Trayvon Martin: Reflections on the Black and Jewish Struggle for Justice

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Since the 1960s, efforts at coalition building and solidarity work between Jewish and Black communities have suffered and never reached the pinnacle that was reached during the early days of the Civil Rights Movement. In 2013, the lack of deep and abiding connections between Black and Jewish activists became apparent in the disparate responses from Jewish communities to the events surrounding the killing of Trayvon Martin and the subsequent acquittal of George Zimmerman. To reinvigorate a coalition among blacks and Jews we need to forge deeper ties across racial lines.

2014

You Can Help Stop America’s March to the Right

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I call this Love’s Rebellion—a refusal to accept the ethos of materialism and selfishness as the ultimate truth of our lives, an insistence on seeing the goodness in others, and a determination to replace “power over” with caring for each other and the earth! It’s time now to give Love’s Rebellion a political platform. And to make that happen, we need your help to push these issues into the public sphere. The most effective way to help introduce a spiritual progressive voice is for you to build a caucus in your union, professional organization, church, synagogue, mosque, political party, or run for some sort of office.

Articles

The Spiritual Truth of JFK (As Movie and Reality)

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To put the Kennedy assassination in a historical perspective that is both spiritual and political, we here reprint Peter Gabel’s brilliant article on the subject, “The Spiritual Truth of JFK (As Movie and Reality),” originally published in Tikkun in March/April 1992 in response to the original release of Stone’s film.

Fiction

The Lady in Bonesweep

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The longer she read, the longer the effect seemed to last. One lamp. One bed. One smooth flat sky-blue pillow beneath her head. Inside a single cage of ribs, her heart stood still.

Books

Taking Back the Roman Catholic Church

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For many “cradle” Catholics, it is difficult to imagine walking away from the communal liturgies and social ministry that have largely defined our lives yet we are daily losing hope that we will live to see a return to the Church promised by the Second Vatican Council.

Articles

Responses to the Pew Report on American Jewry

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Are Jews in existential free-fall? According to the latest Pew Research Center report, 22 percent of Jews have abandoned Judaism and only 15 percent identify Judaism as essential to being Jewish. Rabbi Michael Lerner shares some stirring responses and invites others to join the discussion as well.

2013

Sikh Ethics and Political Engagement

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Built into Sikh tradition is a firm ethic of adhering to a truthful and just process—the idea that the ends do not justify the means. As a result, simply stating that attacks upon Sikhs in a post-9/11 context are “mistaken” or “misdirected” because they should be directed toward another group, Muslims, is an untenable deflection. Instead, American Sikhs walk a thin rhetorical line between declaring what we are—a group that aims to elevate the consciousness of all people to appreciate our common divinity—and declaring what we are not in order to avoid the short-term consequences of popular confusion.