Editorials & Actions

MJ Rosenberg on Israel’s Possible Strike at Iran

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Ehud Barak: Iranian Nuclear Program Not Really About Israel

The classic definition of a campaign gaffe is when a politician inadvertently speaks a truth that will hurt him politically. The first George Bush committed a gaffe when he said that the idea that cutting taxes would increase government revenue was “voodoo economics.” Similarly, it was a gaffe when Barack Obama said that insecure right-wingers “cling” to religion and guns. In other words, a gaffe is a politically inconvenient truth. Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak gaffed big time this week.

Activism

A letter to those who care about Tikkun surviving from Rabbi Michael Lerner, Nov. 14, 2011

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I don’t know if you got the snail mail letter I sent a few weeks ago but since I haven’t heard from you, I’m trying email. I like to update our community each year about my personal news and our Tikkun/Network of Spiritual Progressives situation as we enter into the holiday season and into the new year.  I know this letter is long, but please read all of it!!! If you’d prefer, you can read it on line at

Let me start with some great personal news. The nodule on my lungs has not grown, and there is no indication of cancer elsewhere in my body as of the last CT scan in July.

Editorials & Actions

Exchange of letters and comments on Occupy Oakland and the larger Occupy movement

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I think you might find this exchange between a student and me about Occupy Oakland and the Oakland community of some interest. There is a rumor that there may be a new violent confrontation hours from now as the occupiers refuse to leave (the mayor had previously offered for us to be able to stay 24/7 but without tents–in other words, just as people coming to present our ideas, but not as occupiers. Let me hasten to add that I believe that the police riot 12 days ago was totally unjustified, and believe that the police who were involved should be sent to prison like others who violate the law. The violence of Oakland police is a daily reality for people of color in Oakland and many other American cities, and always a shock to everyone else because it is only when it happens to white people that the media stays on the story for more than a day or two!  I have also posted some responses from others below the first two. So here is the letter I received on email this morning:

Jordan Ashe wrote:

Dear Rabbi Lerner:

My name is Jordan Ashe and I am a student member of your Tikkun community.

Activism

Praying with Our Feet at Occupy Oakland

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When my teacher and mentor at the Jewish Theological Seminary Abraham Joshua Heschel told me and others that he had been “praying with his feet” when he participated in the Selma Freedom march in 1965, he confirmed for many a way of overcoming the dichotomy between my religious practice and my radical politics. In many ways, the anti-war movements of the Sixties and early Seventies of the last century felt like that kind of community prayer. I had that experience again at my various visits to Occupy Oakland, most intensely this past Wednesday, November 2, 2011.

Editorials & Actions

AIPAC Hell-bent on dragging the US and Israel into a war with Iran

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MJ Rosenberg details how AIPAC is pushing for  the US to go to war with Iran, presumably because Iran is Israel’s last militarily viable MidEast enemy. Could the US be that stupid? Or is this just a buildup that Obama needs to convince the military that his Administration would not, if re-elected, abandon them and their desires for endless war or at least endless war-preparation and war-expenditures. Meanwhile Uri Avnery argues that the huffing and puffing about Israel’s “secret plans” for a war with Iran are most likely attempts to achieve other ends without war. Time will tell.

Editorials & Actions

Uri Avnery on Gilad Shalit–the real story

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Uri Avnery

October 22, 2011

Everybody’s Son

THE MOST sensible – I almost wrote “the only sensible” – sentence uttered this week sprang from the lips of a 5-year old boy. After the prisoner swap, one of those smart-aleck TV reporters asked him: “Why did we release 1027 Arabs for one Israeli soldier?” He expected, of course, the usual answer: because one Israeli is worth a thousand Arabs. The little boy replied: “Because we caught many of them and they caught only one.”

FOR MORE than a week, the whole of Israel was in a state of intoxication. Gilad Shalit indeed ruled the country (Shalit means “ruler”). His pictures were plastered all over the place like those of Comrade Kim in North Korea.

Editorials & Actions

Gilad Shalit and the Palestinian Prisoner Exchange–Israeli and Palestinian analyses

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Here we present some of the views that you may not hear in the mainstream Western media, first from Uri Avnery, chair of Gush Shalom, the Israeli human rights organization, then by two columnists in Ha’aretz, the Israeli equivalent of the NY Times. Then we present a Palestinian activist reflecting on what it means to be a prisoner and how that impacts on the consciousness of those held in Israeli prisons.

Editorials & Actions

A Message and Strategy for “Occupy Wall Street”

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This past weekend, Occupy Wall Street demonstrations were held in over 951 cities in 82 countries as people around the globe joined in an international day of solidarity against the greed and corruption of the 1%. The media, trying to discredit all the demonstrators, say we don’t know what we are for, only what we are against. In the NY Times on Tuesday, Oct. 18, a story about Occupy Wall Street claimed that the only thing the demonstrators agreed upon was that they were angry, but not about what much less what they actually wanted.  So I believe there is much to be gained were we to embrace the following 20 second sound bite for “what we are for.”

Editorials & Actions

Buddhist Reflections on Occupy Wall Street by David Loy

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Waking Up from the Nightmare:
Buddhist Reflections on Occupy Wall Street
David R. Loy

In a Buddhist blog about Occupy Wall Street, Michael Stone quotes the philosopher Slavoj Žižek, who spoke to the New York Occupiers at Zuccotti Park on October 9:
They tell you we are dreamers. The true dreamers are those who think things can go on indefinitely the way they are. We are not dreamers. We are awakening from a dream which is turning into a nightmare. We are not destroying anything.

