Editorials & Actions

Two extraordinary articles by Jimmy Carter, former President of the U.S., one on US imperialism, the other on US drug policy

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NY TIMES  June 24, 2012

A Cruel and Unusual Record
By JIMMY CARTER

Atlanta

THE United States is abandoning its role as the global champion of human rights. Revelations that top officials are targeting people to be assassinated abroad, including American citizens, are only the most recent, disturbing proof of how far our nation’s violation of human rights has extended. This development began after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and has been sanctioned and escalated by bipartisan executive and legislative actions, without dissent from the general public. As a result, our country can no longer speak with moral authority on these critical issues.

Jewish Wisdom

Rabbi Kook’s Understanding of Israel and Humankind

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Editor’s note: What’s attractive about this piece is the way it highlights the universalism in Rabbi Kook, whose teachings were twisted by his son into being a cheerleader for right-wing politics. Yet what still remains troubling is the insistence that the people of Israel have a special role, which can only make sense if we redefine Israel to include those of all nations committed to a world of peace, justice, love and generosity of spirit and action.–Rabbi Michael Lerner
 
Rabbi Kook’s Understanding of Israel and Humankind
Selected and translated by Rabbi Itzchak Marmorstein
Comments by Dr. Yitzhaq Hayut-Man
Among the greatest admirers of Rav Kook’s teachings are, naturally, those who studied at Merkaz haRav and are the spearhead in the settlement movement. So there is a widespread impression that Rav Kook’s teachings are chauvinistic -nationalistic, seeing Israel as a nation set-apart not considering the nations. But in truth, Rav Kook has a most universal vision, yet one in which the nation of Israel has a special role in, producing a particular gift for the greatest benefit for all humankind. We shall present here just two quotes from the many in Rav Kook’s inspired writings, with a little commentary on each:
“It is proper that all humankind (Enoshiyut) would unite into one family, and then will end all the quarrels and all the bad characteristics that derive from the division of nations and their borders.

Editorials & Actions

Syria: The Complicated Reality of the Struggle

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Editor’s note: In posting this interview of Sami Ramadani by Samuel Groves of the New Left Project, I do not mean to be endorsing the analysis presented here, some of which makes sense to me and some of which is framed in a very rigid anti-imperialist language which misses the experience of people victimized by the regime as well as the complicated role of the U.S. and of Israel. However, there is enough here that merits consideration to have led me to want to call this analysis to your attention! Between Imperialism and Repression

by Sami Ramadani, Samuel Grove

New Left Project
June 12, 2012

http://www.newleftproject.org/index.php/site/article_comments/between_imperialism_and_repression

[Sami Ramadani is a senior lecturer in sociology at London
Metropolitan University and has been an active participant
in campaign’s against Saddam’s regime and anti-imperialist
struggles for many years. In an in-depth interview, he spoke
to Samuel Grove about the dynamics of the conflict in Syria,
arguing that democratic resistance to Assad’s brutal regime
has been eclipsed by reactionary forces, backed by Western
and Gulf states, with potentially momentous implications for
the Middle East.]

The upheaval in Syria is an enormously difficult subject for
Western outsiders to get a handle on. One of the reasons for
this is the sheer number of different interests jostling for
position and power, from both within and outside the
country.

Editorials & Actions

Is Israeli Treatment of Africans They are Seeking to Deport “Racism, Pure and Simple?”

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Note from Rabbi Michael Lerner: I usually agree with Uri Avnery, but in this case (read his article below), I don’t agree that the (in my mind immoral and disgusting) treatment of African refugees reducible to “racism, pure and simple” as he says in this article below in which he correctly points out the shame that this activity is bringing to “the Jewish state.” In my view, every country in the world uses oppressive and sometimes violent means to keep out those whom it does not want, and those wants are almost always based on both capitalist economic rationales (“there is not enough to go around, so don’t let others share it”) and racist feelings toward others (“they don’t deserve what we deserve because they are less valuable or less truly human that we are”). The problem, in my view, is based on the whole notion of ownership of the earth and of its products that is challenged by Torah ethics (where God says unequivocally that “the whole earth is Mine” and human beings are “wayfarers” on the earth without any right to possess it except to tend it, protect it, and share its produce with everyone). Unfortunately, private ownership, the right to control the land and its inhabitants, is so deeply enshrined in the empire-ideologies that originated long before capitalism but has now reached new heights of penetration into our consciousness through media and education that even those who suffer most in this system of domination nevertheless have internalized its values so deeply that they believe in private property in ideas, land, and products and therefore can easily be manipulated into believing that “their” country will be “taken over” by undeserving others unless they rigorously enforce their borders. We at Tikkun, on the other hand, do not believe in the value, much less necessity, of borders.

