Editorials & Actions

Afghanistan, Military Budget, Iran and Israel: Update

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The NSP–Network of Spiritual Progressives–is part of a national coalition called Win Without War. Our members, together with members of dozens of other organizations, have been working against militarism in all its different dimensions. Below, I’m attaching two communications which have useful information for you as you plan your own activities for peace. Of course, a first step would be for you to help start (or revitalize if there once was one but now doesn’t exist or has “tired blood”) a chapter of the Network of Spiritual Progressives in your community. To join or renew membership, click here.

27.2 Spring

Occupy Passover Seders and Easter Gatherings

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Both Passover and Easter have a message of liberation and hope for the downtrodden of the earth. Yet too often we fail to see the continuities between the original liberatory messages of these holidays and the contemporary need for liberation and resurrection of the dead parts of our consciousness. This is our first attempt to craft a Seder addressing the needs of the 99 percent.

Jewish Wisdom

Sayings of the Jewish Buddhist

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Sayings of the Jewish Buddhist

If there is no self, whose arthritis is this? Drink tea and nourish life; with the first sip, joy; with the second sip, satisfaction; with the third sip, peace; with the fourth, a Danish. Wherever you go, there you are.  Your luggage is another story. Accept misfortune as a blessing.  Do not wish for perfect health, or a life without problems.  What would you talk about? The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single Oy.

Editorials & Actions

Hurrah for Egypt

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Editor’s note: Uri Avnery is one of the most courageous leaders of the Israeli peace movement and Tikkun is honored to print and send out his articles. As with articles we select for the magazine and articles we print on our website, we don’t always agree, but we are always stimulated to think in new ways by these authors. In Uri Avnery’s case, we can’t recall anything recently with which we’ve disagreed, so this is more a statement of our principle than a comment on this piece, which we found very important and a true reflection of the spirit of Embracing Israel/Palestine (which you can order at www.tikkun.org/newsite/eip. Uri Avnery

January 28, 2012

Hurrah for Egypt! THE IMPOSSIBLE has happened.

Editorials & Actions

Help Us Create Passover Seders or Easter Gatherings for the 99 Percent

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Both Passover and Easter have a message of liberation and hope for the downtrodden of the earth. And today, it’s important to understand that the “downtrodden”– those who are hurt by the materialism and selfishness built into the very ethos of global capitalism– are NOT ONLY the homeless, the jobless, the underemployed, those working more than one job in order to help support their families,  those whose mortgages have inflated to levels that they cannot pay, those who can’t afford college or university as states are forced to raise the fees of public universities,  or those who are likely to lose their jobs in the next few years. The downtrodden are also those who find themselves surrounded by others who seem endlessly selfish and materialistic, or people who see you only in terms of what they can get from you, how you can be part of their plan for themselves, how you can advance their interests. No—it’s not just strangers. Increasingly, people today report that even their friends, even their spouse or children, seem to see them through the frame of “what have you done for me lately?” or “what can you give me to satisfy MY needs?” No wonder people feel unrecognized, disrespected, and very lonely even when they are in a family or a loving relationship.

2012

The Brilliant and Short-Sighted Strategy of the Israeli Right

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Ever since 1948, Israeli governments have undermined popular support for a fully socialist society by playing the national security card, forcing people to choose between a civil struggle against fellow Jews who benefit from economic inequalities and an outward-looking struggle against Arab enemies and Palestinians seeking to return to their place of birth.

Editorials & Actions

No Joy in Mudville–Iran & Romney; Obama abandons Habeas Corpus; Israel

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Mitt Romney Embraces The Neocons  by MJ Rosenberg
The top three vote-getters in the Iowa caucuses — Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, and Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) — responded to success in very different ways. Santorum, best known for his antediluvian views on gay rights and choice, emphasized the economy and job creation. Paul, keeping with the themes he has focused on his entire career, talked about personal freedom, the need to restrict “big government,” and preventing a new war in the Middle East. And Romney, who is at this point the frontrunner for the nomination, started his speech by discussing the purported failure of Barack Obama to confront Iran. With the economy still in the doldrums, Romney sees Iran as the most serious problem facing Americans.

Christianity

Occupy Chanukah and Christmas

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Chanukah was the first recorded national liberation struggle against Greek imperialism, and Christmas celebrates the birth of a hoped-for messiah to free the Jewish people from Roman imperialism. Both Judaism born of slaves in Egypt and Christianity born of a movement of the poor and powerless were in their times the “Occupy” movement that confronted the powerful and those who served them.

Editorials & Actions

Urgent: call your Congressperson, Senator and US President Obama to stop indefinite detentions!