Editorials & Actions

The Congressional Progressives Caucus Presents a Budget Plan That Will Work to Create Jobs and Protect Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid

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The Congressional Progressive Caucus Identifies more than $4 Trillion in Savings to Create
Jobs and Protect Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid

Washington, D.C. – The Congressional Progressive Caucus
(CPC) today sent policy proposals to Senator Patty
Murray and Congressman Jeb Hensarling, Co-Chairs of the
Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction,
recommending that the work of the committee focus on
creating jobs, raising revenues through fair taxation
and protecting Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. The CPC identified more than $4 trillion in savings,
which would increase to more than $7 trillion if the
Bush tax cuts are allowed to expire on schedule. The
recommendations direct the savings toward job creation,
the single most important means to reduce the deficit. “It’s way past time to talk big or think big – it’s time
to govern big and do what needs doing,” CPC co-chair
Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva (D-AZ) said. “The American people
are sick and tired of feeling too few in the government
are responsive to their needs.

Editorials & Actions

Fixing Wall Street–50 concrete proposals in Solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street movement by David McClean

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While Tikkun and the Network of Spiritual Progressives believes that the only real way to fix Wall Street is to adopt the ESRA–Environmental and Social Responsibility Amendments to the US Constitution, which we invite you to read and endorse at www.spiritualprogressives.org/ESRA,  we also want to empower the Occupy Wall Street Crowd with some more immediate concrete steps that could be taken to show the cynical media that the demonstrators know what could actually be done if anyone cared to listen. So we present here one such set of first narrowly reformist steps, though we know that what is really needed is the larger transformation called for in the ESRA:
50 Proposals for Reform and Reclamation
In Solidarity with the Wall Street Protesters and the 99 Percenters
Dr. David E. McClean
David McClean is a lecturer in Philosophy and Business Ethics Rutgers University & Molloy College, and Principal, The DMA Consulting Group. Part of the problem was that only in an environment of crisis can the self-regulators galvanize themselves to actions that they couldn’t otherwise take. We had Congress pressing us against any of these [difficult reform] initiatives. We had Congress constantly bearing down   on the Commission: “Don’t take steps which would hurt the firms,   don’t take steps which would change the way business is being done.”…

Editorials & Actions

On Abbas at the UN–a perspective rarely heard

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[Rabbi Lerner’s note: Dr. Saree Makdisi, in the address below which he gave to the Palestine Center in early October,  gives an important window into the minds of Palestinian diaspora thinkers as they watch the current reality unfold. For some, his words will be an incentive to get Israel to return to negotiations quickly, and in good faith, lest the perspective he articulates becomes the mainstream in Palestine. For others, his words will be used a proof that a two-state solution will alway be impossible and that Israel has no choice but to either continue the Occupation or lose its existence as a homeland for Jews. For still others, his words will encourage a new sense of self-respect for Palestinians and a challenge to those who portray them simply as powerless victims. For some West Bank Palestinians, seeking a solution in the short run that might allow them to be freed of Israeli occupation, roadblocks, taxes, home demolitions and targeted assassinations, this perspective will feel like an obstacle to peace, restimulating among Israelis the fears that keep them from making the compromises needed to end the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. And of course, there will be many other possible ways to read this article.

Editorials & Actions

Occupy Wall St–It’s Everywhere where Corporate Power Shapes our Lives, So You Can Occupy it in Your Hometown too!

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The prophet Isaiah stood outside the ancient Israelite Temple and denounced those fasting on Yom Kippur who nevertheless were participating in an immoral society. Said Isaiah (in a statement that is now read in synagogues around the world on Yom Kippur morning though its message mostly ignored when it applies to some Jews’ participation in some of the most exploitative practices of Western capitalism or in support for the current right-wing government of Israel even as it engages in oppression of Palestinians):
Look! On the very day you fast you keep scrabbling for wealth; On the very day you fast you keep oppressing all your workers. Look! You fast in strife and contention.

Jewish Wisdom

Code Pink Activist Rae Abileah addresses members of the Network of Spiritual Progressives at Beyt Tikkun High Holiday services Sept. 29, 2011

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Shana tova!  I am so moved to be here in prayer with this vibrant, strong, brilliant community, and to be standing here on the bima in front of you all is something I could never have dreamed of. I feel I am in the company of friends, of family, speaking with you all, as I know that a central tenant of this community is a dedication to tikkun olam, to the practice of repairing and healing the world and ourselves.  The common ground we walk on is the commitment to creating a more just and joyous world.  And this morning I want to share my story with you – the abbreviated version – I promise! – and besides folks I haven’t lived that long yet… — and I want to share my process of t’shuvah with you. I was born and raised in the rocking era of the 1980s in a land not very far, far away from here – but with an intimate reverence for a land very far away – the country of Israel.  Even in the small coastal town of Half Moon Bay where I grew up, there was some occasional anti-Jewish teasing on the playground. So the idea of a Jewish state fortified by an army to protect the Jews from future annihilation felt comforting.  And the concept, as it was explained to me, of “a land without a people for a people without a land” seemed to make sense.