A major modern conundrum is how the Arab/Israel conflict remains unresolved and, seemingly, unresolvable. In his latest book, Embracing Israel/Palestine,Rabbi Lerner suggests that a change in consciousness is crucial. He examines how the mutual demonization and discounting of each sides’ legitimate needs drive the debate, and he points to new ways of thinking that can lead to a solution. Lerner emphasizes that this new approach to the issue requires giving primacy to love, kindness, and generosity. It calls for challenging the master narratives in both Israel and Palestine as well as the false idea that “homeland security” can be achieved through military, political, economic, or media domination. Lerner makes the case that a lasting peace must prioritize helping people on all sides (including Europe and the U.S.) and that real security is best achieved through an ethos of caring and generosity toward “the other.”

There is one paid position opening at Tikkun for the Executive Assistant to Rabbi Lerner. This is a one year position starting in late June / early July that involves many various skills and responsibilities as well as an orientation of support, service, and dedication to Rabbi Lerner, his work, and a spiritual progressive worldview. Think you know the right person? Send them to the job posting.

We also have many exciting internship and volunteer opportunities with Tikkun, the Network of Spiritual Progressives, and Rabbi Lerner. Have a couple hours a week to transcribe Rabbi Lerner’s Torah Commentary? Want to help build campaigns for the ESRA and GMP? Want to combine your passion for activism, spirituality, and social networking online? There are many opportunities and ways to help build our presence and spread our spiritual progressive worldview through today’s preferred mediums of communication.

Check out the job and the available internships here on Tikkun.org.

The Bay Guardian, a Bay Area newspaper, just published a profile of Michael Lerner on the occasion of Tikkun’s 25th Anniversary. In an extensive comment on the article on the Bay Guardian‘s site, Michael describes it as

the fairest story I’ve ever had printed about me in S.F. And far better than the profiles of me in the NY Times Sunday Magazine, the Washington Post, Newsweek, and the Wall Street Journal when they were describing me as “the guru of the Clinton White House,” not to mention far better than anything that has ever appeared in any Jewish magazine. Asaf Shalev did a masterful job of incorporating a lot of information and avoiding the normal cynicism of the media. I deeply thank the Bay Guardian for having such a competent reporter!

In the aftermath of another assault on his home, the article allows Michael to speak for himself. For example:

While criticism of Israel coming from non-Jews is often dismissed as anti-Semitism, Jews who express dissent often get called “self-hating.” But Lerner said the illogical conclusion that Israel is the same thing as the Jewish people, and that if you criticize Israel you hate yourself has become less effective in silencing dissent. “It simply isn’t true that people are angry at Israel because of some internal psychological deformation,” Lerner said. “[Increasingly] people are saying ‘If being ethical is the same as being a self-hating Jew, then I choose to be ethical.’ “

The piece and Michael’s comments on it can be found here.

Only one day after Rabbi Lerner presented the Tikkun Award to South African Justice Richard Goldstone, at a celebration of Tikkun’s 25th Anniversary attended by over 600 people at the University of California, Berkeley, Rabbi Lerner’s home was again assaulted by extremist Zionist haters who plastered posters over his home once again. This is the 3rd assault on his home since Lerner announced the award to Justice Goldstone whose report on Israel’s human rights violations during the Israeli assault on Gaza in Dec. 2008 and Jan.2009 was denounced by the State of Israel and by the AIPAC-dominated House of Representatives last year. You would not have known about the 2nd attack, which was reported to the police but not to the media because Lerner had been advised that not giving the attackers attention might make future attacks less likely. That strategy failed.

Each time the posters have sought to display Lerner as either a tool of an evil Goldstone trying to hurt Israel. The current posters were done more professionally than the previous ones, and present a picture of Nazi officers carrying away a Jew. Lerner’s name is put on one of the Nazis and “Islamic extremists” is written on the other Nazi, and the innocent Jew is identified as the State of Israel. The perspective of the attackers is clear: “Rabbi Lerner is a Nazi assaulting Israel.” That is why the police have labeled this a “hate crime.”

Today Truthout has done that rather unusual thing: given a leader of the religious left a lot of space to tell their story. As that’s the Tikkun story, as told by Rabbi Michael Lerner, I am particularly happy about it. Asked what Tikkun‘s successes and failures have been, Michael responded in part:

Our greatest achievement has been to legitimate – in the Jewish world and increasingly in liberal and progressive circles – the idea that there should be a middle path that involves support for both Israel and Palestine and critique of both Israel and Palestine. That critique must include the way both peoples are responsible for the current mess, at the same time recognizing the vast disproportion in power and Israel’s consequent preponderant responsibility to create a politically and economically viable Palestinian state.