Editorials & Actions

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Review of this book written by:

Lynn Feinerman dvashah@yahoo.com who writes occasionally for Tikkun Magazine

OBEYING A HIGHER LAW:  Making the Case Against Drone Warfare

Review of DRONE WARFARE:  Killing by Remote Control
by Medea Benjamin

I had already determined I wanted to review Medea Benjamin’s new
book DRONE WARFARE when I encountered three guys on a Bay
Area waterfront test driving a remote controlled miniature drone toy. The drone was about two or three feet in wingspan, styled like an
F16, and had an intrusive, loud, well…. dronelike buzz. It had the rapt attention of everyone on the waterfront.  People
walking their dogs stopped to marvel at the drone as it flew over
the Bay, and returned to buzz around, about a hundred feet over
my head.

Editor’s Note on “Why the Witch-Hunt Against Gertrude Stein?” By Renate Stendhal

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The debate about Gertrude Stein has been in the public eye once again, with accusations flying about her role as a famous lesbian Jew who managed to survive in Nazi-dominated France, to having been protected by a Nazi collaborator, to having been a translator for the Nazi-surrogate regime of Petain. This was a regime that rounded up tens of thousands of Jews who were then put on trains carrying them to Auschwitz where they were murdered. Tikkun magazine does not take a stand on the issue of what Gertrude Stein did or did not do, and our printing of our esteemed writer Renate Stendhal does not mean an endorsement of her views, but only reflects our commitment to encourage rational debate on many topics that have been dominated by rhetorical excess and name-calling. Stein was lauded as one of the early lesbian feminists whose literary fame gave her a partial pass on the sexism and homophobia that typically stunted the literary careers of many other lesbians. For that reason, some have been adverse to question Stein’s role as a conservative who may have helped the Nazis.

Jewish Wisdom

The Spiral of Jewish Learning

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The Spiral of Jewish Learning  by Natan Margalit
Posted May 29, 2012 by nmargalit in Organic Torah. 1 Comment

As we come to the end of the school year, it is traditional to reflect on one of the central values in Judaism: learning. I want to start with a quotation from Mary Catherine Bateson, a wonderful scholar and writer in her own right and also the daughter of the famous anthropologist Margaret Mead and of one of my intellectual heroes, the anthropologist/philosopher Gregory Bateson. Ms. Bateson writes:
. .

Activism

Job Opportunity at Tikkun: NSP Organizer / Assistant to the Editor

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We are looking for a full-time personal assistant to Rabbi Michael Lerner, involved in helping to build the community of Beyt Tikkun Synagogue-Without-Walls in Berkeley, who would also be the organizer/outreach person for the Network of Spiritual Progressives (NSP) and do editorial work at Tikkun magazine and possibly become Assistant Editor. (The Network of Spiritual Progressives is the activist arm of Tikkun.) This one-year activist opportunity involves full immersion in the activities of our small yet high-powered non-profit. It includes regular night and weekend work, in addition to standard 9-6pm working hours with an hour for lunch. Our Assistant to the Editor works from our office in lovely downtown Berkeley, across the Bay from San Francisco, and enjoys all the benefits of living in beautiful northern California (3-4 hours ride to Yosemite or to Big Sur). Beyt Tikkun is Rabbi Lerner’s shteebel/shul– a small group of people who meet either Friday night or Saturday morning each Shabbat for Jewish prayer and Torah study.

Editorials & Actions

Amira Hass: Israel is doing everything to separate Gaza from the West Bank

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Crossposted from Haaretz

by Amira Hass

An elephant will be sitting Wednesday in the courtroom of Supreme Court
justices Asher Grunis, Salim Joubran and Noam Sohlberg. The elephant
will occupy the places of the five plaintiffs, who will be absent: five
women from the Gaza Strip who were accepted into Bir Zeit University in
the West Bank. Four want to go on to a master’s degree in gender studies. Of these, three are in their 40s and one is in her 30s. The fifth is a
young woman who graduated from high school with honors and has enrolled
in law school.

Environment

Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh on Nature and Nonviolence

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Nature and Nonviolence
by Thich Nhat Hanh
[Listen to Audio!]
You don’t discriminate between the seed and the plant. You see that they ‘inter-are’ with each other, that they are the same thing. Looking deeply at the young cornstalk, you can see the seed of corn, still alive, but with a new appearance. The plant is the continuation of the seed. The practice of meditation helps us to see things other people can’t see.

