An article by Daniel Ming and Aaron Glantz in yesterday’s (San Francisco) Bay Citizen, also in the New York Times Bay Area edition:

A Jewish Group Makes Waves, Locally and Abroad

Some Bay Area activists hope a new Egyptian government will lead to an end of Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories

Hundreds of people, mostly Arab-Americans, are expected to gather Saturday in downtown San Francisco to support anti-government protests in Egypt, and a large contingent of Jews representing a Bay Area peace-advocacy group will join them, one of its leaders says.

“We are deeply inspired by their push for democracy and freedom,” said Cecilie Surasky, deputy director of Jewish Voice for Peace, based in Oakland….

The unrest in Egypt is merely the latest issue to pit a number of Bay Area activists against prominent Jewish organizations, as well as against some Israelis who have come to see the Bay Area as a locus for Jewish opposition to Israel’s government….

The divisions have heightened tensions among Bay Area Jews. During one altercation last year, a pro-Israel activist attacked two representatives of Jewish Voice for Peace with pepper spray. Last March, Rabbi Michael Lerner, the editor of Tikkun, a bimonthly Jewish magazine based in Berkeley, received death threats, and his home was plastered with signs accusing him of “Islamo-Fascism,” after he announced that he planned to give an award to a United Nations official who led an investigation into Israel’s 2008 invasion of Gaza.

And if you are in the Bay Area come to our 25th Anniversary celebration when we will give six people including that official, Judge Richard Goldstone, the Tikkun Award! We’re happy that they picked up on this as well:

At one time in my life I taught sociology to both young undergrads and older social work students. I had a great time with the older students, some of whom had been working for many years already and really wanted to understand and change the world. But the younger, middle class students, many of them from Catholic high schools and homes where obedience had been taught more than curiosity and argument, needed a showman, an entertainer, to wake them up, and someone brilliant with ideas to give them something deep to think about once awake. That person did exist in our department: Bruce Luske. He was way to the left of most others at the college, but was able to put radical ideas across in highly popular classes. When I was contemplating crossing the continent to work at Tikkun he gave me good advice and encouragement, because he had studied with Michael Lerner years before. It’s a great pleasure that he has emailed me with his recent piece on OpEd News, drawing on Michael’s ideas:

A Note on Politics and Spirituality

by Bruce Luske

My remarks here as we engage a new year are inspired by pieces debating spirituality in the military and by the work of Rabbi Michael Lerner and others; and are meant to broaden the discussion to society as a whole. I begin with the premise that we humans are born with an innate need for positive recognition and connection to our fellow humans every bit as fundamental to human life as the need for food and water. In fact, as psychologists who study early childhood teach us, we will not become fully human unless this need is met. We are born needing to care and be cared for. I further believe, with all the major world religions as well as aboriginal spiritual traditions, that this innate need for recognition and connection to others has an intrinsic spiritual wellspring to which we must return.

Police rush to the scene of Giffords's shooting (FLICKRCC/SEARCHNETMEDIA).

The shooting of Jewish Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords is not just a tragedy — it’s part of a right-wing assault on government and the liberals and progressives who support it.

Liberals and progressives are hated in many Red States because they support government policies that put restrictions on corporations; challenge the racism, sexism, homophobia and hatred of foreigners that has been part of the traditional conception of white male power; and tend to be insensitive to the legitimate fears that many have about the collapse of families, religious traditions, and the triumph of materialism and selfishness. This last set of concerns is totally valid, and the willingness of liberals and progressives to only see the hateful side of right-wing ideology infuriates many who are drawn to the right not because of hatred of government or because of the various hatreds, but because they feel that their legitimate concerns about the selfishness and looking out for number one are never heard by the Left. Yet, there are a core of haters in the Right, we’ve seen them not only on Fox TV, Glenn Beck and company included, but also in the faces of some who were attracted to the Tea Party or who now rally around the anti-immigrant movement.

