent) sensibly asked, “what kind of pro-Israel movement do we want?” He warned against a narrow ideological view regarding Israel.

While Kushner’s views on Israel should be entirely irrelevant to his suitability for an honorary degree (especially at a public university), they have been a source of confusion. In his vociferous protest against CUNY’s board, he indicated that he’s been misrepresented, that he’s never opposed Israel’s existence.

Now that justice has finally caught up with Osama bin Laden, one hopes that sanity will finally catch up with Washington. In the indispensable TomDispatch.com, editor Tom Engelhardt rains on our very premature victory parade at bin Laden’s death, pointing out that OBL lives on in a host of crucial ways and that the fiend’s enduring victory lies in America’s self-imposed political debasement after 9/11:

Unfortunately, in every way that matters for Americans, it’s an illusion that Osama bin Laden is dead. In every way that matters, he will fight on, barring a major Obama administration policy shift in Afghanistan, and it’s we who will ensure that he remains on the battlefield that George W. Bush’s administration once so grandiosely labeled the Global War on Terror.

One of the global architects of terror responsible for inspiring the 9-11 tragedy was finally killed this week. Osama bin Laden, who violently hijacked the faith of 1.5 billion to rationalize his perverse criminal actions, is permanently seared into our collective consciousness as the 21st century boogeyman.

Sadly, in the eyes of many Americans, bin Laden has also become one of the most visible icons of “Islam” alongside Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X. Furthermore, 10 years after the 9-11 tragedy, nearly 60% of Americans say they don’t know a Muslim, and the favorability rating of Islam is at its lowest ebb.

Muslim Americans, like much of the world, still cannot escape the overbearing shadow of the fallen towers. There is a permanent fork in the timeline of the Muslim American narrative: Pre-911 and Post 9-11.

Pre 9-11, I was another awkward, well intentioned, multi-hyphenated Muslim American with exotic dietary habits who prayed 5 times a day and drank chai instead of alcohol during college.

Post 9-11, I received a special screening in front of my fellow passengers who boarded the plane to North Carolina while observing my Muslim security clearance zoo exhibit.

I felt like smoking a cigarette and spouting a witty barb after my intimate encounter with the TSA.

I have had a dream for many years now to be able to provide an empathic response to the news, whatever they are, so that everyone is seen as fully human. I see this situation as just the right time to explore this approach. There are so many ways in which people have participated in or responded to this event, and I want to capture the humanity of all of them. Some are rejoicing, some are horrified, some are skeptical, some are apathetic, and all are fellow humans. As tough as it sometimes is to really feel that commonality, that is what I most want to do.

I am the mother you ought to fear.

I am the mother you ought to regard with awe and wonder.

I am not any of the Mother Gods you think you know. I am not the triune female divine – virgin, mother, crone. I am not the Madonna tenderly caring for her infant child. I am not Mary of the Pieta holding the crucified body of her sacrificed son. I am not Ala, Mami, Gaia or Kali. I am not Woman Wisdom of the biblical book of Proverbs. I am the nameless mother who is the mother of all the elements that come together to make life possible. I am also the mother of all that comes together to destroy every material thing you value.

I am the mother of volcano, earthquake, tsunami, hurricane, cyclone, tornado, blizzard, fire and flood. I breathe heat and bring drought. And my message to you this Mother’s Day is stop with the nonsense.

Mother's Day Cake (photo by Xurble/Gareth Simpson)

When I was younger I feared becoming my mother. I saw her foibles without really seeing either her strengths or graces, and from time to time, when I caught sight of those foibles in myself, I thought, “Oh darn. I am becoming my mother.” (Well, I thought something stronger than that. But this is a public blog.)

Then, this morning, I caught myself talking to our cats as I got out of the shower. A little context may be helpful here: my mother has lived alone for most of the years since I went to college, which is longer ago than I care to admit. And I know she has talked to her cats all that time since she did it when I lived at home and she still does it now. And while I have a partner, my partner has been in Africa for more than four months and so for all intents and purposes I live alone right now – for another week anyway, till she comes home. So I watched myself have a conversation with the cats and I thought: I am becoming my mother. But without the expletive. And with a sense of gratefulness. So I thought it was time, in honor of Mother’s Day tomorrow, to give thanks for some of the ways that I am becoming my mother.