Other Voices

An Ancient Text from Judea with a Tikkunish vision of the “I” Anochi that is the God of Sinai

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Excerpts from The Thunder: Perfect Mind
(Translated by Rev. Hal Taussig and others from a text
in Coptic from the Nag Hammadi library,
1st 2 centuries of the Common Era.)
 

I [in Coptic, Anokh] am the first and the last

I am she who is honored and she who is mocked

I am the whore and the holy woman

I am the wife and the virgin

I am the mother and the daughter

I am the limbs of my mother

I am the sterile woman and she has many children

I am she whose wedding is extravagant and I didn’t have a husband

I am the midwife and she who hasn’t given birth

I am the comfort of labor pains

I am the bride and the bridegroom

And it is my husband who gave birth to me

I am my father’s mother,

My husband’s sister, and he is my child

I am the slave-woman of him who served me

I am she, the lord of my child

 

But it is he who gave birth to me at the wrong time

And he is my child born at the right time

And my power is from within him

I am the staff of his youthful power

And he is the baton of my old womanhood

 

Whatever he wants happens to me

I am the silence never found

And the idea infinitely recalled

I am the voice with countless sounds

And the thousand guises of the word      

I am the speaking of my name

 

You who loathe me, why do you love me and loathe the ones who love me? You who deny me, confess me

You who confess me, deny me

You who speak the truth about me, lie about me

You who lie about me, speak the truth about me

You who know me, ignore me

You who ignore me, know me

 

I am both awareness and obliviousness

I am humiliation and pride

I am without shame

I am ashamed

I am security and I am fear

I am war and peace

 

…

Why do you despise my fear and curse my pride? I am she who exists in all fears and in trembling boldness

I am she who is timid

And I am safe in a comfortable place

I am witless, and I am wise

Why did you hate me with your schemes? I shall shut my mouth among those whose mouths are shut and then I will show up and speak

 

Why then did you hate me, you Greeks? Because I am a barbarian among barbarians?

Editorials & Actions

Slouching Toward Nuremberg

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Morris Berman has always been an acute reader of American culture and society, so his warnings here need to be taken quite seriously.–Rabbi Michael Lerner
Slouching Towards Nuremberg
 

Strange things are happening in the United States these days, and every day seems to bring additional scary news. The similarity to the erosion of civil liberties in Germany during the 1930s is a bit too close for comfort. Many will regard this statement as hyperbole, and, to some extent, it is. But let’s take a close look at what is going on before we dismiss the comparison out of hand.  

In terms of the historical record for Germany, legal discrimination against Jews certainly existed before the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, and grew steadily over time.

Editorials & Actions

How They Voted on Ending the War in Afghanistan

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A note from the Network of Spiritual Progressives:
The Lee Amendment would have limited spending on the Afghanistan War (currently $2 billion PER DAY) to bringing U.S. troops home. Please read the list of who voted for and who against. Important to remember that Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer, leaders of the Democrats in the House, voted AGAINST ending the war. Although the Lee Amendment was defeated(113-303) it is worth noting that a significant majority of Representatives in the President’s own party voted in support of ending the war now. Please remember to call your member of Congress today and urge a NO vote on the 2013 Defense
Authorization Act.

Editorials & Actions

European Intellectuals Speak Out AGAINST AUSTERITY–and provide an alternative

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Editor’s Note:  Tikkun author Ulrich Duchrow, a professor of systematic theology at the University of Heidelberg, Germany, and cofounder and moderator of Kairos Euope, an ecumenical network striving for economic justice (see his article A European Revival of Liberation Theology in Tikkun’s Winter 2011 issue) presents us with a statement of European intellectuals speaking out against the neo-liberal austerity economic programs that are the weapon-of-choice by the 1% in its class war against the 99%. 
Stop the neo-liberal crisis politics – dispossess the beneficiaries! We are experiencing the deepest crisis of capitalism since the great depression of the 30s – and the European governments continue to pour oil on the fires! From the very beginning, some governments have prevented a solidarity-based solution to the crisis in Europe and are significantly responsible for its exacerbation. This refers particularly to the German government, which, in August 2008, blocked a substantial economic stimulus package for Europe. Hardly had the recession reached its lowest point in Germany in 2009, when the German government preached the necessity for hard austerity policies.