When right-wingers create a climate of hate against liberal government, and then individuals act on that hate as they did in blowing up a Federal Building in Oklahoma City and now this premeditated murder of several people (we are still praying for the survival of Congresswoman Giffords) in hate-filled Arizona (where she had been attacked viciously but not physically for her support of health care reform), the state whose racism has made it famous around the world for profiling Mexican immigrants, there is no call to investigate and protect ourselves from these right-wing hate mongers. Similarly, when Yitzhak Rabin was murdered by right wing Jews, the right-wing ultra-nationalist community in Israel’s West Bank settlers never faced any serious investigation of their role in creating the hateful climate that helped produce the murderer.

Tikkun sponsors a weekly Torah commentary on our home page. Each weekly portion is called a Parsha and its name is drawn from the first new significant Hebrew word in the first sentence of that week’s reading. To many, the form of commentary may seem somewhat pedantic, but the content often takes us to new spiritual ideas. So reading these commentaries requires careful attention, but they are often worth it!

This week’s parsha is called Va’era. It was read in synagogues around the world this past Sabbath and this coming Sabbath the reading will be the parsha called Bo. Both come from the section of Exodus dealing with the struggle between Moses (Moshe) and Pharoah over God’s demand to let the Israelites go. The Va’era parsha can be read in translation here.

In the attempt to not violate the command to not take God’s name in vain, Jews have devised a variety of strategies for how to pronounce the 4 letters YHVH (in the Torah, none of the words have vowels, so the pronunciations are themselves the first level of interpretation or commentary when we decide what vowels to put). One of those strategies is to write God as Gd or G-d. Another is to say “HaShem” which means “the name” (i.e. YHVH). A third is to say Adonay or Adonie or Adonii, which means literally “my master” (and is spelled ADNY by Mark Hirschbaum below). Then others decided to say “Ado-shem” because they feared that Adonay itself was too close to the Name, so when Jews read Torah and come to YHVH they read it “Adoni” or “Ado-nigh,” and similarly in praying, but when just mentioning God’s name in conversation, study, or songs, they may say HaShem or AdoShem. In Jewish Renewal circles, some say “Yah” (which comes from the first two letters YH), but again the more traditional will only say that in prayer or reading Torah, and otherwise say “Kah.”

“The Midrash” refers to a collection of stories that was put together in the 2nd-4th centuries of the common (or christian) era (Jews write that C.E.) and which attempts to fill in the blanks with imaginative stories about what was really going on. The term “midrash” refers to the general activity of giving commentaries and stories about the Torah that go beyond the literal meanings of the words and fill in blanks in our understanding.

Va’era

Torah Commentary by Mark Hirschbaum

Crossposted from Huffington Post.

While making a deal to protect billionaires from $145 billion in taxes that they might otherwise have used to solve pressing domestic problems or to create over 3 million jobs at $30,000/yr., some Democrats and their advisers pointed out that the progressives who dissented from the deal Obama had worked out with the Republican leadership — and which, despite the non-binding vote in the Democratic caucus on Thursday to oppose the deal, is likely to retain most of its giveaways to the rich — had really no place to go in 2012 but to blindly support Obama, so why take seriously all their huffing and puffing about Obama’s list of betrayals?

Sure, they said, Obama had led peace and justice-oriented liberal and progressive movement people to believe he would end rather than escalate middle east wars, punish rather than ignore those who had lied us into the Iraq war and those who had ordered or carried out torture, end discrimination against gays in the military and elsewhere, secure rather than undermine domestic civil liberties and human rights, fight for rather than duck serious changes in immigration and in environmental protection, and insist on at least a public option in health care and lowered prices for pharmaceuticals. But, hey — those people who paid attention to these details were only a small minority, and they would rally around Obama no matter what, giving him no incentive to listen to them. After all, Obama was just being “realistic” about the limitations of his power.

I had mixed feelings when I first heard about Rabbi Lerner’s proposal to save Obama’s presidency by running a primary challenge against him by a candidate who is a strong advocate of progressive policies. I definitely agree that if President Obama signs an extension to the Bush’s tax cuts for billionaires, many people would be emotionally tempted to view that as the “last straw” and end their support for Obama. Why can’t the Democrats simply and repeatedly call it like it is on this issue – borrowing $700 billion from our children and grandchildren to give to rich people over the next few years? According to a recent poll, only 26% of Americans (and only 46% of Republicans) actually support this tax cut for billionaires.

