Tikkun Magazine Archive 1994 - 2018 (https://www.tikkun.org/nextgen/2012/08/)
After decades of observation and outright devotion, I believe that even in these difficult days for the sport, baseball continues to instruct on our most fundamental human virtues and values. More to the point, I believe baseball far more that any other team sport embodies and celebrates many of the principles at the core of what it means to be a progressive, and especially a spiritually minded progressive.
How can we create space for friction and dissent from within Jewish institutions, such as the Jewish Federation or Hillel?
Editor’s note: Robert Crane raises an important issue in the article below. I think the notion of a substantive concept of justice is very important, though I do not think that the way Crane fills this in is satisfactory. Crane believes in other of his writings that justice requires a right to private property–I hold the Torah’s conception that the whole world belongs to God and that no one has “a right” to land or property, all of which is given to us only on condition that we use it to serve each other and God in a love-filled and generous way. But the issue Crane raises deserves our attention.–Rabbi Michael Lerner
Justice as Grand Strategy: The Missing Dimension in American Foreign Policy Toward the Muslim World
by Dr. Robert Dickson Crane
The ancient Roman philosopher, Cicero, wisely advised that before one begins to discuss anything whatsoever one should first define terms. This would apply to perspectives and entire paradigms of thought. Perhaps the most illusive words in the world today are the terms “American” and “Muslim World”.
Was there, is there, and can there be an essence of America that constitutes its identity? This issue of identity is developed by Seyyed Hossein Nasr in his recent book, The Garden of Truth: Vision and Promise. He begins by generalizing that humans, both as individuals and as communities, act according to the image they have of themselves.
The value of sharing and selflessness even gets a nod, as Peter struggles to balance personal obligations with his dawning sense of purpose as a crusading superhero. Go Spidey!
Editor’s note: Tikkun Magazine, following the regulations that allow you to donate to Tikkun and get a tax-deduction, does not take stands on political candidates or parties. We do encourage people to vote. In the coming two months we will encourage a lively debate on our website and in our magazine in which our readers are free to explain why they do or do not support and given party or candidate. To start that discussion off, we present you with an article by Ted Glick, and as you send in your responses to this or present your own ideas, we will select some to post them on our website. –Rabbi Michael Lerner000000
Strategic Presidential Voting
By Ted Glick
It’s puzzling that there is almost no discussion among progressives about the U.S.’s completely unique way of choosing its top political leader and how we could use that fact strategically.
Uri Avnery
August 18, 2012
The Threat of a War with Iran: Mad or Crazy? BINYAMIN NETANYAHU may be crazy, but he is not mad. Ehud Barak may be mad, but he is not crazy. Ergo: Israel will not attack Iran. I HAVE said so before, and I shall say so again, even after the endless
talk about it.
The source waters of the American religious imagination are larger than Christian orthodoxy—just as Jesus was an Orthodox Jew only more so, and St. Francis, a cosmic Christian whose love for his brethren included birds, donkeys, and the sun. Whatever the source of our common faith, it contains multitudes.
A most unusual book by a most unusual author in the comics world, this small-sized, thick, square volume follows in many ways upon Fredrik Strömberg’s Black Images in the Comics (2001). It also departs in so many other ways that the contrast is vastly illuminating.
We are the beneficiaries of the most advanced audiovisual systems ever known, capable of moving our emotions, challenging our ideas, and opening our imaginations. Is it right that the most technologically sophisticated and financially expensive products of this system are entertainments like the Batman movies, designed to deliver their gratifications not to the mind but to the gut?
For the past few years, there have been voices of revisionism in France. It is very difficult, as everyone everywhere should recognize, to sustain sincere self-criticism regarding shameful national episodes. But President Francois Hollande has made clear that some issues must be addressed with intractability and not compromised.