Nietzche was preoccupied with the question of where the “good” came from, and who was responsible for it, that is, what is its “genealogy”. Here is his summary statement on the matter:

The judgement “good” did not originate with those to whom “goodness” was shown! Rather it was “the good” themselves , that is to say, the noble, powerful, high-stationed and high-minded, who felt and established themselves and their actions as good, that is, of the first rank, in contradistinction to all the low, low-minded, common and plebian’the pathos of nobility and distance, as aforesaid, the protracted and domineering fundamental total feeling on the part of a higher ruling order in relation to a lower order, to a “below”- that is the origin of the antithesis “good” and “bad”‘ (The Genealogy of Morals, Kauffman edition pp 25-26).

Thus, to Nietzche, those who have power are those who create morals for a society. When, as in the ancient times, according to Nietzche’s myth, the leadership was in the hands of the aristocratic and noble, there was a different conception of morality than the currently accepted one in bourgeois society, which derives from the ressentiment of the herd, “perverted” towards concepts like pity and shame. The idea that morality as a concept and practice is the result of forces of power in society is developed in Foucault and others. Is this definition of power = morality the case in Jewish thought?

I propose that our perasha offers a test case in reading of these ideas. The way one explains the supplementary prohibitions of the kohanim (I don’t like the term “priesthood” loaded as it is with a set of meanings from our European history) in essence situates the concept of an elite within Jewish society.

The textual issues which give rise to this discussion in the commentators is found at the outset of our perasha. Perashat Emor begins with Gd telling Moshe to speak to the Kohanim, the sons of Aharon, instructing them not to be defiled by contact with the dead. The word emor, speak, is repeated twice in the verse. The Talmud Bavli, Yevamot 114. explains this duplication as instructing the priests to caution the adults to educate the children as well in the ways of ritual purity, so that the children don’t defile themselves either. The Hebrew phrase used to explain this is very concise and leads to several alternate readings “l’hazhir gedolim al ketanim”- translated literally, warn the big regarding the small. The Midrash adds that this repetition of the command Emor, is necessary because of the presence in humanity of an evil inclination, and thus, being easily corruptible, humanity its warnings in duplicate.

The Kotzker finds this Midrash’s meaning to be adressed to the wrong audience. If a duplicated warning is mandatory for those in a lower state, then duplications should be present in commands relating to the masses, not the priesthood, the spiritual elite, as it is here! So why then is it directed at the Kohanim, instead of towards the masses? According to the Kotzker, this message of spiritual weakness is specifically directed to the Kohanim as an educational paradigm oriented toward the entire people’s transformation. That is, the duplication addressed to the kohanim is meant to teach the body of Israel, that if these people who are so close to the Temple need a special extra precautionary warning, then how much more careful everyone else must be!

At any rate, returning to our original question of valuation of spiritual hierarchies, among the classic Hasidic thinkers, we notice a trend, whereby the status of the Kohen is diminished in favor of the people as a whole. The Tiferet Shelomo notes that the opening verse begins in the plural, addressed to the Kohanim, but ends with the singular- here’s the verse transliterated: v’amarta alehem, you shall say unto them, lanefesh lo yitama b’amav, that the kohen should not “yitama“, defile himself, among the people. Spiritual elitism? According to the Tiferet Shelomo, the purpose of the kehuna as an institution is primarily concerned with elevating the entire people, thus, the subject of the verb yitama (defiled) is not the kohen, but rather is an injunction against letting any nefesh b’amav, a person of the nation, be defiled. In other words, don’t read it that no priest should profane himself among the people, rather, read the verse as: Teach the priests to create an environment which prevents the people, b’amav, from becoming profaned. Not letting any individual stumble is the primary purpose of the institution of kehuna. The Sefat Emet (in the sermons from 1877, trl”z) suggests that the level of holiness of the kohen is in a direct relationship to the level of holiness of each individual among the rest of the people. The spiritual level of the kohen is not only some individual attainment, but rather reflects the level of the people as a whole. When the people are led to greatness, their leaders are then great.

The Kedushat Levi, the Be’er Mayim Hayim, and the Noam Elimelech share an interesting, more radically egalitarian view. The Kedushat Levi explains that the phrase “the sons of Aharon” is superfluous, after all, we know who the kohanim are descended from. To him, this phrase is meant to keep the kohanim modest. The kohen can not lord his position over others, as his position is solely a result of lineage, something which one doesn’t earn, and can’t be said to deserve, so what does he have to be a big shot about? Thus he must fulfil his duties not thinking he is any more special than anyone else as a result (this is exactly the opposite of how many organizations, including contemporary chassidut with its emphasis on lineage, evolved).(The Kedushat Levi thus also reads the double emphasis on the word “emor” “say”, not just as a teaching for the kohanim, but to all people as a message to keep their speech from becoming defiled.)

