Tikkun Recommends

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The Migrant Ship / #refugees welcome: Poems in a Time of Crisis
These two pamphlets from indie poetry presses in the UK showcase how poets across the pond have been responding to the Syrian Civil War, the confrontation with the West staged by ISIS, the refugee crisis that has arisen as a result, plus the immigration nightmare and its consequent social inequalities—all of which are felt more immediately and intensely there than in the U.S.#refugees welcome, which is a short anthology, includes English poets long associated with social action, such as Tom Phillips, alongside many younger voices originating from the Middle East, such as Alice Yousef and Zeina Hashem Beck. The poems vary widely, from verse reportage of working in the refugee camps (Thomas McColl), to spare, rhythmically taut images of violence (Kate Noakes), to the unsettling ironic distances between a world intact and another blown apart (Rosemary Appleton).

A Fish Story – Found in The NY Times, 2007

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They’re still debating whether or not
it was God revealing Himself that day
to the two fish cutters in the Catskills. Mr. Luis Nivelo, a born-again Christian,
was lifting a live 20-pound carp
out of the box of iced-down fish
and was about to club it on the head
when it began to speak Hebrew. The shock of a fish speaking Hebrew—
or any language, ancient or modern—
threw Luis against the wall and down
to the slimy wooden packing crates
that covered the cutting room floor. He looked around to see if the voice
had come from the slop sink,
or the shop’s cat. But it had not.

From: Untitled Poems

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438,

They tell us not to be heavy, not to be deep. They tell us not to be passionate. The truth is always defeated
by lies. They tell us not to be deep. They tell us not to memorize.

Still Immoral, Still Stupid Let’s End 50 Years of Israel’s Occupation of the West Bank – One Person/One Vote

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Family relationships can be very complicated. One can be extremely angry at a parent, a sibling, even one’s own child, deeply disapprove of some of their actions, and yet still love them quite deeply. That is the situation facing many Jews in the Israeli Left and increasing numbers of American Jews who are united around the following demands of the government of Israel:

End the Occupation and end the daily violence against Palestinians that is an intrinsic part of almost every attempt by one nation to dominate another by force. Acknowledge Israel’s role in creating the Palestinian refugee problem (not 100 percent Israel’s fault, but definitely a large part Israel’s fault). Stop calling Israel a “democracy” when it rules over two million Palestinians and does not give them the right to vote in Israeli elections or otherwise participate in shaping the decisions that impact their lives.

Articles

The Silent Slaughter of the US Air War by Nicholas J S Davies

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The U.S. mainstream media voiced moral outrage when Russian warplanes
killed civilians in Aleppo but has gone silent as U.S. warplanes
slaughter innocents in Mosul and Raqqa, notes Nicolas J S Davies. By Nicolas J S Davies

April 2017 was another month of mass slaughter and unimaginable terror
for the people of Mosul in Iraq and the areas around Raqqa and Tabqa
in Syria, as the heaviest, most sustained U.S.-led bombing campaign
since the American War in Vietnam entered its 33rd month. The Airwars monitoring group has compiled reports of 1,280 to 1,744
civilians killed by at least 2,237 bombs and missiles that rained down
from U.S. and allied warplanes in April (1,609 on Iraq and 628 on
Syria). The heaviest casualties were in and around Old Mosul and West
Mosul, where 784 to 1,074 civilians were reported killed, but the area
around Tabqa in Syria also suffered heavy civilian casualties. In other war zones, as I have explained in previous articles (here and
here), the kind of “passive” reports of civilian deaths compiled by
Airwars have only ever captured between 5 percent and 20 percent of
the actual civilian war deaths revealed by comprehensive mortality
studies.

The Settlement Legality Debate: FAQ

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I. Why Now? The resurgence of debates about legality, particularly the legality of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, has become an unexpected feature of public discussion of Israel/Palestine over the past decade. This resurgence has been primarily the work of two kinds of forces. On the one hand, pro-settler advocates have been asserting that the pervasive international view of the illegality of the settlements is simply wrong.

Emmanuel Levinas, the Political, and Zionism: Michael Morgan’s Levinas’s Ethical Politics, a Review Essay

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I

When I was a graduate student in Jewish thought and philosophy in Israel and the U.S. in the late 1980s and early 1990s we were all reading Emmanuel Levinas. Some of his major works had recently been translated into English and Hebrew (all were written in French) and his dual commitment to continental philosophy and Judaism made him, for many of us, the Franz Rosenzweig of our generation. Levinas quickly became a cottage industry among American scholars of Judaism, from those interested in Rabbinics who read his Nine Talmudic Readings, to those interested in phenomenology and ethics who read Totality and Infinity, Otherwise than Being and Time and the Other, to those who were interested in a philosophically sophistical apologia for Judaism who read his In the Time of the Nations and Difficult Freedom. Dissertations were written about him, journals were full of essays on his work, and a North American Levinas Society was established in 2006 with conferences and symposia. Levinas stood at the center of Jewish philosophical though for at least two decades.

Trump’s War on Dangerous Memory and Critical Thought

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The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists. ― Hannah Arendt
People living in the United States have entered into one of the most dangerous periods of the 21st century. President Donald Trump is not only a twisted caricature of every variation of economic, political, educational, and social fundamentalism, he is the apogee of an increasingly intolerant and authoritarian culture committed to destroying free speech, civil rights, women’s reproductive freedoms, and all vestiges of economic justice and democracy. Trump is the fascist shadow that has been lurking in the dark since Nixon’s Southern Strategy. Authoritarianism has now become viral in America, pursuing new avenues to spread its toxic ideology of bigotry, cruelty, and greed into every facet of society.

The Place of Politics: Public Protest and the Rabbinic Construction of Space

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There is a strong contrast of delicate and solid, metal and wood, meditative and powerful. The location is not coincidental. The artist’s statement—in a plaque behind the sculpture—ties the symbolism in almost simplistic manner to the Los Angeles Police Department. The number five (the larger pillars) corresponds to the number of members of the police commission. The four smaller pillars, to the four stars on the uniform collar of the Chief of Police.

Excavating Truth Through Spiritual Activism (On the Fear of Muslims)

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As for deaths caused by terrorism, leaving aside the 2,908 American fatalities in the US in 2001, the Global Terrorism Database shows that the other 14 years in the period 1999-2014 accounted for a total of 73 American fatalities in the US (averaging 5 per year) and a total of 219 (16 per year) worldwide. In 2014, there were 32,685 deaths from terrorism worldwide, up 80% from 2013, out of which only 38 deaths (a mere 0.11%) were recorded in the West, including 18 in the United States, which ranked 35th on the Index.

Winter 2017 Table of Contents

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This quarterly issue of the magazine is available both online and in hard copy. The full online articles are only available to subscribers and NSP members — subscribe or join now to read the rest! You can also buy a paper copy of this single print issue. Members and subscribers get online access to the magazine. If you are a member or subscriber who needs guidance on how to register, email staci@tikkun.org or call 510-644-1200 for help — registration is easy and you only have to do it once.

Tikkun Recommends

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Recovering the Sacred: The Power of Naming and Claiming
Recovering the Sacred: The Power of Naming and Claiming, Winona LaDuke, Haymarket Books, 2016

With Americans experiencing a growing awareness of the persistence of racism in every aspect of our lives, we welcome Haymarket Book’s republication of Winona LaDuke’s important focus on the way the Native American community is healing itself from the ravages of the genocide inflicted upon them even as that community must now recover power to slow the latest assaults on their land and their rights by the energy industry. LaDuke highlights the way Native Americans are healing through recovering their own sacred traditions, and in that process are increasingly able to lead the way to slow climate change. How to Read the Rest of This Article
The text above was just an excerpt. The web versions of our print articles are now hosted by Duke University Press, Tikkun’s publisher. Click here to read an HTML version of the article. Click here to read a PDF version of the full article. Source Citation

Tikkun 2017 Volume 32, Number 1: 2

[Once there was a man . . .] and [give me peace o my world . . .]

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Once there was a man who was neither happy,
nor was he sad, in his case this shallow state
grew deeper from year to year. Finally he landed
in a hospital for the nervously disturbed. To stimulate him,
he was told to listen to the news and read
the papers. Indeed, he listened and read, but it’s hard
to say if it influenced his views or not
(nor is it known if he had any at all).

OUTPOST

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An Arab boy in blue flip flops galloping bareback the length
of the valley, back and forth, over and over