General News

'California' has Always Been Islamic

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A half millennium has taught us that America is very far from that country Utopia whose name literally means “No Place.” There has always been a disjunction between the words expressed in the Declaration of Independence, the poem on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty, or indeed the nebulous desire to find paradise towards that direction where the sun descends. It is true that the “discovery” of the New World led to genocide, and that its history is as enmeshed with violence as any other part of the world (perhaps more so). And yet the platonic ideal of this idea, this desire for a better world, must still lie at the heart of the American project if we’re to have any hope of surviving the twenty-first century. To weld shut the gate of America for Muslims, a country that they have inhabited before the pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock, to even consider such an abomination, is to be tempted by the howling cries of the worse demons of our nature.

General News

Explaining the Holocaust: How and Why It Happened

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How can one transmit the enormity of the Holocaust to a younger generation? In this very sensitive and perceptive book, Mordecai Schreiber has achieved that goal. In two hundred pages he is able to provide not only an overview of the Holocaust, but also present a variety of Jewish and Christian theological responses to this time of madness and murder, which he reexamines now, seventy years after Auschwitz. The author takes us through the First World War and its aftermath, particularly in Germany, the rise of Hitler, the key architects of the Shoah, focusing on Heinrich Himmler, Joseph Goebbels, Adolph Eichmann, and Josef Mengele. He follows with the evolution of the Holocaust, The Judenrat dilemma, and Jewish inaction during the Holocaust (yes, there were things that could have been done).

General News

Trump Reveals the Toxic Ideology of the GOP

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The leaders of the GOP clearly don’t want Donald Trump to be their party’s nominee for President. They don’t want him representing the Party in any way at all. They are fervently praying for him to self-destruct or just fade away before he destroys the Party!

General News

A Lonely Lawyer

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In today’s Israel, this is an act of incredible courage. Advocate Feldman is no crackpot. He is a well-known lawyer, prominent especially in the field of civil rights.

Judaism

Torah Commentary- Perashat Vayigash: Confronting Societal Injustice, Confronting Ourselves

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In these troubled times, when we see societal tolerance of speech approaching that of fascism, when open hate speech about anything or anyone approximating an “enemy”, where even the victims of oppression are treated with hostility and suspicion, one feels helpless in attempting to maintain a sense of justice and decency. How does one respond to what appears to be a situation of crisis? What kind of discourse is appropriate as a response? This week’s perasha (Torah portion) begins at a similar moment of crisis- All seems lost. An innocent descent to Egypt to purchase food has ended up with youngest brother Benyamin imprisoned by the enemy authorities.

Empathy

Humiliation is the Root of All Terrorism

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The idea that ISIS and other radical jihadis are simply “evil,” or that they “hate freedom” or are simply incomprehensible purveyors of a “hateful ideology” (to quote the repeated formulation of Barack Obama) just begs the question of why they are the way they are and why they believe what they believe. To actually understand Farook and Malik and those who engage in violent terrorism, and based on that understanding begin to do something to change the conditions that have produced and will likely continue to produce so much human suffering and loss, we have to attempt to grasp the terrorists’ experience of life from the inside, to see them as human just as we are, and to see what shaped them such that their thoughts and actions make sense to them.

Environment

Peace for the World, Healing for the Climate

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Yesterday I was arrested at Beale Air Force Base, near Marysville, California, along with seven others. We were charged with trespassing. This video of me speaking was filmed after we crossed the line onto the base. In it I begin to explain the connections between US military policy and climate change. The letter that we attempted to deliver to the base commander gives a more detailed explanation of our concerns and our reasons for demonstrating.

General News

Something is Happening Here

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A specter is haunting American political discourse – the specter of Trumpism. As a result numerous interpretations of his bizarre success have proliferated, analysts seemingly at a loss for explanation. Much as Dylan’s Mr. Jones in “Ballad of a Thin Man” we find that “something is happening here, but you don’t know what it is.” The light-hearted jokes of summer about Donald Trump’s ridiculous orange bouffant and his shrill Queen’s accent have given way to a more ominous autumn, one where the presidential candidate doesn’t disavow the suggestion that if elected he would require Muslims to be registered in national databases and for mosques to be closed down, and where his supporters beat Black Lives Matter protesters to Trump’s approval. Now the candidate is calling for the barring of all Muslims from immigrating to the United States.

General News

On Frank Sinatra

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I have been a Frank Sinatra fan since before I can remember. My parents told the story of me during my terrible twos: I would be screaming about something that had gone wrong in my little girl toddler world, but when Frank Sinatra came on the radio singing “Three Coins in a Fountain”, I would stop screaming, listen to him sing the song, and when it was over, I would continue screaming. Genius music and musicians populate the soundtrack of my life. Jackie Wilson, Sam Cooke, The Beatles, Motown, Aretha Franklin, Nina Simone, James Brown, Jimi Hendrix, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Weather Report, Barbra Streisand, Whitney Houston, Patty LaBelle, Dolly Parton, Loretta Lynn, Johnny Cash, June Carter Cash, Michael Jackson, Sting, Al Jarreau, and more. I learned classical music from Leonard Bernstein’s children’s concerts and from my piano teachers in East St.