Sheikh Hamza Yusuf, co-founder of Zaytuna College in Berkeley, calls on religious people of all faiths to face head-on the “negative externalities of religion” — those toxic side effects of religion that we don’t like to deal with. In an age of nuclear proliferation, he explains, religious extremists of all faiths — not to mention the fundamentalist secularism of people like Sam Harris, who calls for a pre-emptive strike on Muslims — are capable of destroying massive numbers of people. The way out of this mess, Yusuf says, is for Jews to emulate the Judaism of Rabbi Hillel, Muslims to practice the Islam of Imam Al Hasadi and Fakhr al-Din al-Razi, and Christians to draw inspiration from Francis Assisi. Hamza Yusuf gave this speech after accepting the Tikkun Award at Tikkun’s Twenty-Fifth Anniversary celebration. [youtube: video=”r0IMzz7p6Mk”]
President Obama has done a major disservice to the American people by accepting the right-wing premise that cutting budgets in order to lower the deficit should take priority over creating jobs.
Note from Rabbi Michael Lerner: We at Tikkun hate violence from whatever source, so naturally we’ve been extremely critical of Hamas through the years both for its violence and its glorification of violent acts of terror against Israeli civilians. We’ve similarly been critical of Israeli violence which is built into the very structure of the Occupation. And we’ve similarly been critical of the U.S. , Russia, China, Iran, Syria, Libya, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and the list goes on and on. But we also critiqued the Israeli government and the US for demanding that Palestinians become more democratic, then after Hamas won a popular election in 2006, rejecting any negotiations with a government that had Hamas as part, a decision which helped precipitate the split between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. Just as I supported negotiations with the Vietcong and North Vietnam to end the War in Vietnam, so I believe it is appropriate to negotiate with your enemies (not just the ones you approve of) if you really want to end a war and end violence.
Editor’s Note: I received this information from a homeless woman named Bobbie. It reminds us of why the GMP is so important and why the budget reductions of help to those suffering from poverty is such an immoral reality. “Poverty is the worst form of violence.” –Mohandas Gandhi
NEED VS SUPPLY
Funding
•In 1978, HUD’s budget was over $83 billion. •In 1983, HUD’s budget was only $18 billion. Demolition
• In the last several years, HUD has been tearing down thousands of low-income units across the country. • From 1996 on, HUD has spent $0 on building low-income housing while thousands of units have been demolished.
Crossposted from Hitzei Yehonatan. “You Shall be Holy, for I the Lord am Holy”
A commentary on the first sentence of the Torah portion that might literally be translated as Holies or Holy Ones. A friend of mine and loyal reader of these pages, Rabbi David Greenstein of Montclair New Jersey, was disconcerted by a remark I made a few weeks ago (Metzora, Supplement II) in which I stated that “Holiness is somehow connected in Jewish thought and in halakhic thought with separation, with making distinctions, drawing boundaries.” He argued, citing Sha’arei Yosher by R. Shimon Shkopf (a major Lithuanian Talmudist of the late 19th and early 20th century, who developed a philosophy of the underlying principles of Jewish law), that the holiness demanded of us is not “to distance ourselves from permitted enjoyments… but that the purposeful goal of our lives [is that] all our service and toil should always be dedicated to the good of the collectivity, that we not avail ourselves of any act or movement, benefit or enjoyment unless it have some aspect that is for the benefit of those other than ourselves.”
Whether intentionally or not, my friend raised the same question as is implied by a well-know midrash on the first verse of this week’s parasha, which warns against confusing Divine holiness and human holiness. In Leviticus Rabbah 24.9 we read:
אמר ר’ שמעון בן לקיש… “קדושים תהיו”. יכול כמוני? תלמוד לומר: “כי קדוש אני ” – קדושתי למעלה מקדושתכם. The Torah states: “You shall be holy [for I the Lord your God am holy]” (Lev 19:2). Is it possible [that you be holy] like Myself? Scripture states: “For I am holy.” My holiness is above your holiness. God is by His very nature utterly different from human beings or, as Rudolf Otto puts it, “Wholly Other”: His holiness transcends the corporeal world, and He dwells in realms far beyond our comprehension, let alone our ability to participate therein. Hence, when the Torah speaks of human beings, or specifically Jews, as being called upon to be holy, or even to emulate God’s holiness, it refers to something utterly different in nature than God’s holiness—and it is this which Rav Shkopf, and my friend, had in mind. Our midrash does not provide any positive definition of what human holiness is, but suffices with stating the radical difference between Divine holiness and human holiness. However, from the continuation of our parashah and the laws contained in the chapter that follows this general statement, one may infer that it means caring for one’s fellow man, behaving in an ethical manner, and creating an ethical society based, not only on decent behavior, but on loving and generous attitudes towards others. (Verses 5-8, which are concerned with ritual issues of consuming the flesh of a zevah offering within a certain period of time, are a kind of exception that proves this rule, and one might well ask what these verses are doing here—but that is a question for another time.)
An interesting insight into this idea is provided by Rav Yehudah Ashlag in one of the essays in his book Matan Torah (brought to my attention by another friend, Professor Emeritus Yehuda Gellman). Ashlag speaks there of the purpose of human life generally and the reason for Creation, beginning with the statement that it is the very nature of God to give. God needs nothing for Himself; He is infinite and omnipotent, and is in any event incorporeal and without the needs of flesh and blood. Hence, his nature is to give; the Creation of the universe was, so to speak, an expression of His need to give, to have someone to love.
Any doubt about how the United States makes its policies on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict should be dispelled by the Obama administration’s near-instant reaction to the Fatah-Hamas reconciliation announcement: it is determined to be fully in sync with Prime Minister Netanyahu.
The fact that “awe” and its variants are flooding our vocabulary is a welcoming sign that a fuller and deeper sensibility of “awe” is reemerging in our culture.
The Seventh day of Passover is a holiday, much like the first day. It deals with redemption and also with another stage of the deliverance from Mitzrayim, that of the splitting of the sea which allowed the Israelites to cross, and then returned to its natural state in order to swallow Pharoah’s cavalry, which had been in pursuit of the former slaves.
Reposted from the Progressive Christian Alliance. American motivational speaker Denis Waitley said, “There are two primary choices in life: to accept conditions as they exist, or accept responsibility for changing them.” I am convinced that Rabbi Jesus refused to accept the conditions of the corruption of Judaism by the Temple rulers. He also refused to accept the brutality of the Roman occupation. In these refusals he accepted the responsibility to try to change those conditions for the better and especially for the benefit of the poor and exploited. In this process Rabbi Jesus set his face to go to Jerusalem.