A War Against Boys?

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By now, you’ve probably heard there’s a “war against boys” in America. The latest heavily-hyped right-wing fusillade against feminism, led by Christina Hoff Sommers’s new book of that title, claims that men are now the second sex and that boys–not girls–are the ones who are in serious trouble, the “victims” of “misguided” feminist efforts to protect and promote girls’ development. They counsel anguished parents to “rescue” or “protect” boys–not from feminists but from a definition of masculinity that is harmful to boys, girls, and other living things.

2000

The Challenge of the Twenty-First Century

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As our century draws to a close, we are facing a whole series of global problems which are harming the biosphere and human life in alarming ways that may soon become irreversible. Concern with the environment is no longer one of many “single issues”; it is the context of everything else–of our lives, our businesses, our politics. The great challenge of our time is to build and nurture sustainable communities–social, cultural, and physical environments in which we can satisfy our needs and aspirations without diminishing the chances of future generations.

1999

A Global Gamble

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The debate about global warming is a debate about the outcome of a gamble. We are betting that the benefits of our industrial and agricultural activities will outweigh the possible adverse consequences of an unfortunate by-product of our activities, an increase in the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases that could lead to global warming and global climate changes.

1999

Israeli Feminism: The Impact of Women’s and Gender Studies on Jewish Studies

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In Israel, where the rabbinate together with the army give patriarchy a stranglehold on civil society, the potential impact of the feminist study of Judaism is of far more than personal significance. Nevertheless, it is only recently that the isolated efforts of a few scholars working in different institutions have begun coming together to form a vibrant and distinctive Israeli branch of feminist Jewish women’s studies, bringing a breath of fresh air and activism to a field dominated by conservative Judaic studies faculties and yeshivas. This in itself is one of the most important messages to emanate from the conference on “The Impact of Women’s and Gender Studies on Jewish Studies” held in Jerusalem in June 1999.

1999

A Kabbalah for the Environmental Age

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A longing for Kabbalah is abroad in the land. Even people with little connection to Judaism, no knowledge of Hebrew, many of them in fact non-Jews, are seeking initiation into the secret chambers of Jewish esoteric knowledge. Differing from the interest in Hasidism that centered mostly around Chabad in the preceding decades, this turn to Kabbalah has rather little to do with Jewish observance or with nostalgia for a romanticized shtetl past (a past that many denizens of “Kabbalah centers” in fact do not share). The Kabbalah seekers are after the Truth, with a capital T.

1998

A Spiritual Renewal of Education

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Education is everywhere in crisis. This is true not just in the failed schools of our inner cities but also in our successful” schools where we are spending huge sums to turn out graduates who lack a moral conscience to match the power of their skills to destroy, to make greedy profits, and to despoil the earth for future generations.

1998

Fighting for Disarmament

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If I sought a conviction for the last thirty years, it would be this – every one has a right to life. Equally, no one has the right to kill – no individual at home or on the street, no doctors in abortion clinics nor any Dr. Jack Kevorkian, no government through war or death row. God alone reserves the right to kill. And then, never does.

1998

The Ultimate Therapy

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While the twentieth century was shaped largely by the spectacular breakthroughs in the fields of physics and chemistry, the twenty-first century will belong to the biological sciences. Scientists around the world are quickly deciphering the genetic code of life, unlocking the mystery of millions of years of biological evolution on Earth. Global life science companies, in turn, are beginning to exploit the new advances in biology in a myriad of ways, laying the economic framework for the coming Biotech Century.

1998

Starting on My Spiritual Path

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Naomi Wolf describes her struggle to “come out” as a spiritual person in a progressive, post-Marxist milieu which was “profoundly atheistic and hostile to religious and spiritual traditions.”

1997

Living With Genocide

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The first and most fundamental human right is the right to life. Without it such other rights as freedom of speech and protection against arbitrary arrest are simply irrelevant. In this sense, genocide – the intentional destruction of substantial portions of the racial, national, ethnic and religious components of humanity – is the most heinous of all human rights abuses.

1996

Happy Birthday, World

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There is an ancient talmudic tradition that affirms that the world was created on Rosh Hodesh Tishrei, a day also known as Rosh HaShanah, the Jewish New Year. Our Mahzor also reminds us that the world was created on this day. So it’s particularly appropriate for Jews to stop and think about how we are celebrating this most ancient Earth Day, how we are honoring the birthday of our home, the planet earth.

1996

Toward a Meaningful Ecological Politics

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The word “ecology” comes from the Greek root oikos, meaning “home.” The idea is that the earth is a place of close relationships – that plants, animals, minerals, and humans matter to each other and together constitute an integrated whole. Ecology, as a scientific discipline, studies the interconnections between species and habitat. It arose from the insight that nature’s character could not be understood by merely concentrating on individual parts but that one must also focus on nature’s mutualities and interdependencies.

1995

Crossing the Ethnic Divide: A Meditation on Anti-Semitism

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A few weeks after converting to Judaism, I stopped by my neighborhood fish market. I told the man behind the counter that I needed supplies to make gefilte fish for Passover. “You?” he asked. “You’re Jewish? That can’t be, you don’t have the right kind of nose.” By this time I was used to Jews questioning whether I was Jewish, but no non-Jew had done it before. And this comment about noses? I was horrified.

1995

A Muslim Voice Against Terrorism

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Muslim voices against terrorism have not been silent, but it is the trend, perhaps even the policy of major media, to downplay the voice of reason, the voice of faith, and the voice of principle, in favor of the shouts of the extreme, the wails of the grief-stricken, and the threats of the treacherous. The voices of peace, justice, mercy, and tolerance are not difficult to find among Muslims and Islamic media, who consistently denounce acts of terrorism and reject them as illegitimate and unacceptable Islamic strategies or methods.