Credit: Creative Commons/The Value Web

Rarely are we invited to consider ethical questions of right and wrong in matters of economic development, particularly in times of economic fragility, when jobs and investment are in high demand.

But as any society debates core economic and policy ideas, the battle for moral leadership matters. And so, at this critical time, it is vital that progressives reclaim some of that language.

For too long, we’ve been told that our values must take a backseat to the imperatives of economic growth and the associated promises of job creation; that what best serves the interests of large corporations will ultimately benefit the rest of us.

Like readers of Tikkun I am passionate about peace in Israel-Palestine as well as in the wider Middle East. Being a theologian/writer with a background in Jewish-Christian dialogue, I have mainly sought to speak  to peaceseeking Christians—and others—who are willing to look beyond the polarity of being either pro-Palestinian or pro-Israeli towards envisioning a solution for both communities and building on the prophetic traditions of each other.

I believe—like Gandhi—that you have to look truth in the face, and take the courage to tell it.

Credit: Creative Commons

The many angles of the Dylan Farrow/Woody Allen sexual assault saga have been dissected relentlessly over the past two weeks. For all the information unearthed, it is increasingly apparent that we will never know what happened between Woody Allen and his adoptive daughter nearly 22 years ago. One thing we do know for certain, though, is that in 1992 the Connecticut state prosecutor Frank Maco found “probable cause” to prosecute Woody Allen, but he did not move forward with filing charges due to “the fragility of the child victim.”

In a November 2013 Vanity Fair article, Farrow told author Maureen Orth “”I have never been asked to testify. If I could talk to the seven-year-old Dylan, I would tell her to be brave, to testify.” Maco, for his part, told the author that he found Farrow too uncooperative to testify. Either way, someone made a decision that it would be too much for Farrow to testify in court against her alleged assailant, and Farrow today wishes a different decision had been made.

Credit: Timothy Fadek/Polaris

Last month marked the fourth anniversary of Haiti’s catastrophic earthquake, an event CBS News labeled the “worst natural disaster in the history of the Western hemisphere.” The extent of the devastation is well chronicled at this point, as is the fact that Haiti was hardly a prosperous nation before the ground shook in 2010. After the quake, aid money and help of all kinds flowed in to the country from caring people and institutions around the world.

But even as money flowed in, other money flowed out. At the time of the earthquake, Haiti owed roughly one billion dollars to international creditors despite having just received roughly an equivalent amount in debt relief prior to the quake. This meant that in the aftermath of the earthquake, Haiti was sending money in debt payments each month that could have been spent rebuilding the country, providing clean water, and mitigating the cholera epidemic that followed soon after. Today, a sadly similar situation has presented itself in the Philippines, which has now sent almost $2 billion in debt payments to creditors in the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan. Much of the Philippines’ debt is derived from the Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos regime, which spent borrowed funds on repressive instruments of the state, a nuclear power plant built on an earthquake fault at the foot of a volcano that did not produce a single unit of energy for the country, and, of course, on a spectacular collection of shoes.

(DMX / Credit: Creative Commons- Wikimedia)

The first couple of times I heard a celebrity boxing match between George Zimmerman and the rapper known as DMX was in the works I thought the idea was a joke.

But this match is not a joke – it is actually on its way to being contracted. And I’m terrified of what this means for us as a society.

George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch coordinator who shot unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin back in 2012 was acquitted of the murder and manslaughter charges against him, so on a legal level, no more can be done to hold Zimmerman to account.

There is, however, much that can and should be done to change the system that allowed that verdict to happen. The way to bring about justice is to use this horrible case and its powerful, emotional backlash to change what is wrong within our system, to make it reflect the peoples’ desire to move forward past racial disparities and unpunished hate crimes.

People are against Zimmerman because they are against his raw, blatant display of hate, violence, and discrimination.

So let me ask: why are we letting him stoke these exact same sentiments through a high-profile boxing match on TV?

Ten years ago, the first genocide of the 21st century started in Darfur. It was another in the long list of 46 genocides since the Holocaust, when the world first promised “Never Again!” Despite that promise, we’ve heard a deafening silence from the world as each of these genocides unfolded.