But I digress, so let’s get back to running a primary challenge against Obama from the left. Didn’t Ted Kennedy try that when he mounted a primary challenge against President Carter in 1980? Carter ended up losing the general election to Ronald Reagan that year, and while I doubt that Kennedy’s challenge caused that, there was a general gut feeling that it was a contributing factor.

I can’t endorse Rabbi Lerner’s proposal here, but after giving it some more thought I decided that there is some merit to his idea. The merit is not necessarily for the reasons emphasized in Rabbi Lerner’s article, or as a winning election strategy for the Democrats, but because of the way it would change the public debate about ideas and policy

Dear Tikkunistas,

It is with great pleasure that we bring you the Spanish translation of the Environmental and Social Responsibility Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, or ESRA. Written by Rabbi Michael Lerner and Peter Gabel, and developed in collaboration with the Network of Spiritual Progressives, this Spanish version was translated by José Luis Sanchez (and proofread by me).

We hope this enables more people to get excited about the ideas of the ESRA. Please pass this post or the entire text around to any Latino organization or individual you think might want to get behind it. Also, remember that we are looking for people who can translate the ESRA into Hebrew, Arabic, French, Italian, German, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, and other languages. If you know anyone with these language capabilities who would like to do it, please ask them to contact Rabbi Lerner at rabbilerner@tikkun.org. We are interested in translating other Tikkun articles and NSP materials as well.

Por favor, circule este documento y procure el endoso de consejos municipales, legislaturas estatales, senadores y congresistas federales, partidos políticos y organizaciones cívicas, religiosas y profesionales.

Por favor, firme y endose la Enmienda de Responsabilidad Ambiental y Social (ESRA)a la Constitución de los Estados Unidos.

Photograph by Toni Verdu Cabro

Security and Peace

By Jonathan Granoff

May God’s grace and peace be with us In the name of God, the Most Merciful, Most Compassionate. We are all interested in peace and security. Inner peace, the source of peace, is an inside job. One important aspect of a healthy inner life is prayer.

The evidence of real prayer is whether it opens the heart to love, regardless of whether we pray quietly, out loud, within a tradition, out of a tradition, facing the east, the west, up or down. If it’s prayer, it opens the heart to God’s love. If it doesn’t, it’s not prayer.

The evidence of prayer is love and the evidence of love is caring for other human beings. The evidence of that caring and that compassion is service. And the evidence, experientially, of service is a clear conscience. The evidence of a clear conscience is inner peace. Inner peace gives us the capacity to receive wisdom. Wisdom further reinforces our humility as we realize it is a gift, not something we can achieve through egocentric willful effort.

I am writing here as a rank-and-file member, not a leader, in the political struggle. My internal monologues may or may not speak to others who, like me, are highly attracted to Michael Lerner’s vision but are not so adept at carrying it out. Like many of us I have a love-hate relationship with electoral politics.

• Love the people who fought tooth and nail for us to have votes and political rights.


• Aware that the power elites fought those heroes and lost some major battles to them. The power elite wanted to pursue their wars with our money as they pleased (Charles I got into a spat with Parliament about that and lost his head), wanted the slaves to stay slaves, wanted to make their money any way they pleased and let us go to the wall (and so called every promoter of trade unions, safety regulations and nets, everyone who cared about the powerless, “Commies” and “enemies of freedom”).


• But also aware that electoral politics function as a safety valve for the power elite, enabling them to concede some big battles while winning the war. (They ridiculed FDR for saying his New Deal would save America from socialism and fought him hard, but of course he was right, it did. They waited a good long while before mounting an all-out effort to reclaim their privileges, and they haven’t taken us all the way back there yet, as my official What You Will Get From Social Security letters promise me).


• Aware that life is compromise and innumerable ordinary lives like mine have been made safer and better from progressive legislation passed after elections were won.