The Noam Elimelech very aggressively denies the validity of pride about lineage, the person’s “am“, his volk or genitori, which he refers to as a “tuma’a“, a defilement! He thus rereads the end of the verse transliterated above as “the kohen shouldn’t defile his soul with pride about his people”. Once freed from reading this passage concerning the priesthood, he rereads the above cited Talmudic teaching regarding “Gedolim al ketanim”, warning the great regarding the lesser, in two ways of interest to us:

1. That even those in a lofty spiritual state (gedolim) must be concerned about their own seemingly trivial sins (ketanim).

2. The idea of repetition as in Kierkegaard: When in a high spiritual state (gadlut), the individual must attempt to descend with the lessons of that state back into the quotidian, the everyday. The challenge is to carry the spiritual heights of specific moments of grandeur back into ordinary life and society. It is not a great achievement to feel spiritual when at a point of spiritual high, it is maintaining that moment in everyday life that is the achievement.

The Be’er Mayim Hayim stresses the mutual inter-relatedness of all the strata of the people; there is a mutual responsibility upon every sector of society to not pull the others down. He explains that this teaching intentionally is presented after the Nadav V’Avihu episode, which was a failure not of the masses but of the upper echelons of spiritual society, and thus wonderfully inverts the assumed standard reading of the “l’hazhir gedolim al ketanim” maxim: The ordinary people should not be misled by the sins of the leadership!

In conclusion, let us turn to the teaching of R. Zadok Hacohen, who at the outset seems to teach that the kohanim do have a privileged position, but his inversion of who the kohanim are is most dramatic- to R. Zadok, all of Israel ultimately are the kohanim .According to the Midrash Rabba, this perasha of spiritual nondefilement for the priesthood comes as a reward for the “yir’ah“, the awe, with which Aharon, forerunner of the priestly clan,  approached Gd when called to the altar (see Rashi on Vayikra 9:7, supported by Malachi 2:5). The Midrash adds that this honor will be bestowed upon all his subsequent generations, even after the Temple is destroyed. But what significance does non-defilement have in the absence of the Temple, when the ritual rites of purification are no longer in existence? R. Zadok explains that even if the physical edifice on Mt. Zion no longer exists, the “Temple” still exists. Where is it? In our hearts, as quoted according to the Midrash Shir Hashirim Rabba. There, Gd is referred to as the heart of the Jewish people; the Midrash’s proof text refers to Gd as being “shochen”, dwelling, in our hearts; the word “shochen” is etymologically related to the word for the sanctuary, the “Mishkan”- thus there, in our heart, is the Temple, where Gd’s presence dwells. As a result of yir’ah, awe before the Divine Presence, the descendents of Aharaon are always ready to enter this Temple, the one alive, beating, and present inside each and every one of us. And in truth, it is not only genetic kohanim who have this ability. We are all described as having this same awe, this yir’ah that enables us to encounter Gd dwelling within us, on the Shabbat, as stated in a halachic context in the Mishna, Demai 4:1, and in the Jerusalem Talmud there. The Zohar states explicitly that Shabbat in time is equivalent to the Temple in space, so that keeping the Shabbat is equivalent to serving Gd in the Temple. Thus, in summary, when we attune to proper consciousness, we are all equivalent to kohanim serving in the Temple- in that Temple within each and every one of us.

Once we have reached a situation of reading whereby the priestly texts regarding Kohanim can be understood as referring to inter- and intra- personal issues, then we are open to lovely readings of the sort presented by R. Hayim of Sanz in his Diverei Hayim. The Diverei Hayim expands a suggestion by the Noam Meggidim that the nefesh, a metonymic term that is usually read as “a person” referred to in the opening verse of Perashat Emor, refers not to the priest but actually means what its literal translation says it is, the “soul” (that is, nefesh is translated as soul rather than person). Verse 21:1 reads: lanefesh lo yitama b’amav,generally translated as “the priest should not become ritually impure among the people”. However, in the spirit of the subversion described throughout this essay, the Noam Meggidim and Diverei Hayim democratize the reading to refer to each individual soul. The Divrei Hayim adds a radical translation of the word amav, which is generally read as deriving from the root “am”, meaning “the people”. However, he suggests that the root here is one with a doubled m, which is the term used for the dwindling flickering of a coal, the dimming light of the ember. Read in this light,  the Divrei Hayim reads the verse as follows: When the spiritual achievement of a particular individual (soul, nefesh) has reached a low point (its immui, its dwindling), it should not give up hope and self destruct in despair (lo yitama, giving a psychological spin to the ritualistic term “impurity”). A person should not become depressed even when one feels really down. Rather, every person should realize that even at the lowest point, when one feels one has entirely lost all connection to spiritual life, one can restore ones self to a state of great holiness and wholeness.