This position has earned Tikkun a reputation in the Jewish world establishment as self-hating, etcetera, even though we support the existence of the state of Israel and see this as the best way for Israel to embody its own values.

Some sectors of the left see us as apologists for Israel.

Increasing numbers of young Jews now accept the worldview we’ve put forth in Tikkun, although it still is rejected by the Jewish establishment.

And the failures?

Controversy

For the most part, I have been staying clear of controversies. My passion, and where I see my gifts, is for the process of bringing people together across differences more so than in advocating for this or that position. I take a stand for certain principles and for a vision of a world that serves everyone, not for particular opinions, even though I do have my opinions in abundance. This is a conscious and ongoing choice because I want to make myself available to everyone, not only those with whom I happen to agree on any given issue.

Today, however, I am about to walk a complex line on a rather sensitive topic. I am doing this because I have been writing about tests of courage several times in the last several weeks, and I want to acknowledge two men who have taken a stand despite significant costs in order to honor their own values and moral integrity.

A week from Monday, on March 14^th, Tikkun is celebrating its 25^th anniversary, to which the public is invited. Part of the celebration consists of 6 awards given to a number of people, one of whom is Justice Richard Goldstone from South Africa. Goldstone headed a fact-finding commission of the UN to Gaza in 2008-2009, and the report that came from that investigation has been the center of enormous controversy. So much so, that Goldstone agreed not to go to his grandson’s Bar Mitzvah to avoid a mass demonstration that would divert attention away from the family and the focus on the boy.

This week’s spiritual wisdom on unconditional love comes from Joyce Rupp’s “Fragments of your Ancient Name: 365 Glimpses of the Divine for Daily Meditation.” Rupp is an author, retreat leader, and spiritual midwife. For more information on Rupp, visit her website.

Captain of My Heart
Rabia al-Adawiyya

Do I consent to your being in charge,
Leading the daily dealings of my heart?
Am I able to yield my comfortable control
Even if I prefer to do things my own way?
Can I surrender to what I know is right
When I hear your voice within my conscience?
How do I bend my strong independence
And move in directions of your wise choosing?
O Captain of My Heart, slowly I am accepting
The wisdom of your divine authority within me.

It’s time for bolder international action against the ruthless dictator of Libya who is killing his own people.

Military jets, helicopter gunships, and mercenaries with machine guns are indiscriminately attacking unarmed demonstrators while heads of state just make statements.

Only a vigorous global response can help prevent the situation from spiraling into greater violence. Please ask the US to play a leadership role in forcing the UN Security Council to act.

There are peaceful and effective international actions that could save lives in Libya. For instance, the members of the UN Security Council control a large part of the international financial system – where Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi and his henchmen keep their money. That means we could in short order freeze most of the regime’s assets — hitting it where it hurts most.

Add to that an embargo on military aid and supplies (including funding for mercenaries); humanitarian assistance for refugees and victims of violence; human rights investigations into officials leading the crackdown; and economic sanctions targeted at the top levels of the Libyan regime; and we’ve got a good chance of making a difference. But we have to act fast.

Wisconsin Unions: The destruction of public sector unions in Wisconsin will directly undermine your economic well-being in the years to come. Almost all of us who are not rich have for decades derived hidden benefits from the ability of unions to set wages at a level that makes it possible for a middle class family with two wage earners to make a decent living. Their actions have a ripple effect that goes all the way up and down the class ladder.

If the unions are smashed, don’t be surprised if your job options and pay diminish dramatically in this decade. And that’s only one of many reasons not to allow the forces that wish to take care of the needs of America’s wealthy and powerful elites first before taking care of the rest of us to get away with destroying public sector employees — and these forces are in both major political parties and demonstrably in the Obama Administration as well. There’s also the reason of pure “justice, justice shalt thou pursue.”

This week’s spiritual wisdom on unconditional love comes from Joyce Rupp’s “Fragments of your Ancient Name: 365 Glimpses of the Divine for Daily Meditation.” Rupp is an author, retreat leader, and spiritual midwife. For more information on Rupp, visit her website.