• Hate the way money and media manipulation work on our fears, while our vision and hope is ridiculed.


• Love the Michael Lerner / Peter Gabel approach to this in their many editorials, articles and books (which is why I am here). They advocate shifting the emotional tone of the Left away from anger, bitterness, demonization of opponents (including contempt for working class religious people), and appeals to purely materialistic issues — however well justified that tone may be — and towards an understanding of people’s deeper longings for meaning, for a caring society more even than for a wealthy one, for honesty in politics, for vision of what could be, for appeals to hope and cooperation. They believe this would actually work, politically. I agree. It would. But it’s just too radical for the Left.


• Am baffled by our human tendency, including my own, towards rejecting the spiritual wisdom of the ages.
  
  

This week’s spiritual wisdom is a poem written by Jonathan Granoff about how seeking and knowing God leads to peace. Granoff serves as president of the Global Security Institute, which pursues peace by promoting arms control and nuclear disarmament. His poetry has been featured on Tikkun Daily in the past.

For This Knowing

A hidden treasure longing to be known made us,
so that through us and in us and with us,
that treasure could be known.
Through the wisdom that grows in beauty
it happens.

And for this knowing, all of us are here together,
where,
in God’s grace,
we are one
and each one is known
in its own nuance.

A favorite photo of two of our favorite people: the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu. Vancouver, Canada, 2004. Credit: Carey Linde.

I was surprised when a friend told me that the well known American Buddhist nun Pema Chodron’s talk this week in a 3,000 seat Bay Area venue is sold out, considering that it’s the same week when the Dalai Lama is teaching in the area for four days, including at a sold-out 11,000 seat venue. (You can get virtual participation in Chodron’s event via live-stream video.)

The Silicon Valley newspaper the Mercury News reports:

…the Bay Area appears eager to listen. Already rich in Buddhist traditions from Japan, Vietnam and other Asian countries, the region has become a mecca for religious thinkers of other faiths who are blending Buddhist traditions with their own, as well as a beachhead for the fledgling “interfaith movement.”

I know a lot of people who are blending elements of Buddhism into their lives, without ever saying “I am a Buddhist.”

“Interfaith” is a difficult concept, because it requires a different relationship with one’s own religion, quite apart from other religions:

This is a response response to Michael Lerner’s comment about NVC (Nonviolent Communications) and progressive politics, which he posted here.

Dear Michael,

I have been sitting for a couple of days now with the comment you posted on Sunday, reflecting deeply on how I want to respond. I am glad, first of all, that you and I have had sufficient connection and trust between us to continue this conversation personally if we wanted to. This is not the first time these topics come up, and I imagine we will continue to engage on them in the months and years to come, hoping that we are both well enough for long enough to do so. For now, I am writing this publicly because I want the readers to have the opportunity to understand how I see the issues you are raising. I am not writing this primarily to you, nor am I trying to “convince” you. I only want to be understood as closely as possible in what I am intending to say.

To begin with, I share a big piece of your concern. I think of it as tragic that so many people learn and use nonviolent communication only as a tool for personal growth. I know you are concerned that people would have their energy drawn away from political engagement, and I want to give credence to this concern: this is true for some people. However, I don’t think of it as intrinsically so, and I also know people who have come to engage with systems and with social change precisely because of becoming more hopeful about creating a different world through learning NVC.

While I treasure and value the deep spiritual wisdom and growth that I have gotten from years of immersing myself in NVC, for me what’s exciting about it is way beyond the personal. As I mentioned in one of my recent posts, I am less and less comfortable with calling it nonviolent “communication” because it’s so much more than that for me. It’s the intersection of the spiritual, social, theoretical, and emotional that I treasure so much, along with the very concrete blueprint I see in it for how to structure life in such a way that we can create a world that works for all, to borrow Sharif Abdullah’s phrase.

Every night since the attack on my home by right-wing Zionists, I’ve been saying a prayer of forgiveness for them. While the political meaning of that act, and of the demeaning of critics of Israel, will be explored more fully in the July/August issue of Tikkun, on the spiritual level it is very important to not let negativity, even terrorism or violence, get the upper hand by bringing us down to the same level of anger or hatred that motivates those who act violently or those who demean and attempt to delegitimate the critics of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.