Here’s an additional reading along these lines, one that transfers the verse into one making reference to more rarified concepts about prayer and consciousness. The Pri Haaretz, R. Menachem Mendel of Vitebsk, reads “nefesh” as referring to prayer (the term is used frequently in relation to David, who is viewed metaphysically as the archetype of prayer/shekhina). Prayer, to the Pri Haaretz, takes flight when it is intended as a contemplation of the Divine, as opposed to the “grounded” form of prayer as petition for personal gain. The latter to him is degraded prayer,defiled- “tamei“. As such he read our verse as instructing us that the soul/prayer must not be defiled by “amav“, the physical drives and desires of the body (with all the components of the physical organism incorporating, as it were, a whole population of desires). Thus the teaching “l’hazhir gedolim al ketanim” is read as ” To illuminate (l’hazhir from the root “zohar” meaning to glow), the higher, expanded consciousness (the term “gadlut” is a frequent Lurianic term for higher states of consciousness) into the lower worlds, the lower states of mind (that is the material world, “katnut” read as small mindedness).

We have seen how a seemingly exclusionary set of dry ritualistic exhortations regarding an “elite”, have become transvalued into a set of universally normative spiritual and ethical goals and guidelines. In our readings, we look to the “masses” not as the source of ressentiment as did Nietszche, but rather to each and every person at every level and rank as the source of endless spiritual renewal.

I’m not a Canadian, but I’ve lived in Canada and was an enthusiastic supporter of the New Democratic Party, the perennial third (sometimes fourth) party in that country until a few days ago. I don’t wish to steal Peter Marmorek‘s thunder as an actual Canadian and I look forward to his post-election analysis, but I would like to share some reflections of my own.

When I was a student at McGill in the early ’70s, I campaigned for an NDP candidate in Montreal. Naturally, he finished a distant third (if not fourth). Now I’ve learned that dramatic NDP gains in Quebec (where it nearly wiped out the separatist Bloc Québécois, down from 47 seats to four) have catapulted it into a respectable and unprecedented second place finish nationally–up from 37 to 103 seats, with the Liberals crashing from 77 to 34.

The ruling Conservative Party won a majority of the seats but only 39% of the vote. The key to the election strategically seems to be that a close split between Liberal and NDP voters in Canada’s most populous province, Ontario, allowed the Conservatives to win a decisive number of seats there.

I was drawn to the NDP out of a sense of international solidarity as a young American socialist who was a member of the Socialist Party-USA and later its successor organizations, the Social Democrats-USA and the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee.

I hate to keep repeating myself, but the issue won’t go away. Torture is morally wrong, and it is clearly prohibited by international and American law. Thus, I find it shocking that Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld openly admit to authorizing torture, and that they do so with impunity. And if Khalid Sheik Mohammed and Abu Faraj al-Libbi — who allegedly provided information that helped us locate Osama bin Laden — were prisoners of war, then their torturers committed war crimes.

Now, in the wake of bin Laden’s death, right-wing ideologues are once again defending the use of torture.

In response, opponents of torture are trying to prove that it did not play a positive role in the capture of bin Laden. For example, Eugene Robinson says in today’s Washington Post that “torture wasn’t the key to finding bin Laden.”

Well, it doesn’t matter if it was. Torture is wrong. Period. And it is a crime.

Bin Laden’s capture does not justify torture. Terrorists do not need him in order to operate. I am happy we got him, but sadly it probably doesn’t really matter that much.

Cinco de Mayo celebration. Photo: Creative Commons/vpickering.

Crossposted from Colorlines.com

by Roberto Lovato

Back in the late 70′s and 80′s, when most white people didn’t feel safe in predominantly Latino neighborhoods like San Francisco’s Mission district (or inner cities, for that matter), summer started with Cinco de Mayo. Tiny, hyper-local street fairs where Mexican restaurants, crowds of happy, loud brown people and lamb chop-sideburned Santana-wannabe garage bands filled the air with cultural and political electricity. It went largely unnoticed outside of the Latino neighborhood, what used to be called El Barrio.