Unconditional Love

You are Love like no other.
Love so large you contain our smallness.
Love so deep you accept our shallowness.
Love so strong you carry our weakness.
Love so wide you enclose our wandering.
Love so tender you experience our hurting.
Love so tolerable you outlive our apathy.
Love so ardent you thaw our coldness.
Love so true you endure our betrayals.
Love so patient you wait for our returning.

Today: I accept that I am loved unconditionally.

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:

This week’s spiritual wisdom comes from Chaya Kaplan-Lester on parshat Mishpatim. Kaplan-Lester is a Jersualem-based educator, psychotherapist, and writer who works to enhance the collective Jewish spirit. She is the founder of Havayah.

Mishpatim: “An Eye for an Eye“ from a Mystical Perspective

by Chaya Kaplan-Lester

Each week Jews read a portion (“parsha”) of the Torah. This week we read parshat Mishpatim, the parsha of “Laws.” Amongst the plethora of laws there inscribed is the well-known injunction of ‘ayin tachat ayin — an eye for an eye.’ It states that if there is an injury, the penalty should be an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, wound for wound. The sages agree that the implications of such a law are barbaric and greatly at odds with the moral endeavor of Torah. In the movie The Fiddler on the Roof, Tevya sums up this Jewish sensibility when he quips, “If everyone lived by ‘an eye an eye’ and ‘a tooth for a tooth,’ the world would be blind and toothless.”

“Hogwash, Mr. President,” Robert Scheer’s critique of President Obama’s State of the Union talk last night, is worth reading. Both that and my own analysis of the State of the Spirit in the Winter 2011 issue of Tikkun, written over a month ago, have important elements of truth. My approach, if applied to Obama’s talk last night, would agree with many of Scheer’s points, yet take a more compassionate approach, balancing Scheer’s correct righteous indignation with a larger view of the crisis facing the human race.

Our NSP point of view would address what was even worse about the Obama talk: the reiteration of the dominant values of the capitalist order — such as that the real goal of society should be to enhance our capacities to compete with each other, that what we need is a return to economic nationalism in which the U.S. is number one, that education should be primarily in science and technology in order to make sure that we can beat the other countries of the world and retain our previous position as the most powerful force in the world, and that to do that we must build our military might and make our education focused on getting more power. As the writers of Tikkun magazine have repeatedly stressed, these ideas generate a world in which there is a struggle of all against all to “make it,” and a world of endless warfare in which our resources are aimed not at satisfying human needs but at achieving dominance.

No wonder, then, that ideas like “caring for each other” or “caring for the planet” or words like love, generosity, compassion, solidarity, and environmental sanity were absent from the Obama talk. Please read both pieces linked to below and compare them with the trivialities and distortions of most of the media. And then, please join our Network of Spiritual Progressives (NSP) at www.spiritualprogressives.org and help us bring our perspective into the public arena. And yes, please send these two articles to everyone on your email lists to help them go viral. And you have my permission to post my article on your websites or reproduce it in your web magazines or wherever else you wish to have it printed.

Hogwash, Mr. President

by Robert Scheer

What is the state of the union? You certainly couldn’t tell from that platitudinous hogwash that the president dished out Tuesday evening. I had expected Barack Obama to be his eloquent self, appealing to our better nature, but instead he was mealy-mouthed in avoiding the tough choices that a leader should delineate in a time of trouble. He embraced clean air and a faster Internet while ignoring the depth of our economic pain and the Wall Street scoundrels who were responsible – understandably so, since they so prominently populate the highest reaches of his administration. He had the effrontery to condemn “a parade of lobbyists” for rigging government after he appointed the top Washington representative of JPMorgan Chase to be his new chief of staff.

The speech was a distraction from what seriously ails us: an unabated mortgage crisis, stubbornly high unemployment and a debt that spiraled out of control while the government wasted trillions making the bankers whole.

Read the rest here.

The State of the Spirit, 2011

by Rabbi Michael Lerner

The bad news is that global warming will soon be irreversible and, by the end of the twenty-first century, large parts of the earth will be under water. China is emerging as the world’s greatest superpower while continuing to regiment its people and repress democratic civil liberties and human rights. Just as today the West spends its energies fighting an elusive “war on terror” generated by its fantasy that its survival depends on dominating other countries to gain their fossil fuels, in the future Western elites of wealth and power may seek to create medieval-style enclaves surrounded by private Blackwater-style armies to prevent ordinary citizens from getting at their dwindling supplies of food and other goods. Most people will be encouraged to blame each other and fight each other for the decreasing sustenance left to the majority of the planet’s residents.