Many people have expressed their concern for Rabbi Lerner after the recent vandalism of his home and have wondered if there’s anything they can do to help. Tikkun has released a statement asking readers to contact the media and ask them to publicize this incident in meaningful and thoughtful ways.

I am gratified to share this announcement with all of you, sent by the Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish Community Relations Council, The Jewish Federation of the East Bay and the Northern California Board of Rabbis on May 4, 2010. We appreciate their swift condemnation of the attack on Rabbi Michael Lerner and Rabbi Debora Kohn Lerner’s home in Berkeley, California yesterday. Obviously, many people on all sides of the political spectrum are deeply affected by what happened.

“We unequivocally condemn criminal acts perpetrated against Rabbi Lerner’s home. Political disagreements must be resolved in a civil manner, and not by resorting to violence. Our communities are especially disturbed that this crime targeted Rabbi Lerner at his home, thereby conveying to him the message that he may not be safe there. We are encouraged by the responsiveness of the Berkeley Police Department to this incident, and we urge its officers to investigate this crime as thoroughly as possible. The entire community must send a message to the perpetrators that we reject violence and criminality as a means to express our political opinions.”

I’ve spent the last two weeks in a funk, listening to the debates about the future of health care reform. I am pleasantly surprised by two phenomena: 1] public dialogue around health care is both vibrant and incredibly substantive ; and 2] conservatives have absented themselves from discussion.

I grew accustomed to palliatives and drivel during the Bush years. (Remember when plastic sheeting and duct tape were promoted as public health policy? In the event of an epidemic, we were instructed to wrap our homes in plastic!) I am surprised at the enthusiasm and diversity of our civic dialogue. This is a huge positive change and a sign of our improved civic health.

On the other hand, the Republican Party has descended into utter moral and intellectual bankruptcy. They have determined that the only quick route back to power is to prevent legislative action, then brand Democrats as ineffectual. Their most fervent followers believe America is a white Christian nation under attack. As a result, they are opposing anything and everything. Jack Kemp, the Party’s self-described “bleeding heart conservative” passed away in May after a decade of political exile. As long as the far right wages primaries against Republicans who fail their ideological “purity test,” there will be no new Jack Kemp, no ideas, no discussion within the “big” GOP tent. Alert Democrats can capitalize on their failure to build.

Building the Ship of State

Actual dialogue has been confined to two progressive factions, and it is fueled by a structural question. Out of what material do we build our ship of state?

Goddess of Willendorf, 22,000-24,00 BCE

I’m surprised that almost none of us blogged about the Parliament of World Religions (PWR) in Melbourne, Australia (12/3 – 12/9). I realize that the US Congress was still discussing the health care bill, Obama had just given his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, and the Copenhagen Climate conference was underway. So we all have good excuses.

Here at Tikkun Daily, we heard from Dave Belden, who wrote about Rabbi Michael Lerner’s workshop on the spiritual progressive movement. And Rabbi Lerner also wrote about the great disappointment world spiritual leaders at the PWR felt at Obama’s speech in Oslo. But otherwise, there wasn’t a peep about this important gathering that happens every five years.

For members of my religion — both feminist pagans and members of the Goddess Movement across a variety of faiths — it seems to have been a very exciting experience. From what I’ve read, both the Goddess movement and paganism were well-received, something that has rarely happened before. In fact, Phyllis Curott was quoted on the Women at the Parliament blog site as saying that back in 1993 she had difficulty finding anyone else who would appear on a panel about the Sacred Feminine and very few attended. She went on to say that

Things certainly seem to have changed with this Parliament and the Sacred Feminine was clearly rising!

Michael Lerner in the Sydney Morning Herald. Interesting picture: Australian excitement at finding a radical American rabbi?

“From jail to the White House, rabbi gets his message across” reads the headline in the Sydney Morning Herald.

