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.
Former managing editor Dave Belden, Associate Editor Peter Gabel, and I were honored to receive the Utne Independent Press Award won by Tikkun Wednesday night at a ceremony attended by staff from some of the most significant magazines in the United States (Managing Editor Alana Price was unable to attend but was with us in spirit). The awardees were selected from some 1,300 magazines reviewed.
Tikkun won in the category of Best Body/Spirit Coverage. The other nominees were: The Christian Century, Commonweal, Geez, Resurgence, Sojourners, Tricycle, and Yes!Magazine. In accepting the award, we want to acknowledge the excellence of the other nominee magazines as well!
The irony: we are unable to afford to print our Summer issue for lack of funds, or to remain in print.
by: Dave Belden on April 27th, 2011 | Comments Off
If you have been admiring our new magazine website since it debuted in March, and wondered who put it all together, well here are most of us at an evening celebrating the achievement.
The two Tikkun staff who saw the project through from soup to nuts are Alana Yu-lan Price, second from left at bottom, and me, the baldy with specs at back. Our designer, with whom we worked from the get go, is Sabiha Basrai of Design Action, to the right of Alana. Sabiha has also designed the print magazine for the last four years, and the three of us have had a great time working together. The style and functionality (in design terms) of the new website owe more to these two women than to anyone else. Colin Sagan of Quilted also gave us excellent advice about magazine website design.
Sadly, Tikkun has run into financial difficulties that are forcing us to make drastic staff cuts now in order to keep going long-term. Two core staff members — operations manager Pete Cattrell and me — are being laid off as of May 1, so this is my last week. Alana Price is staying on as managing editor. The magazine will continue but we are determining on an issue-by-issue basis whether we can afford to print paper copies or whether it will appear as a subscriber-only issue on the web. The summer print issue will only appear online, but the fall issue will be printed; beyond that whether there is a print edition will depend on what funds come in. Tikkun Daily will continue.
A Possible Remedy
There are so many things I could say but the first is this: if 300 people were to give us $1,000 a year, we could continue at close to the recent staffing level, and continue to put out a print magazine. Or 600 people at $500 a year. It doesn’t have to be one or two major backers supplementing the thousands of subscriptions, memberships and donations, which is how the magazine has operated until now; it could be a larger number of people stepping up to keep the magazine afloat. Let me say right now a sincere thanks to everyone who has already donated. Many people have given up other things they wanted or needed to do already in order to keep us going – and thanks to them we still are going, and will continue.
In the visionary teachings of Isaiah, it says the repair of the world will require that the wolf will dwell with the lamb, while the leopard will lie down with the goat. Woody Allen once joked, “The wolf can lie down with the lamb, but the lamb won’t get much sleep.”
But seriously, overcoming the tension between a wolf and a lamb, or between a leopard and a goat, is a clue to the kind of peacemaking that needs to happen between humans who hold clashing points of view. In order to heal this broken world, we need to open up our hearts and minds to envision the possibility of hawks and doves, right and left, fundamentalists and progressives, moderate Democrats and radical Greens, sharing ideas and building teamwork where there once was snarky-ness.
How is this possible, especially in our polarized current world? A few quick examples will illustrate what this tikkun olam process might look like.
One is the temple where I’ve been an active member for the past seven years. We have hawks and doves, lefties and moderates (and even several Republicans), some same sex marriage supporters and some same sex marriage “not yetters.” However, each time there is a discussion where divergent points of view get expressed, our Rabbi Miriam Hamrell says lovingly, “These are holy struggles. What a blessing it is that we can have such intense feelings expressed with so much caring and mutual respect.”
by: Dave Belden on March 23rd, 2011 | Comments Off
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.