The attempted assassination of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and the murder of so many others in Arizona has elicited a number of policy suggestions, from gun control to private protection for elected officials, to banning incitement to violence on websites either directly or more subtly (e.g., Sarah Palin’s putting a bull’s-eye target on Giffords’ congressional district to indicate how important it would be to remove her from the Congress).

On the other hand, we hear endless pleas to recognize that the assassin was a lonely and disturbed person whose choice of Hitler’s Mein Kampf as one of his favorite books reflects his own troubled soul, not his affinity to the “hatred of the Other” that has manifested in anti-immigrant movements that have spread from Arizona to many other states and in the United States and has taken the form of anti-Islam, discrimination against Latinos, and the more extreme right-wing groups that preach hatred toward Jews.

The problem with this debate is that the explanatory frame is too superficial and seeks to discredit rather than to analyze. I fell into this myself in the immediate aftermath of the murders and attempted assassination. I wrote an op-ed pointing to the right wing’s tendency to use violent language and demean liberals and progressives, and its historical tie to anti-Semitism and anti-feminism. Once I heard that the arrested assassin had a connection to Hitler’s Mein Kampf, I reacted from my own childhood pain at realizing that most of my extended family had been murdered by the Nazis. So I pointed to the current violent language used by the right-wing radio hosts and some of the leaders and activists of the Tea Party, and how their discourse helps shape the consciousness of those in pain and provides them with a target.

But the problem really is much deeper, so I’m sorry I put forward an analysis that was so dominated by my own righteous indignation that it may have obscured a deeper analysis, and mistakenly insinuated that all Arizonans were responsible for the racism in the current policies toward immigrants and that all people on the Right embrace the hate rhetoric of some of their most extremely popular hate addicts like Glenn Beck, or the ignorance of history that led Sarah Palin to label as “blood libel” the criticisms directed at her. Some people even thought that in mentioning that Congresswoman Giffords is Jewish that I was somehow suggesting that I would care less if she were not — so I also apologize for being sloppy enough to allow that interpretation — very far from my intent, since I believe that all people are equally created in God’s image, and for that reason I’ve been an outspoken critic of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians (though also a critic of Hamas’ violence against Israeli civilians).

Three poems by Elizabeth Cunningham.

IT’S NOT ALL PRETTY

It’s not all pretty.
The earth knows terrible things.
She receives all deaths,
gentle and brutal.

She bears the pain of every birth.
She turns all things back into herself;
she worries the bones to dust.

She is changing, always changing.
Layers shift.
Her own bones crash and break.

Tides heave.
Rock erupts into fire.
It’s not all pretty.

Beauty never is.

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

Our editor Rabbi Lerner wrote these prophetic words in early September for the Nov/Dec issue of Tikkun. Now that they have come true, it’s worth reading this article and paying especial attention to his recommendations in the last part of the editorial.

Middle East Peace Negotiations?

By Rabbi Michael Lerner

Until the populations of Israel and Palestine really want peace, the peace negotiations will be nothing but a slightly sad sideshow, unless the Obama administration, momentarily freed from its own electoral concerns, is prepared to put forward a substantive peace plan of its own.

It used to be that the elites in both societies would tell you that once they worked out a deal, their relatively excitable populations would embrace it. Perhaps. But what has become clear in recent years is that neither side has sufficient stability based on popular support to actually make the compromises necessary to negotiate a peace agreement with terms that could actually work.

So, instead of playing to each side’s elites, those who seek peace must now launch a broad educational campaign to reach ordinary citizens (if necessary, over the heads of those elites) with a message that is convincing — a message that says, here are the terms of a fair peace agreement and here is why we believe that if each side makes the necessary compromises, it will work to meet your best interests.

We are beginning to put videos of some of the speeches from our conference in June up online. To get you started we’ve got some great speeches by Rep. Keith Ellison, Lester Brown, Sister Joan Chittister, Gary Dorrien, John Dear, Rev. Dr. James Forbes, and a Q&A with Rabbi Lerner, Peter Gabel, and Sister Joan Chittister. More to come after the new year . . .

Check out the videos here! Happy holidays and new year; stay warm.

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.