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URGENT  Dec. 14
The House is currently voting on the conference report for the National Defense Authorization Act which contains language authorizing indefinite detentions of persons SUSPECTED of terror activities detained on US Soil, including US citizens! Don’t be fooled–a future President or Attorney General could use this against anti-war demonstrators or anyone else they determined was “suspected” of terror activities. We fought the War of Independence from England to protect ourselves from this kind of arbitrary use of power without protection of individual rights. Don’t let them destroy what was best in American freedoms!

Editorials & Actions

What If They Sent in Social Services to Help Occupations Instead of Riot Cops to Bust Heads?

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Call Mayor Bloomberg of NYC, Mayor Jean Quan of Oakland, or whoever is your mayor and suggest that they support the Occupy movement by providing encouragement to social workers, teachers, clergy and others to go down to the Occupy encampments and volunteer time and energy to help those who badly need this support!! Cities are cutting back on vitally needed social services, while at the same time, buying expensive military gear for their police departments. From AlterNet by Joshua Holland, “What If They Sent in Social Services to Help Occupations Instead of Riot Cops to Bust Heads?”:
Occupations across the country have struggled to feed and shelter the least fortunate among us, and then faced often violent police crackdowns at great taxpayer expense. Pause for a moment and imagine what might result if mayors sent in social workers to help people rather than riot police to bust some heads? In a society that tends to avert its gaze from the homeless, the hungry, the addicted and the mentally ill, the Occupy movement’s compassion has become an albatross around its neck.

Jewish Wisdom

A Mystical Message about Chanukah from Rabbi Zalman Schachter Shalomi

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Reb Zalman is one of the most inspired teachers of Judaism alive today. I was blessed to have him as my teacher for thirty years while I studied under his supervision for my smicha (rabbinic ordination), and he chaired the Beyt Din (rabbinic court) that granted ordination and conferred on me the title of rabbi some sixteen years ago). –Rabbi Michael Lerner
A Mystical Message about Hanukkah from Rabbi Zalman Schachter Shalomi
Several times the Bible tells us that God wants to have a place “to make His name dwell therein” it’s interesting that it says not that ‘I will dwell there’ but that my Name will dwell there. While everything isGod,  in God, the whole cosmos is not separate from God, the point that a Temple makes is  – that there is a concentrated, stronger focus of the quality of divinity for those who enter there. So while it is true that God is in everything there is, everything that is broadcasts its own quality, a Temple was a broadcasting tower from which a signal went out to the world.

Editorials & Actions

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Editor’s Note:
The comparison of Israel to South Africa has incendiary elements–and caused Jimmy Carter’s very important book to be dismissed without a serious reading. But this piece is from the publisher of the only liberal newspaper in Israel, and has to be taken very very seriously even by those of us who think that the use of the term “apartheid” is counter-productive and obscures the way in which Israeli
policy toward Palestinians is not only different from apartheid, but in some respects far worse in real life terms. Haaretz newspaper is the equivalent to the NY Times for Israel, the one paper that doesn’t focus on sensationalism, Arab hatred, sex, and gossip, but actually bothers to report the news. So its owner Amos Schocken, of the famous family that created Schocken Books, commands our respect, as well as appreciation for having given our previous managing editor Joel Shalit permission to reprint on Tikkun’s website the articles in Ha’aretz.–Rabbi Michael Lerner

The necessary elimination of Israeli democracy
Haaretz publisher and owner Amos Schocken says there is a difference between the apartheid of South Africa and what is happening in Israel and in the territories, but there are also similarities. By Amos Schocken Tags: West Bank Israel settlements Knesset Yitzhak Rabin

Speaking in the Knesset in January 1993, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin said, “Iran is in the initial stages of an effort to acquire nonconventional capability in general, and nuclear capability in particular. Our assessment is that Iran today has the appropriate manpower and sufficient resources to acquire nuclear arms within 10 years.

Editorials & Actions

Another element of the Obama Administration’s Lesser but Still real Evil

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When people often say that they are going to reelect Obama as “the lesser evil,” it is important to acknowledge that though lesser evil, the Obama Administration has been involved in considerable evil. By Jeffrey Sachs
Huffington Post
November 25, 201
The wonder of our world is that scientific knowledge is
now so powerful that we can save millions of children,
mothers, and fathers from killer diseases each year at
little cost. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and
Malaria has mobilized that knowledge over the past
decade to save more than 7 million lives and to protect
the health of hundreds of millions more. Yet now the
Global Fund is under mortal threat because of budget
cuts approved by President Obama and the Congress. The Obama Administration had pledged $4 billion during
2011-13 to the Global Fund, or $1.33 billion per year.