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.
by: Dave Belden on February 20th, 2011 | Comments Off
I will be profiling the honorees at our March 14 celebration over the next couple of weeks (see my last post), not just to promote our event, since most readers of this blog live far away and can’t attend it, but to promote these people and their tremendous contributions, to explain why they are receiving the Tikkun Award. In addition to speeches from the honorees and editors, we will enjoy some terrific music and poetry at the event. Again, for people far away, as well as to bring more of you nearby folks to the event, I am hoping to profile the musicians. (We are also in the last days of creating our new magazine website which will debut in early March so it’s another of those insanely intense two weeks at Tikkun — so who knows what I will actually manage to post about here).
Today I want to start by writing about Kelly Takunda Orphan Martinez, because she has a fundraiser concert of her own this week that I encourage Bay Area people to come to.
I first heard Kelly Orphan play at Oakland’s First Congregational Church (known as First Congo), where she was the music directors for many years. She was remarkable. I tried to explain why when I invited her to play at our event: “I never felt seeing you play at First Congo that your performance was about you: it was always about the people in the pews and the worship of God, about creating the spirit and feeding the spirit. That is the kind of music we would like to have at our event.”
The Spring 2011 issue of Tikkun is in the mail now to subscribers. Here’s the top half of the back cover:
Michael Lerner always puts on terrific events and this will be no exception. We will hear from each of the honorees above, as well as from Michael and Peter Gabel, who has guided Tikkun with Michael from the start. There will be energizing and spiritually deep music in between speeches. So if you can hop a plane, car or bike and come along, don’t miss it! Click here to register.
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:
“Fourteen anti-war activists may have made history today in a Las Vegas courtroom when they turned a misdemeanor trespassing trial into a possible referendum on America’s newfound taste for remote-controlled warfare.” That’s how one Las Vegas newspaper summed up our stunning day in court last Tuesday, when fourteen of us stood trial for walking on to Creech Air Force Base last year on April 9, 2009 to protest the U.S. drones.
We went in hoping for the best and prepared for the worst. As soon as we started, the judge announced that he would not allow any testimony on international law, the necessity defense or the drones, only what pertained to the charge of “criminal trespassing.”
With that, the prosecutors called forth a base commander and a local police chief to testify that we had entered the base, that they had given us warnings to leave, and that they arrested us. They testified that they remembered each one of us. Then they rested their case.
We called three expert witnesses, what the newspaper called “some of the biggest names in the modern anti-war movement:” Ramsey Clark, former U.S. attorney general under President Lyndon Johnson; Ann Wright, a retired U.S. Army colonel and one of three former U.S. State Department officials who resigned on the eve of the 2003 invasion of Iraq; and Bill Quigley, legal director for the New York City-based Center for Constitutional Rights. We presumed they would not be allowed to speak.
All fourteen of us acted as our own lawyers, and were not allowed any legal assistance, so members of our group took turns questioning our witnesses, and trying not to draw the judge’s wrath. Lo and behold, the judge let them speak, and they spoke for hours.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) has accused Israel of increasing its arbitrary repression of Palestinian non-violent activism lately. Abdullah Abu Rahma’s arrest — which I reported on in the second segment of my interview with Starhawk — is part of this crack-down in Bil’in, Nil’in, and Ramallah, where grassroots demonstrations have begun to mobilize Palestinians, Israelis, and international solidarity against the wall being built between the occupied territories and Israel. According to HRW,
Israel is building most of the barrier inside the West Bank rather than along the Green Line, in violation of international humanitarian law. In recent months, Israeli military authorities have arbitrarily arrested and denied due process rights to several dozen Palestinian anti-wall protesters.
Starhawk believes that the Israeli government fears this non-violent resistance more than the violent action they’ve contended with for years. Why? Because the government knows the movement’s power to shift public opinion and mobilize people against Israeli injustice. These grassroots efforts undermine several pillars of Israeli control in the occupied territories, according to Starhawk, and start to shatter the story that Palestinians are all evil terrorists.
My newspaper this morning gave me hope. And brothers and sisters, that doesn’t happen very often. On the front page, taking up about one third of the sheet, there was an article entitled “Trying to open the ‘inner eye.’” It was a piece that described the new Center for Conscious Living, an offshoot of the Church of Religious Science, which the pastor said is “reinventing the idea of church, with ‘stand you up music,’ meditation, singing, chanting and ‘an inclusive message of self-empowerment.’” Above this article, the top story was about our governor’s clean energy plan, in which 25 percent of the Wisconsin’s energy must come from wind, solar, biomass, or other renewable sources by 2025. My friend Jack Kisslinger, whose website is called Planet for Life, tells me that 25% might be a good number, but it has to be 25% of reduced overall energy consumption. So the governor’s goal is at least a step in the right direction. These days we’re at less than 5%!?! But the miracle is that some of Wisconsin’s business leaders are lining up behind the governor, including executives of Johnson Controls, an auto parts and building products manufacturer. All of this combined with the EPA’s stricter standards for smog-causing pollution made me ebullient.
I’ve been really angry at the Obama administration lately, so it was nice to agree with them for the first time in what seems like months. The last straw for me was Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize speech, coming right on the heels of his announcement about expanding the war in Afghanistan. Until then had I tried to see his incrementalism as “realism.” But Rabbi Michael Lerner‘s editorial in the latest Tikkun, “Afghanistan: Obama Capitulates to the War Makers,” says it all. I agree with Rabbi Lerner that Obama’s announcement represented “a decisive endorsement of the strategy of domination.” And then Obama’s Nobel Prize speech tried to justify his decision by saying that we will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes, that “Evil does exist in the world.” When Obama used that final phrase, I stopped listening to him. Christopher Hedges‘ article in the same Tikkun, “Celebrity Culture and the Obama Brand,” describes the shift in my opinion at that point: “President Obama does one thing and Brand Obama gets you to believe another.” I stopped believing in Brand Obama.
It’s hard to be optimistic given the world situation these days. But I believe that the three stories that filled me with hope today are related in a way that may not be immediately apparent. Without more spiritual exploration, people in this country will have trouble opening their minds to the changes in store for us. And those changes are going to be very fast, whether for the better or for the worse. As I said in a post several months ago,
An unnatural economic and psychological disaster has struck America
If you just thought it was about you, or your boss, or Bush or Obama, read psychotherapist Harriet Fraad‘s diagnosis of what ails us. Fraad identifies five major social trends that transcend our personal lives and our Washington administrations.
Celebrity as Idolatry
Pulitzer journalist Chris Hedges, in his incisive, uncompromising style, eviscerates the celebrity culture of our day, and asks what our global celebrity President has done for us. Michael Lerner says that Obama’s Afghan War policy will not work.
Wake Up!
It’s not only gloom in this issue of Tikkun. Harriet Fraad points to what we can do about our collective depressions. Rep. Keith Ellison, one of the leaders of the House Progressive Caucus,is upbeat about Obama. Catalan philosopher Jordi Pigem urges us to wake up and use the economic crisis to good effect. Christian theologian and historian Gary Dorrien argues that the proponents of the Social Gospel had many things right and we can learn from their approach.
To read these articles, visit the magazine racks at your local bookstore. Or buy a single copy here or subscribe here.A few of the articles can be read on the web already, here. The rest will go up when the next print issue comes out on March 1.
We are in the last ten days now of producing the next print issue of Tikkun. We’ve been getting compliments on how good the magazine has been looking graphically lately (for which our thanks especially to Sabiha Basrai, our designer — seen here with her colleagues at Design Action, and don’t neglect to run your cursor over their faces for a tiny surprise). That’s despite the fact that every recent issue it seems I get to a point where I say to myself, OK, well this time we just won’t have time to make it look good so we’ll have a plain vanilla issue, if only we can just get the words right. That’s where I have been the last three days, except we are even further behind than usual. I’m only writing this post because I started to breathe a little easier last night, and am thinking that maybe our amazing team can pull another one out of the hat after all. Maybe.
