Demonstrators and clergy carrying a golden calf in the shape of a Wall Street bull march from Judson Memorial Church to Zuccotti Park on Sunday, October 9, 2011. / Tom Martinez and Dennis Hearn

The local chapter of NSP in Washington, D.C. has been involved in creating an alternative to the standard conservative prayer breakfast that takes place each year, and we are inviting you to do the same in your community. We’ve been working with Occupy Faith D.C. to create “the People’s Prayer Breakfast.” You can do the same in your area of the country. It doesn’t have to be this week – take your time and make sure you do outreach to Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Ba’hai, Sikh, Wicca, Buddhist, Quaker, Unitarian, Religious Science, and all other possible communities of faith to get them involved in the planning.

Challenged by interviewer Michael Krasny on the NPR affiliate KQED’s Forum show Tuesday morning to defend one part of Embracing Israel/Palestine (my claim that the path to peace requires a transformation of consciousness, and that Israel and Palestine not only could live together in peace but that there is no peace and justice for Israel without peace and justice for Palestine, so the best way to be both pro-Israel is to be pro-Palestine, and the best way to be pro-Palestine is to also be pro-Israel), I argued that the majority of both Israelis and Palestinians actually want peace but cannot believe that the other side wants it too.

It is this depressive paranoid certainty that “the other” wants to destroy us that has been a central part of what keeps Israeli and Palestinians from finding the path to their common interests, just as it is a similar paranoid and pathogenic fantasy that keeps the U.S. population willing to finance an inflated military which keeps in an ending state of hyper-alertness and makes it a ready tool for imperial ambitions of the wealthy. I also presented my psychological assessment of both sides and my view that consciousness transformation, though difficult, is both possible and absolutely necessary, both in Israel/Palestine and in the U.S.

The answer from the Jewish Right came tonight in the fourth attack on my house, this time on the first night of Chanukah (Dec. 20th). This one was relatively mild–two black-hooded men pasted signs on the outside of my house and garage saying “Palestine is an Arab fantasy.” They were taking their clue from Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich who has tried to out-do his Republican opponents in the primaries by, among other things, showing that he can be even more extreme on Israel than anyone else. Thus the notion that Palestine is an “invented nation.”

Chanukah was the first recorded national liberation struggle against Greek imperialism, and Christmas celebrates the birth of a hoped-for messiah to free the Jewish people from Roman imperialism.

What would a non-consumeristic Christmas look like? Here's one vision: a "Christmas Peace Tree" made from post-consumer recycled plastic installed by artists in Washington, DC, as part of Occupy DC's gathering in Freedom Plaza. Credit: Creative Commons/Elvert Barnes.

The symbolism of a homeless couple giving birth in a manger surrounded by animals because the more comfortable people have not been able to make room for them inside a roofed home is akin to the symbolism of the candles lit on Chanukah to celebrate the victory of the powerless over the powerful: both offer a powerful reminder that both Judaism born of slaves in Egypt and Christianity born of a movement of the poor and powerless were in their times the “Occupy” movement that confronted the powerful and those who served them.

All the more tragic to witness how both religions have been twisted in our own time to serve the powerful. Major forces in the Christian world have sided with the war-makers, ultra-nationalists, and the blame-poverty-on-the-poor cheerleaders for vast inequalities and protection of the rich against the needs of the rest. Jews, while retaining their commitment to domestic liberalism, have become tone-deaf to the cries of the oppressed in Palestine, to the huge inequalities of wealth in Israel, and have allowed their American institutions to be governed not by “one person, one vote” but “one dollar, one vote.”

Reb Zalman Schachter Shalomi is one of the great Jewish mystics and spiritual teachers alive in the world today. He is the founder and spiritual guide of the Jewish Renewal movement, and was my teacher for thirty years directing my study for the rabbinate, and chairing the Beyt Din (Jewish rabbinic court) that examined my learning and gave me ordination (smicha) and the title of rabbi. If you ever get a chance to hear his teachings, please do so! He has written frequently in Tikkun magazine, and I count him, along with my mentor at the Jewish Theological Seminary Abraham Joshua Heschel, one of the great inspirers of the Tikkun enterprise. Here is a mystical message about Chanukah from Rabbi Zalman Schater Shalomi:

I recently came across this musical tribute to the Occupy Movement by Makana, an artist from Hawaii. I hope you’ll feel similarly inspired as you watch this!