Cinco de Mayo’s mix – live salsa, mariachi and rock Latino music; sometimes-inspired English and Spanish-language political speeches and volanteando (flyering) – provided the soft cultural cushion for generations of citizens and non-citizens dropped by the American Dream. And none but the cigarette smoking Marxista even knew or spoke about May Day, the International Workers Day rallies that filled cities around the country this past weekend.

Thirty years, millions of mobile devices and a massive wave of migration later, Latinos have largely forgotten the meaning of Cinco de Mayo. There’s still considerable color, music and even some inspiration among attendees at Cinco de Mayo events, but the electricity of the events has been heavily doused by beer promoters trying to capture Latina hearts and minds and by military recruiters desperate for young Latino bodies. With notable exceptions among the more thoughtful Cinco de Mayo organizers around the country, event organizers no longer tell us that we’re celebrating the victory of the badly-equipped, but inspired Mexican guerrilla army that fought and defeated the far better-equipped forces of Napoleon III’s decaying French Empire. Cinco de Mayo’s loss of electricity has itself become a Latino-”American” sign of imperial malaise.

Instead, our electricidad has migrated to Primero de Mayo (May Day). Born in the U.S., after immigrant and other workers protesting in Chicago’s Haymarket Square were killed by police in the late 19th century, Primero de Mayo was, until very recently, a largely forgotten commie affair. Today, Latino workers, specifically immigrant workers, march against the militarized immigration forces of President Obama, and these workers are powering May Day back to relevance in a decaying empire that tries to border itself off from the rest of the working world by celebrating “Labor Day” in September. The day connects us to people marching throughout the hemisphere and the entire world; it previews and makes palpable the bottom-up borderlessness that is the only salvation for this extremely troubled planet.

The dance of time: quick time, slow time; quick, quick, slow. I’m fascinated by the times of history. Evil usually takes time to prepare and to grow, but then often only instants, minutes to inflict, and then again a lifetime or more to heal. This seems to be part of the tragic of human nature and human existence. A massacre, rape, violence, horror in all its many forms… Time does not heal of itself.

I recall meeting a Swiss journalist in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, after the withdrawal of the Serb army. Serbs and Kosovars had been living together for generations, for hundreds of years, perhaps not with any great affection, but living as neighbors, she said, sharing the same schools, landings in apartment buildings, often going to each others’ marriages, sharing birthdays. And then a slow poisonous rise of nationalisms, and suddenly Serbs were turning on their Kosovar neighbors, telling them to leave, now, within minutes, with what they could carry. A certain level of tolerance destroyed in hours that may take generations to heal, to restore. And the enemy was not a faceless unknown, had a first name.

Credit: Creative Commons/R!E.

The 66th session of the UN General Assembly opens at 3 PM, September 13th, in New York City. According to my sources, the session will vote to recognize an independent Palestine based on 1967 borders on September 22, 2011, eleven days after the 10th anniversary of 9/11. What follows is a plausible battle plan for peace.

The following day, 9/23/11, is Friday. After prayers, massive peaceful demonstrations will be held in all the major Islamic capitals in the world, calling on Israel and the US to recognize the new Palestinian state. Candlelight vigils will be held at Israeli embassies and consulates around the globe with the same goal. In Jerusalem, huge crowds will march on the checkpoints leading into Jerusalem from both sides of the Green Line for a carefully planned exercise in civil disobedience with the eventual objective of opening the checkpoints. The marches will be led by women and children bearing bouquets of red and white roses which will be inserted into the muzzles of the Israeli M-16s. The marchers will then retreat.

Crossposted from the GOATMILK Blog

“As an American, a Muslim and a Republican, of states right’s and original polity, I give this:

How is it that we as Muslims have come so far from the aristocracy of yore, yet find ourselves consummately subservient to the political aims and whims of Muslim elders who nod wisely and speak stupidly. The ferment of ire that is the baseline of the “Osamas” is a a sad state of affairs where modern Muslims will not question their leadership but will find their deen questioned by people of unscrupulous nature.

