Editorials & Actions

Reclaim America after 2014 elections–Please come to our conference Dec. 14th

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After the 2014 Elections and Facing a Congress determined to dismantle environmental, health and social benefits for middle income Americans and the poor in 2015-2016
It’s critical that ethically sensitive people develop a strategy to:

RECLAIM AMERICA
You, dear reader, are invited to:
A Town Hall Meeting & Strategy Discussion
 Sunday December 14, 1 p.m.
At the University of San Francisco McLaren Hall
(Golden Gate Ave near Roselyn Terrace)
Among the presenters at our strategy conference:
 Mathew Fox Liberation Theologian, Author of Original Blessing, and The Coming of the Cosmic Christ
Rebecca Kaplan Oakland City Council President,
George Lakoff Prof of Cognitive Science and Linguistics, author of Don’t Think of an Elephant and Moral Politics,  
Rabbi Michael Lerner Editor of Tikkun, rabbi of Beyt Tikkun Synagogue, Author: The Left Hand of God: Taking Back our Country from the Religious Right and Spirit Matters,
Marianne Williamson, author: Healing the Soul of America, A Return to Love, and Imagine What America Could Be in the 21st Century, ,
Cat Zavis Attorney, Executive Director, the Network of Spiritual Progressives, and teacher of Empathic Communication
And more. (Our speakers will start the discussion, but the most important person to be there is YOU). Pre-registration at:   spiritualprogressives.org/reclaimAmerica
The Congress that will shape America in the next two years is committed to defunding government  so that it cannot  enforce the minimal environmental protections currently in place, provide health care coverage for those who need it,so that it, provide safety and health protection for our food or for our work places, or protect the old, the young, the vulnerable—while at the same time that Congress will seek to decrease still further the taxes on the super-rich and the corporations they own and control. This is an ethical and spiritual and religious crisis of monumental proportions—and calls for secular liberals and progressives to join with spiritual or religious activists to work together to develop strategies to save our planet earth and protect middle income and working people and the unemployed from the assaults of the selfish. That’s why we, spiritual progressives of every variant (including atheists and secular humanists as well as people in every religious community) must  now take action to present a different worldview, one based on the Biblical call to “love our neighbor” but also “love the stranger (the Other/the powerless)., to pursue justice and peace.

Editorials & Actions

Why Have Jewish-Arab Relations so Rapidly Deteriorated Inside the Borders of the State of Israel?

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Why Have Jewish-Arab Relations Deteriorated in Israel? The View of Sikkuy’s Ron Gerlitz, by Phyllis Bernstein

What follows is a summary of remarks delivered by Ron Gerlitz, co-executive director of Sikkuy: The Association for the Advancement of Civic Equality, at an Inter-Agency Task Force for Israeli Arab Issues meeting on November 6, 2014 in New York. 

“To hate Arabs isn’t racism, it’s having moral values! #Israeldemandsrevenge

By Phyllis Bernstein

This summer, and since the war in Gaza, we have witnessed a serious deterioration in relations between Jewish and Arab citizens in Israel.  Unlike the events which took place in 2000 between the police and Arab citizens, since the summer of 2014 we’ve seen civil clashes between Jewish and Arab citizens. In most cases, Jews have attacked Arabs verbally or physically.  What’s new is the frequency and intensity of these incidents. This is something we’ve never seen before in Jewish-Arab relations in Israel.   A few examples:  shouting “death to Arabs” on the street, demonstrations demanding the firing of all Arab employees in some shopping malls, organized pressure on employers to fire Arab employees, death threats against people who expressed sympathy for Arabs, including former Defense Minister Amir Peretz, physical and verbal attacks against Arab citizens, racist incitement in social media, dismissal of Arab employees by mainstream Jewish employers, and incitement by politicians such as Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman who called on Jews to boycott Arab businesses.

Editorials & Actions

ISIS is an Existential Threat to Israel–a note from Uri Avnery

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Editor’s note: this is a selection from a longer article by Uri Avnery

Isis as an Existential Threat to Israel  by Uri Avnery

ISIS (“the Islamic State”) poses no military danger. The present and former generals who shape Israel’s policy can only smile when this “danger” is mentioned. A few tens of thousands of lightly armed fighters against the huge Israeli military establishment? Ridiculous. As indeed it is.

Editorials & Actions

Yearning for a World of Love and Justice

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We live in a world filled with loving and caring people. We all crave a world filled with love and care. Yet most of us doubt that we can experience a loving and caring world beyond our own private lives and homes. Why? Because the ethos of the capitalist marketplace, which places greatest value on money and power, has infiltrated our personal lives, shaping our unconscious and conscious beliefs about “human nature.”