RABBI Michael Lerner sports a small lapel pin. It is the paired flags of Israel and Palestine, with the words ”Justice Peace Life” emblazoned beneath: heavy political baggage for a little ornament.

It says a lot about its wearer, a controversial Jewish intellectual and prolific author who is also the spiritual leader at a San Francisco synagogue.

And here he is being interviewed on the Late Night Live national radio show. Listen here. He covers a lot of ground about Obama, Afghanistan, Israel, Palestine, and more.

Michael has gone as a speaker at the Parliament of the World Religions. He is on various panels and platforms, and presenting this seminar:

Spiritual Progressives: Networking Towards a New Bottom Line

Spiritual progressives are all those (including ‘spiritual-but-not-religious’ people) who seek a New Bottom Line. Institutions, corporations, laws and government policies, educational, legal and health systems, and even our personal lives should be defined as ‘productive’, ‘efficient’ or ‘rational’ not only to the extent that they maximize money or power (the Old Bottom Line), but also to the extent that they maximize the human capacity to be loving, caring, kind, generous, ethically and ecologically sensitive, aware of the sacred in other sentient beings, and capable of responding with awe, wonder and radical amazement at the grandeur and mystery of Creation. Rabbi Michael Lerner invites participants to a meeting to discuss how to build a network of spiritual progressives within their own denominations, religious communities, academic communities or local places of worship or work.

If you are in Northern California or want an excuse for a visit, consider coming to the Engaging The Other conference in San Francisco (San Mateo to be precise) November 12-15.

Huston Smith

Michael Lerner

Michael Lerner and Huston Smith give the keynote speeches on the first evening, Thursday the 12th. Michael needs no introduction here. Huston Smith, the site delightfully tells us, is “internationally renowned as the world’s leading philosopher, scholar, and author on world religions, and has devoted his life to the study of Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Hinduism, all of which he believes in.” We also learn that his book The World’s Religions has been the most widely-used textbook on its subject for a third of a century — selling over 2,500,000 copies worldwide.

Steve Bhaerman

The next afternoon you can attend a roundtable on “Economic and Environmental Sustainability” at which both Steve Bhaerman, aka humorist Swami Beyondananda (from the inside back page of Tikkun), and my own good self will be appearing. Does Steve eschew his puns when appearing as himself? We will find out. The teaser for this one is: “How can we transcend greed, power, and scarcity thinking to insure economic and environmental policies and practices that work for the good of all?”

Meganwind Eoyang

But if you come you’ll have a hard choice as one my favorite people in the Bay Area will be doing a concurrent workshop. Meganwind Eoyang will present “Empathy – Can You Stay and Stay?” The blurb promises:

In the face of accelerating social and political polarization, we can learn to care for ourselves so we can stay present and participating in difficult dialogues, reaching the human being behind the position with sustained empathy and compassion. Demonstrations, role plays and discussion.

Meganwind Eoyang “Grew up fighting in inner city street gangs and later studied and taught martial arts.

Poet Josh Healey: J Street's Van Jones? Photo by Natasha Mozgovaya of Haaretz

We all have a lot of hope for J Street as an Israel lobby that can counteract AIPAC and promote justice for the Palestinians, just as we all have a lot of hope for Obama as a president who can talk with “our enemies” and create a more caring and ecologically sane society at home. We forgive their efforts to capture the center by ditching any of their friends who appear troublesome, we forgive, we forgive, and we mourn because when you start throwing your friends overboard, you only let the opposition know you have little belief in your ship, and so your potential friends may not wish to board. It’s an old story that pundits keep pointing out, but the liberal left-of-center seems so shellshocked by thirty years of rightwing ascendancy that they just can’t act as if they were as strong as they are.

“So Van Jones resigned, but did the right wing stop attacking Obama?”

You know the answer to that. It didn’t, but Obama’s friends lost a little heart, a little confidence. The voice is that of Josh Healey, J Street’s equivalent to Van Jones. Healey is the poet they just removed from their conference line-up for pointing out some similarities between Guantanamo and Auschwitz. In an interview in Haaretz, Josh Healey explains this problem with centrists beautifully: