Tikkun (https://www.tikkun.org/category/other_voices/page/53/)
Publishing an article that intensely criticizes an aspect of Christianity was a stretch for us here at Tikkun. Although we consider this magazine to be interfaith as well as Jewish—and have many Christian readers and writers—the idea of taking on something as sacred to the Christian world as the cross gave us pause.
Faced with July 4th celebrations that are focused on militarism, ultra-nationalism, and “bombs bursting in air,” many American families who do not share those values turn July 4th into another summer holiday focused on picnics, sports, and fireworks, while doing their best to avoid the dominant rhetoric and bombast. This year that kind of celebration is particularly difficult when many of us are deeply upset as we watch our government escalating its policy of drones, still fighting a pointless war in Afghanistan, running elections in which only the super-rich or their allies stand a chance of being taken seriously by the corporate media, watching as the distance between rich and poor becomes ever wider, while education and social programs for the poor get defunded, the Supreme Court reaffirms the right of corporations to on donate without limit to political campaigns, the envirionment reaches beyond the tipping point and nobody even bothers to pretend that they are going to do something to epair the ecological crisis, and the government passes legislation that in effect does away with habaeus corpus and the right of people to a trial by their peers (by legislating life imprisonment without trial for anyone the government suspects of being a foreign operative, including US citizens), and disspirited by the lack of vision of the Democratic Party, and the dis-unity and nit-picking on the Left which seems to only know what it is against but has not yet developed a coherent vision of what it is for! Oy. That’s why we’ve developed a July 4th celebratory program that you can draw from (and songs–see the bottom of this note) to create for yourself and your friends and/or family a celebration that will have meaning to you. We wish to affirm what is good in America without ignoring its problems, and to affirm a vision of hope that transcends this moment in 2012 and its disappointments. And we can even celebrate that some people who didn’t have medical coverage will now, after the Supreme Court decision last week to allow the Obamacare plan to be implented, and before the Republicans find a way to eviscerate it, have that coverage–a concrete step towards “The Caring Society–Caring for Each Other and Caring for the Planet” that is the goal of the Network of Spiritual Progressives (which is also welcoming to atheists and agnostics and anyone else who wants a world based on love and generosity).
Germany – Aggrieved about Grass
Victor Grossman, Berlin (Victor Grossman has written for Tikkun from Germany for many years)
It’s rare that poems cause such anger and excitement. The only other case I can recall was Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass” which once “awoke a perfect storm of derision and abuse”. That was a century and a half ago, but somehow Grass still awakens “derision and abuse”. This time, however, it’s Günter Grass, a Nobel Literature Prize winner, with his poem “What Must Be Said”. And the subject matter is war and peace.
Grass denies the right of any country – and he is courageous enough to name Israel openly– to wage a heavily-armed first strike against Iran based on the possibility that Iran might also acquire atomic weapons.
Too many liberals and progressives blame voter support for reactionary and ultra-conservative politics on the supposed mean-spiritedness, racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, or stupidity of those who vote the other way. By slipping into this easy mindset, we fail to perceive the real yearning so many of us have for a life filled with love, caring, and generosity.
Eager for Tikkun’s take on the 2012 election and other current events? Read the timely articles on our web magazine site (tikkun.org) and the blog posts on Tikkun Daily (tikkun.org/daily).
The mainstream media have frequently framed their discussions about U.S. and Israeli policy toward Iran as a debate between U.S. President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about whether to strike Iran immediately or to wait to see if sanctions work. This narrative has set the framework for a march toward war by excluding from the discourse the nonviolent option: that we not use coercion to achieve our ends.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
. .
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.
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.
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.