In the economic marketplace we are taught to look out for ourselves, maximize our profits, and do what we need to do to get ahead, even at the cost of people we care about.

Editorials & Actions

Rula Jebreal: How I’m Treated as a Minority in Israel

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New York Times

Minority Life in Israel

By RULA JEBREAL

OCT. 27, 2014

Credit Bratislav Milenkovic

My mother, Zakia, was so proud that my sister and I spoke better Hebrew than Arabic. Osman, my father, believed that by achieving the highest levels of education, we would one day be treated as equal in our country, Israel. He sincerely believed that Palestinians capable of articulating their narrative would win the hearts and minds of Israeli Jews. My parents believed in the promise of a democracy that transcends ethnicity.

Editorials & Actions

A book on Caring for People With Alzheimer’s

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:
WHERE TWO WORLDS TOUCH   by Rev. Dr. Jade C. Angelica.    Skinner House Books. Boston, MA. 2014
Reviewed by Rabbi Richard Address 

            Jade Angelica introduces us to her approach to caregiving for people with Alzheimer’s  by reminding us that it is about “the power and potential of true encounter”. That “true encounter”, inspired in many ways by Buber, Heschel and a host of others, is a motif that is unpacked in her readable and informative narrative about her personal journey with her mother.  “Where Two Worlds Touch” joins a growing list books and articles that have begun to address the growing challenges to families and society that are emerging with the aging of the baby boomers.

Editorials & Actions

UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Climate Assessment Nov.2, 2014

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COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) – Climate change is happening, it’s almost entirely man’s fault and limiting its impacts may require reducing greenhouse gas emissions to zero this century, the U.N.’s panel on climate science said Sunday. The fourth and final volume of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s giant climate assessment didn’t offer any surprises, nor was it expected to since it combined the findings of three earlier reports released in the past 13 months. [Rabbi Lerner on the tone of this A.P. article: it once again lulls one to sleep, with words like “didn’t offer any surprises” when it could have said, “is yet another attempt to wake the world’s peoples to rebel against governmental and corporate leaderships that have set this planet on a path toward environmental destruction of the life support system of Earth.” But of course, the media hide behind their pretext of “value free reporting,” though their values are constantly seeping through in their choice of what to feature and who to quote.]

But it underlined the scope of the climate challenge in stark terms. Emissions, mainly from the burning of fossil fuels, may need to drop to zero by the end of this century for the world to have a decent chance of keeping the temperature rise below a level that many consider dangerous. Failure to do so, which could require deployment of technologies that suck greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere, could lock the world on a trajectory with “irreversible” impacts on people and the environment, the report said.

Culture

Chana Bloch’s poem Potato Eaters

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Chana Bloch. Photo by Peg Skorpinski

Potato Eaters

Chana Bloch

My grandmother never did learn to write. “Making love” was not in her lexicon;
I wonder if she ever took off her clothes
when her husband performed his conjugal duties. She said God was watching,
reciting Psalms was dependable medicine,
a woman in pants an abomination. In their hut on the Dniester
six children scraped the daily potatoes from a single plate;
each one held a bare spoon. Five years from the shtetl her daughters
disguise themselves
in lisle stockings and flapper dresses.

Editorials & Actions

Terrorism, Terrorism, Terrorism

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Terrorism, Terrorism, Terrorism: The Word That Fuels Endless War

Journalist Glenn Greenwald explains the importance of challenging how this powerful word is used by those who always say only describes the violence of others and never their own. by Jon Queally, staff writer [ http://www.commondreams.org/author/jon-queally-staff-writer ]

IMAGE [ http://www.commondreams.org/sites/default/files/styles/cd_large/public/headlines/war_terrorism.jpg ]

“I’ve been writing about torture, [mass] surveillance, and putting people in prison with no charges and drones and warfare,” explained Greenwald, “and every time any of those policies are raised, the government has a one word answer for all of it: terrorism.” (Image: Public domain)

Journalist and columnist Glenn Greenwald appeared [ http://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/watch/terrorism-or-act-of-war-in-ottawa–349263939798 ] on MSNBC’s Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell on Tuesday night to address recent violence that took place in Canada, in which soldiers of that nation’s armed forces were targeted, andreiterated his position [ https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/10/22/canada-proclaiming-war-12-years-shocked-someone-attacked-soldiers/ ] that understanding and challenging the way the word “terrorism” is employed in such cases is critically important in the context of the ongoing and so-called “War on Terror” that has kept western armies at war in the Middle East and Central Asia for well over a decade. The consistent problem, argued Greenwald, is that both U.S. and Canadian officials, in addition western media outlets and the public at large, repeatedly characterize “terrorism” as something “only non-government groups can do” and that this “conveniently excludes ourselves and our allies… from the definition.

Editorials & Actions

Thandeka on America’s New Spiritual Pioneers

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America’s New Spiritual Pioneers
An Unfolding Political Story About Emotions Lost and Found
Thandeka
 

We are at the dawn of a new era in progressive faith and politics in America. This new era has not yet emerged because most of its members – millions strong – are spiritually leaderless and do not have a shared identity. Moreover, they lack the institutional gravitas of sanctuaries networked together to create a force field in American politics. Presently, these folk simply get tallied in religion surveys and in the media as a subset of the “Nones,” namely, as the 17 million self-identified spiritual folk among the 46 million Americans without religious affiliation. But they are more than this.

Editorials & Actions

The GMO Deception!

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Editor’s note: The following is a note from the radio and tv show Democracy Now

As voters in Oregon and Colorado head to the polls next week to decide if they support labeling laws for genetically modified organisms, on Tuesday we will be joined by Sheldon Krimsky to discuss his new book, The GMO Deception: What You Need to Know about the Food, Corporations, and Government Agencies Putting Our Families and Our Environment at Risk. The book has a forward by Ralph Nader and is a compilation of thought-provoking essays by leading scientists, science writers and public health advocates who, in their writing, explore the social, environmental and moral consequences of GMOs. You can read the introduction below. Sheldon Krimsky is professor of urban and environmental policy and planning at Tufts University as well as an adjunct professor in the Department of Public Health and Family Medicine at the Tufts School of Medicine. Krimsky is also a board member of the Council for Responsible Genetics.

Editorials & Actions

I actually need your help!! Yes you, who is scanning through items at Tikkun.org!

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Dear Friend or Ally of Tikkun or random scanner through this website,

I understand if you feel deeply troubled by what has been happening in the United States and around the world this past year. I know I do. But I also have a lot to be grateful for in my personal life—my son finished writing his first book (on a phenomenology of hope with a special focus on Martin Buber) and my grandchildren are flourishing into wonderful pre-adolescents. And I’m very proud to tell you that four weeks ago Tikkun magazine received the “Magazine of the Year Award” from the Religion Newswriters Association, reminding the public at large of the high quality of our magazine. And I’m proud that we were among the cosponsors of the Great Climate March in New York City.

Editorials & Actions

The Dispute about the Opera on Klinghoffer

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The following article is from ha’aretz newspaper in Tel Aviv:
Why an American-Israeli Jew like me saw ‘Klinghoffer’
Raw, uneasy, complicated and messy: Despite its faults, the Met Opera’s ‘Death of Klinghoffer’ is simply not the anti-Semitic bogeyman the protesters make it out to be. By Brian Schaefer |

Demonstrators protest outside Lincoln Center in New York on October 20, 2014 against The Metropolitan Opera’s planned performances of ‘The Death of Klinghoffer.’ Photo by AFP

RELATED TAGS

Jewish Diaspora
Jewish World
Opinion

A protester holds up a sign ahead of the Metropolitan Opera’s planned performances of ‘The Death of Klinghoffer.’ Photo by Brian Shaefer

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Editorials & Actions

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Palestinians torn over contact with Israelis: Univearsity’s exclusion of journalist Amira Hass raises questions about boycott policy
Date: October 20, 2014

Subject: ***Palestinians torn over contact with Israelis: Univearsity’s exclusion of journalist Amira Hass raises questions about boycott policy Amira Hass banned from Bir Zeit university <http://www.jonathan-cook.net/2014-10-12/palestinians-torn-over-contact-with -israelis/>

Jonathan Cook, Middle East Eye blog October 12, 2014

A Palestinian university’s decision to bar from its campus an Israeli
journalist and outspoken critic of the occupation has exposed a growing rift
among Palestinian activists about the merits of contact with Jewish
Israelis. Staff at Bir Zeit University, near Ramallah in the West Bank, ordered Amira
Hass, a reporter for the Israeli daily Haaretz newspaper, to leave a public
conference late last month. She was told it was for her own “safety” in case
students protested against her presence. Hass, who has lived among Palestinians in the occupied territories for many
years, is a rare critical voice against the occupation in the Israeli media. Her articles translated in Haaretz’s English edition are widely read outside
Israel.