Tea: Miada and her mother share solar-cooked tea in the Iridimi Darfuri refugee camp in Chad. Credit: Barbara Grover.

During Rosh Hashanah in 2004, Rabbi Harold Schulweis challenged the Valley Beth Shalom Congregation in Encino to not stand idly by as another genocide happened in front of our eyes; he asked that we found Jewish World Watch, through which we could bring the lessons of Torah to bear on the horror being inflicted on humankind by perpetrators of genocide and mass atrocities.

The Valley Beth Shalom community responded en masse, calling upon Southern California synagogues to unify and raise their collective voices in outrage over the events in Darfur. Over the last ten years, more than 70 synagogues have answered that call; together we have marched, rallied, and advocated – locally, nationally and internationally. We sent delegations to travel to the regions we work in to bear witness and bring survivors the message that they are not alone.

The Atharva Veda, one of the sacred texts of Hinduism, says: “Let there be peace in the heavens, the Earth, the atmosphere, the water, the herbs, the vegetation, among the divine beings and in Brahman, the absolute reality. Let everything be at peace and in peace. Only then will we find peace.”

What would it mean to put sacred calls like these into action?

That is the question that our group – Sadhana: Coalition of Progressive Hindus – is seeking to answer. We are an all-volunteer group of New York-based Hindus who first came together in 2011. Our purpose is to bring a progressive Hindu voice into the public discourse, and to live out the social justice principles at the heart of Hinduism.

La Raza Noble, linoleum cut, 18" x 24".

When you bite into a ripe tomato, have you ever wondered where it came from? That tomato on your kitchen table has most likely traveled all the way from California’s Central Valley, plucked from the vine by the hands of a migrant farmer. This is the valley where painter and printmaker Michele Ramirez and her family have called home for at least three generations. “I have flashbacks every time I smell a ripe tomato,” says Ramirez, who spent a summer with her uncle harvesting tomatoes. “A really good tomato has this really earthy, beautiful smell. I smell it and boom, I’m back in the fields for just that nanosecond.”

The Central Valley has long captivated the imagination of artists and novelists for whom the beauty of its topography, with expansive pale skies and farmhouses speckling the horizon, has proven irresistible. For Ramirez, the Central Valley is both a beautiful and “distant, unknowable place” whose solitude she captures eloquently in her paintings. “You have this beautiful landscape [with] nobody in it… this giant sky and this slate horizon and all these grids.” Part of the appeal for Ramirez is the emptiness of the Central Valley, along with its blunt geometry, created by the rows and fields of its massive farms.

Credit: Creative Commons/Paul Sableman

Jacob is being groomed for empathy. So said Rabbi David Ingber of Congregation Romemu in New York City during a Friday night D’var Torah last November. It was the week of Parsha Vayetzei, the Parsha in which Jacob, with only a rock as a pillow, dreams of angels ascending the ladder. So begins Jacob’s solo journey, one marked by a series of perfidies, betrayals, and disappointments. By the end of Genesis, having experienced both ends of these dynamics multiple times, he has sown the seeds of humility and compassion. Empathy for the patriarch Israel, is a painstaking development. Empathy was also the theme of that particular Shabbas, not only with the focus of the Rabbi’s D’var, but also with the community potluck dinner after evening services, acknowledging the participants of the SNAP Challenge.

The Shmaya Mikveh, pictured here, is Israel's only pluralistic, open mikveh.

During difficult times, new beginnings, or endings, people often look for a way to symbolically mark transitions. In her mid-twenties, Miriam had just gone through a difficult break up and was about to make aliyah to Israel from Los Angles. Wanting to start fresh, Miriam remembered an Orthodox woman who ran a pluralistic mikveh who had told her, “If you ever just want to have the experience, you can come and do a dip anytime you want. You don’t have to come only because you’re married.”

Miriam decided to visit the mikveh and told the woman that she wanted to spiritually cleanse herself for her big life changes. While explaining that the mikveh can be a symbol for starting fresh, the woman set out candles and meaningful passages. Miriam describes her first mikveh experience as beautiful and lovely. However, her second mikveh experience was not as welcoming.