Every living thing that Al-Qaeda stood for is an affront and idolatry to both Allah (SWT) and Islam as a construct. OBL is hopefully the last bastion of folk who seek to pervert Islam in the name of militarism. May we now be at a turning point where conversation and humility can overshadow the sadness of yore that allowed OBL’s ilk to pervert religion and bend it to suit his wholly un-Islamic aims.” - Oz Sultan, Former Director of PR at Park 51

“Well, I was multitasking by being on Twitter and writing a final paper when I heard there would be a be an announcement from Obama. Everyone on twitter was trying to guess what it was, and then there were rumors about Osama. Everyone was going crazy on Twitter and FB. I finished my paper 5 hours later, which should have taken less than two hours. Definitely worth it though. I’m Egyptian American and when Mubarak fell, it was one of the happiest days of my life, and today is too.” - Aya A. Khalil

“Though I am not Muslim, I was happy to hear President Obama reiterate in his global statement that it WAS NOT a war against Islam. Very happy to hear the promotion of racial, religious, and ethnic tolerance in a critical moment.” - Art Balaoro

The Jewish tradition has much to say on the killing of our vicious and even murderous enemies.

When Pharaoh’s troops were drowning in the Red Sea as they sought to re-enslave or kill the Israelites, the angels began to sing praises (the Hallel prayers: Psalms 113-118). According to the Talmud, God chastened them: “My children (the Egyptians) are sinking in the sea, and you are singing praises?”

Yet God did not silence the Israelites, knowing that at that moment it would be hard for humans not to celebrate the death of an oppressor.

Nevertheless, the Jewish tradition then instituted two practices in accord with God’s response: first, that the Hallel prayers would be cut down to a partial saying of some of the psalms on the last six days of Passover; and second, that when we do the Seder on Passover and recite the plagues that were used against the Egyptians to get them to free the Jews, we put our finger in the cup of wine, symbolic of our joy, and dip out a drop of wine for each plague — this symbolizes that our cup of joy cannot be full if our own liberation requires the death of those who were part of the oppressor society.

It is the loss of this consciousness by almost every society on the planet that is a real source for concern and mourning. For far too many people, the war on terrorism seems to be an extension of the football games where we cheer on our team: “USA! USA! Hey, you are tough!”

I’ll get right to the point: in the wake of Osama Bin Laden’s death, the US desperately needs a national day of mourning, a solemn affair in which we acknowledge our need for broken-heartedness, humility, and compassion in the wake of almost ten years of human anguish.

This is going to be a controversial post. Read on at your own discretion.

There are marvelous progressive analyses of where we stand today at commondreams.org, and Rabbi Lerner and Peter Gabel have written a superb account for the online Tikkun magazine (separate from the daily blog). Much of what might be said from a progressive and indeed a spiritual progressive perspective has already been said. But I have not seen a call for a national day of mourning. Here’s why I think we need one:

Two days before the start of Passover, I get stuck at the Israeli border. I’m re-entering the country from a weekend trip. It’s early in the morning, but already hot and there’s no breeze.

“Please sit outside and keep waiting,” an Israeli guard tells me. “Thank you.” She speaks with a thick accent and smiles. I’ve already been waiting two hours.

I wonder why I’ve been stopped. I’m not part of any activist groups. I don’t go to demonstrations or protests. I don’t think I’m a security threat. I haven’t hurt anyone.

An Israeli border check.

I’m waved inside and motioned to sit down on a plastic chair. A phone is put in my hand and a voice comes through the receiver. It’s an official, someone’s superior. The line crackles; he sounds far away.

“How long have you been in Israel?” he asks.

“Around three months,” I say.

“We know you’ve been to the West Bank. Is that right?”

“Yes,” I say. “I have.”

I feel like this was the wrong answer. There’s a long pause.

“What is your relationship with the Arab?”

Wisconsin workers

Happy International Workers Day, everyone! All over the world, on grand and small scales, people are celebrating the majority in every society: workers and would-be workers. Every day, in my work as a teacher, I see that the belief in fairness continues to flourish among the majority, the baristas and servers, the nurse’s aides and clerks, the dishwashers and groundskeepers.

photo by Jonathan McIntosh wikimedia commons

It’s a complex situation, of course. Workers can be hard on one another, proud of their endurance under extreme conditions. As one server told me recently, “If you can’t take abuse and disrespect every day, you don’t belong in the restaurant business.” And yet, in a recent class discussion, both men and women restaurant workers acknowledged that at the end of the working day, they often cried.

There Is Hope

Though the power of the privileged has grown grotesquely and the power of workers has shrunk, commitment to justice is a motion-sensitive light that turns on again when we move.