Creative Commons / Adrian Kinloch

This past weekend, Occupy Wall Street demonstrations were held in over 951 cities in 82 countries as people around the globe joined in an international day of solidarity against the greed and corruption of the 1%.

The media, trying to discredit all the demonstrators, say we don’t know what we are for, only what we are against. So I believe there is much to be gained were we to embrace the following 20 second sound bite for “what we are for.”

• We want to replace a society based on selfishness and materialism with a society based on caring for each other and caring for the planet.

• We want a new bottom line so that institutions, corporations, government policies, and even personal behavior are judged rational or productive or efficient not only by how much money or power gets generated, but also by how much love and kindness, generosity and caring, environmental and ethical behavior, and how much we are able to respond to the universe with awe, wonder and radical amazement the grandeur and mystery of all Being.

• To take the first steps, we want to ban all money from elections except that supplied by government on an equal basis to all major candidates, require free and equal time for the candidates and prohibit buying other time or space, and require corporations to get a new corporate charter once every five years which they can only get if they can prove a satisfactory history of environmental and social responsibility to a jury of ordinary citizens. We call this the Environmental and Social Responsibility Amendment to the US Constitution (ESRA).

• We want to replace the mistaken notion that homeland security can be achieve through a strategy of world domination by our corporations suppoted by the US military and intelligence services with a strategy of generosity and caring for others in the world that will start by launching a Global Marshall Plan that dedicates 1-2% of our GMP ever year for the next twenty to once and for all eliminate global poverty homelessnes, hunger, inadequate education and inadequate health care — knowing that this, not an expanded militarr, is what will give us security.

• And we want a NEW New Deal that provides a job for everyone who wants to work, jobs that rebuild our environment and our infrastructre, and jobs that allow us to take better care of educating our youth and caring for the aged. That’s what we are for! And you can read more about them at www.spiritualprogressives.org

Ok, it was two minutes instead of 20 seconds, but we deserve that amount of time.

Flickr / Mat DcDermott

The prophet Isaiah stood outside the ancient Israelite Temple and denounced those fasting on Yom Kippur who nevertheless were participating in an immoral society. Said Isaiah (in a statement that is now read in synagogues around the world on Yom Kippur morning though its message mostly ignored when it applies to some Jews’ participation in some of the most exploitative practices of Western capitalism or in support for the current right-wing government of Israel even as it engages in oppression of Palestinians):

Look! On the very day you fast you keep scrabbling for wealth; On the very day you fast you keep oppressing all your workers. Look! You fast in strife and contention. You strike with a wicked fist. You are not fasting today in such a way As to make your voices heard on high. Is that the kind of fast that I desire? Is that really a day for people to “press down their egos”? Am I commanding you to droop your heads like bulrushes And lie around in sackcloth and ashes? Is that what you call a fast day, The kind of day that the God of the Burning Bush would wish? No! This is the kind of fast that I desire: Unlock the hand-cuffs put on by wicked power! Untie the ropes of the yoke! Let the oppressed go free, And break off every yoke! Share your bread with the hungry. Bring the poor, the outcasts, to your house.When you see them naked, clothe them; They are your flesh and blood; Don’t hide yourself from them! Then your light will burst through like the dawn; Then when you need healing it will spring up quickly; Then your own righteousness will march ahead to guard you. And a radiance from YHWH will reach out behind to guard you. Then, when you cry out, YHWH will answer; Then, when you call, God will say: “Here I am!” If you banish the yoke from your midst, If you rid yourself of scornful finger-pointing And words of contempt; If you open up your life-experience to the hungry

This week’s spiritual wisdom comes from Wendy Kenin:

There are so many reasons to love the mikveh (Jewish ritual bath). My love for mikveh inspired me to keep kosher, observe the Jewish Sabbath, and cover my hair as a married woman.

Here are a few of my personal favorite things about the mikveh:

1. Immersing into the Earth’s waters

Mikveh water must meet certain requirements of being naturally existing, as from a natural body of water or harvest from the rain. Any large enough body of naturally occurring water can be a mikveh. The ocean is the largest mikveh in the world. When a woman immerses in the mikveh, she is entering the womb of the feminine Earth, called Adamah in Hebrew. She strikes a fetal position pose, and then is spiritually reborn upon exiting the waters.