One reason Alana and I (the print production team) are behind is that we are also the Tikkun Daily production team and it alone could take up all our time if we let it. And what fun it would be if we could let it. This is only the second print issue we have put out since Tikkun Daily went live in July.
Another reason we’re frantic now is that then we had about eight interns, college students or grads (and one sharp high schooler) who came from all over the country to work with us for the summer. But this time we have had none on site since mid August until last week, when two new interns started with us. Thank you Erin Shitama, back from a Fulbright year teaching kids in a rural Muslim school in Indonesia, and Suzanne Sherman, artist and mother of four kids in school, for taking on the print editorial and art internships! I just ran across Suzanne’s comment on Lanell Dike, our artist of the week, which shows how in sync she is with our ideas about art and why we were so happy she agreed to work with us.
One particular Rwandan genocide victim’s story rendered Alice Walker, peerless writer of human experience, speechless. Visiting Gaza this year after the invasion, she struggled to speak again about atrocity. In print for the first time, her stories of Rwanda and Gaza.
Has Obama abandoned you and his own vision of a caring society?
Or does he need us to be much more forceful in pushing for it? Have WE let him down by expecting him to save us? Read Michael Lerner’s editorial.
On Bookstalls this week! Or buy a single copy here or subscribe here. Only a few articles (linked here) are made available online, until the next issue comes out, when all are posted. We depend financially (for running this blog as much as everything else our staff does) on selling copies, on donations and on memberships in the Network of Spiritual Progressives (join and you get a free sub for the print magazine).
The September/October Tikkun is being promoted in over 600 college bookstores, and we have packed it (as usual!) with challenge and interest for students and faculty, including:
Green Living in Practice and Why Can’t Live Without It
Are synthetic foods making us sick? Is global warming challenging our entire civilization? Yes to both. But is academic freedom being misused to hobble our response to the crisis? Special Section on the Environment by Graeme Taylor, Conrad Miller, Chet Bowers, David Loy and Courtney Rosser.
The Trial of Israel’s Campus Critics
Academic freedom is under fierce attack by extremist pro-Israelis who are trying to shut down voices critical of Israeli policy towards the Palestinians. But freedom to hear and discuss both sides is nowhere needed more than on this issue. By David Theo Goldberg and Saree Makdisi.
How Jail Can Change Lives For The Better
…when a restorative justice program enables the most violent learn how to give up violence and become community creators. Sunny Schwartz’s story is one of the most hopeful ever told in Tikkun. Ronnie Earle, the Texan DA who filed charges against House Majority Leader Tom Delay should be even more famous for the related work he promoted.
"Moses Gathering the Broken Tablets" by Ben-Zion, on our first cover: 1986
Because our intention is for it to be:
Jewish
Interfaith
Political
Spiritual
Humanist
Biophilic
Progressive
Prophetic
Intellectually deep
“Unrealistic”
Inspiring
All that!!
No wonder I’m feeling simultaneously jazzed and exhausted. In need of spiritual practice… I’m off for an evening hike in the hills.
These words are open to multiple meanings, of course. The only real way to find out what we mean by them is to read the blog. But, nothing in them is intended to exclude atheists or agnostics or believers. And no way are we saying to other blogs, “we’re more spiritual than thou” or “more intellectual than thou” or anything like that: this is about intention and reaching for love and depth and joy, not about thinking we exemplify them.
We think this list makes us different from all other blogs, but we hope and expect to be proved increasingly wrong about that.
At the same time, this blog is unique in the way it draws on the wisdom of twenty-four years of Tikkun magazine and its founder and editor, Rabbi Michael Lerner. For Rabbi Lerner’s thinking, explore the Tikkun and NSP websites, especially the Core Vision, Spiritual Covenant with America and Global Marshall Plan, and for the magazine’s archives, which some heroic interns are currently rebuilding after a disastrous website meltdown, go here. Oh, and don’t miss Michael Lerner’s take on God.
To read more about what we are trying to do with this blog, written as prose not a list, look at the editor’s favorites in the right hand column.