“When we refer to G‑d’s presence within our world, giving life to all things, then She is the Shechinah,” writes Tzvi Freeman about why we don’t call G-d Mother.

“When we refer to G‑d’s transcendence beyond this world, we call Him The Holy One, blessed be He. G‑d does not change or have parts, G‑d forbid. Both are the same one and singular G‑d, just looking at that G‑d from different angles,” he writes.

G-d is female, G-d is male, and G-d is everything and can be interacted with and described from each of these aspects.

As we often do in the magazine, the website, and in our emails, here are responses you are unlikely to read or hear or see in the mass media to the President of Palestine Abbas and the Prime Minister of Israel Netanyahu in relationship to what they have been doing at the U.N. Our first respondent is a Palestinian activist in Ramallah, the second a Jewish columnist in NYC.

Here is the first response from Professor Mazin Qumsiyeh, originally posted on his blog:

Kudos Mr. Abbas

Mahmoud Abbas gave a brilliant speech at the United Nations, getting rounds of applause from most of the representatives. I think it demonstrated clearly and unambiguously that the Palestinian leadership has been “unreasonably reasonable” and has instead seen the hopes of peace and of millions of Palestinians suffering for 63 years dashed on the rock of Israeli expansionist, colonial, and apartheid policies. He explained that Israel has been taking one unilateral action after another each resulting in more pain and suffering for our people. Going to the UN, he explained is putting things back where the problems started (he did not use the last two words but I do). He said a word that I think he should defend strongly that no person or country with an iota of logic or conscience should reject the Palestinian state membership in the UN or its formation in the 22% of historic Palestine that is the West Bank and Gaza. I think he took a courageous step and gave a good performance. Now we here on the ground in Palestine hope and will push for additional follow-up steps. From our own perspective, three things are critical:

truthout.org

Subscribers to Tikkun and Members of NSP are mostly united in strong criticism of Obama’s failures–failures due NOT solely to the obstruction of Republicans and his own conservatives in the Democratic Party, but to his failure to articulate and fight for a larger vision. Had he done so, a growing number of liberals and progressives agree, the American people might have responded enthusiastically. They don’t blame him for failing to produce, they blame him for failing to fight for what he claimed to believe in. Last week, for example, with the nation hoping to hear a visionary economic plan, instead heard a wimpy and ineffective one–instead of the New New Deal for a Caring Society that we and many others have been advocating. Of course it would be blocked by the Republicans, but imagine how different people in the US would have felt if they felt that there was someone championing a New New Deal that would among other things spend enough money to put everyone back to work who wants to work!!! Just having that alternative as something to fight for would have electrified the country and finally defined Obama in a winnable way.

Rusty Stewart/Flickr

Here are some responses to the UN Recognition of Palestine discussion, including an article by The Israel Project strongly against the Tikkun position–part of our function to provide peace-oriented people with an understanding of some of the views we don’t normally encounter and that we need to understand. Our views are set forward in the petition to recognize Palestine and re-affirm Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state with ironclad guarantees for both Israel and Palestine to grant equal rights to all the minorities living within their boundaries without any imposition of religion and with full human rights to all of the residents living within those states. Click here to view and sign the petition.

Obama’s Unique Opportunity
by Gideon Levy

What is the American president going to say to his citizens? What will he say to the citizens of the world? How will he rationalize his country’s opposition to recognizing a Palestinian state? How will he explain his position, which runs counter to the position of the enlightened – and less enlightened – world?

And above all, what will Barack Obama say to himself before he goes to bed? That the Palestinians don’t deserve a state? That they have a chance to get it through negotiations with Israel? That they do not have equal rights in the new world that we thought he was going to establish? Will he admit to himself that, because of opportunistic election considerations – yes, Obama is now being exposed as quite an opportunist – he is also harming his country’s interests as well as the (real ) interests of Israel, and is acting against his own conscience too?

American diplomats acknowledge that they do not have the votes to prevent the General Assembly of the United Nations from recognizing Palestine and granting it some of the rights of member states. The U.S. can block full membership only by exercising its veto in the Security Council, an act likely to intensify hatred of the U.S. in many countries around the world.

A far wiser strategy is for the U.S. to introduce a resolution to the Security Council providing full membership in the U.N. to Palestine while simultaneously reaffirming Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. Both sides win.

The resolution should make clear that this recognition is contingent on both Palestine and Israel respecting the rights of all its citizens and offering them equal protection under the law, and not imposing any religious practices on any of its citizens.

Around the country, people will walk with their neighbors in remembrance of 9/11. Photo by Gordon Bell/Flickr

As the tenth anniversary of 9/11 approaches, many of us are wondering how best to honor the many victims of that tragedy and its aftermath in a way that does not yield to the militarism, chauvinism, and Islamophobia that have often been linked to or justified as appropriate responses to 9/11. So here is a note we got from one spiritual progressive, Bart Campolo, whose ideas are closely aligned with the NSP:

Here in Cincinnati, my wife Marty’s answer is inviting some of our friends to join us on a walk with some Muslim and Jewish families she invited by simply calling their congregations. She got the idea from me and my friends at Abraham’s Path, who are sponsoring www.911walks.org to help people find or pull together their own 9/11 Walks all over the USA and around the world. The goal of these walks is simple: To help people honor all the victims of 9/11 by walking and talking kindly with neighbors and strangers, in celebration of our common humanity and in defiance of fear, misunderstanding and hatred.

The violence vs. non-violence debate about how to build a new society with perspectives from Michael Nagler vs. Uri Avnery

This is a critical debate which evokes significant differences among secular and spiritual progressives. I hope you’ll let me know your reactions to it. I’m a huge fan of Avnery, whose articles regularly appear on our Tikkun web magazine site www.tikkun.org. And a dear friend of Michael Nagler whose writings have been an inspiration to me and many others. I can easily understand the power of Avnery’s argument, though personally I’m on the side of non-violence. Some people misunderstood the title of my last communication where I send “overthrow the Syrian regime.” Yes, but I didn’t mean violently, but instead was meaning to be supporting the non-violent struggle of Syrians against the violence of Asad and his army, and encouraging us in the West to find non-violent ways to help, like boycotts, divestment and sanctions.

Uri Avnery is leader of Gush Shalom, the Israeli peace movement organization in Tel Aviv. Here is his piece:

To The Shores of Tripoli

Though The Bible tells us “Rejoice not when thine enemy falleth” (Proverbs 24:17), I could not help myself. I was happy.

Muammar al-Gaddafi was the enemy of every decent person in the world. He was one of the worst tyrants in recent memory.

This fact was hidden behind a façade of clownishness. He liked to present himself as a philosopher (the “Green Book”), a visionary statesman (Israelis and Palestinians must unite in the “State of Isratine”), even as an immature teenager (his innumerable uniforms and costumes). But basically he was a ruthless dictator, surrounded by corrupt relatives and cronies, squandering the great wealth of Libya.

I’d like to draw attention to three different perspectives on the amazing growth of tent cities of protest across Israeli society — one from Uri Avnery, one from Zeev Sternhell, and one from Bernard Avishai.

How Goodly Are Thy Tents

by Uri Avnery

FIRST OF all, a warning.

Tent cities are springing up all over Israel. A social protest movement is gathering momentum. At some point in the near future, it may endanger the right-wing government.

At that point, there will be a temptation – perhaps an irresistible temptation – to “warm up the borders”. To start a nice little war. Call on the youth of Israel, the same young people now manning (and womanning) the tents, to go and defend the fatherland.

Nothing easier than that. A small provocation, a platoon crossing the border “to prevent the launching of a rocket”, a fire fight, a salvo of rockets – and lo and behold, a war. End of protest.

In September, just a few weeks from now, the Palestinians intend to apply to the UN for the recognition of the State of Palestine. Our politicians and generals are chanting in unison that this will cause a crisis – Palestinians in the occupied territories may rise in protest against the occupation, violent demonstrations may ensue, the army will be compelled to shoot – and lo and behold, a war. End of protest.

When as a teenager I became immersed in the writings of the Prophets, I was most excited by the Prophet Jeremiah. My parents, who thought I was making a big mistake to have decided to become a rabbi, told me that I really sounded more like a prophet, and that one could not combine a deep prophetic vision with being a congregational rabbi, because the congregation would fire anyone who would challenge their comfortable life-style. Moreover, they warned me that people would always be offended by the “truth-telling” and “confrontational attitude” of the prophets in general and Jeremiah in particular. But their biggest challenge was this: “What’s the use of being a prophet when the prophets were all such failures? They were scorned in their life-times, and their message was not really heard by those to whom it was spoken or written. If you want to have influence, Michael, become a lawyer and then the first Jewish U.S. Senator from our state, not a rabbi, and certainly not a prophet!” My parents were loving and wonderful people, and their message was given out of love and a concern that I not waste my life. But it was not advice I could follow. I had become by twelve years old a disciple of Abraham Joshua Heschel, whose book on The Prophets remains one of the most important books in my own intellectual and spiritual development. So after reading his book on Jeremiah, I asked Mordecai Schreiber to write an essay for Tikkun on this important question: “Was the prophet Jeremiah a Failure?”

I hope you read it! Here’s how it starts:

Rethinking Jeremiah

No prophet among the Bible’s literary prophets provides us with more information about himself and about prophecy in general than Jeremiah. We first meet him as a young lad, and we follow his life, his prophetic career, and his thoughts well into old age. Anyone interested in better understanding biblical prophets and prophecies needs to study the book of Jeremiah, which is the subject of my latest book, The Man Who Knew God: Decoding Jeremiah. History, in a sense, has portrayed him as a failure. He failed to convince his contemporaries not to rebel against Babylon; he failed to save Jerusalem from destruction; and he is best remembered as the sorrowing prophet who mourns the destruction. Indeed, in English his name gave rise to the term for a bitter lament, a Jeremiad. Like Job, Jeremiah curses the day he was born. The burden he carries as a prophet who admonishes people who refuse to listen is unbearable. Several attempts are made on his life. He is sentenced to death and barely escapes execution. He is considered a traitor by the king and his counselors, by the priests, by self-styled prophets, as well as by ordinary people. He can count his friends on one hand. Aside from his loyal scribe, Baruch ben Neriah, he only has one constant friend, namely, God. No other prophet in the Hebrew Bible has a more intimate or passionate relationship with God than Jeremiah. It is this relationship that keeps him going and keeps him alive.

We at Tikkun have been saying for the past 3 years what former Sec. of Labor and economist Robert Reich says below and what Paul Krugman has been saying for the past 2 years: there is no serious budget crisis. Instead, we have an employment and housing crisis.

It is true, as Robert Reich says below, that the Republicans have been running with this lie for the past several years in order to prevent the Democrats, when they had the majority in both houses of Congress, and the presidency, 2009-2010, from doing what the country needed: a massive Work Progress Administration (WPA) employment program coupled with a freeze on mortgage foreclosures and a law requiring the banks to renegotiate mortgage interests to what it was when the mortgage was first offered to the buyers.

But Reich plays down the huge culpability of Obama and his economic advisors (who could have been Reich and Krugman, and no Republican forced Obama to go with the pro-corporate advisors he actually chose form the start).

In upcoming months, President Obama alone will decide on the fate of the Keystone XL oil pipeline that would bring dirty, muddy oil from Canada down to Texas to be cooked and processed to feed our addiction to this temporary resource. Please consider writing a letter to friends, family, or co-workers, or coming out to Washington between the and of August and early September.

I was honored to be invited to be on a panel with the Dalai Lama July 18 in Chicago. This is the third time I’ve been invited to be on a panel with him, and by now he recognizes me. His first words when we embraced yesterday were: “Last time your kippah was red, now it’s white–but very nice!” He was referring to the head covering that religious Jews wear on our heads, also known as “yalmekah” or skullcap. (He doesn’t seem to change his outfit very often–it’s beautiful color and simplicity bespeaks his philosophy).

He had his usual twinkle in his eye and smile on his face. This great spiritual leader is renowned for his impish qualities, his humility, and his smarts, and all were in full view both Sunday, July 18, when he addressed some 8,000 people in a huge auditorium in Chicago, and on Monday when we sat together on a panel in a smaller venue of 1,500 seats, every seat filled, and discussed interfaith connections.

Unlike Sunday, when the sound system was imperfect and it was sometimes hard to make out what he was saying, on Monday July 19, it was impossible to not be astounded by the Dalai Lama’s combination of cleverness and spiritual depth. His themes are well known, and he returned to them over and over again: the need for compassion, the importance of recognizing that all religions are pointing to the same realities, the centrality of non-violence in changing the world, and the need to work on one’s own spiritual life simultaneously with any work in changing the world.