Empathy

A 53 Year-Old's View of the Upcoming Election (and this 53 year-old is a little scared)

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With Mitt Romney’s choice of Paul Ryan as a running mate, this election has become very personal for me. In this posting, I’d like to share how the field looks from my perspective, using my 53 year-old lens, colored by my life experience and where I am in life right now. And, I think there are a lot more people like me that might want to take a glance at their choices through my lens because I am beginning to agree with the pundits, that this is one of the most important elections in a generation. I’m a 53 year-old gay man, Jewish, married for over 20 years to the same Presbyterian husband, living in a “ticky tacky house” on a hill in Daly City that’s around five years from being paid off. I started life in the housing projects in Rockaway New York, subsidized apartments built to help the working poor.

Healing Israel/Palestine

To Be Born Without a Country

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The Olympics are always an exciting time. As the paragon of athletics on the international level, it allows a unique arena for patriotism and pride. But what I really cannot help but think of as I sit and watch team USA is how much I take for granted, and how truly lucky I am to have been born within the borders of a country.

General News

The Idea of America

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When Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican nominee for president of the United States, announced Representative Paul Ryan as his vice-presidential running mate, Ryan said that America was an idea. He spoke of the idea that human rights derive from God and from nature and not from government. Whether or not human rights ought to be grounded in natural law is a discussion for another day. For now, let us think about the opposition Ryan asserts between God and nature on one hand and government on the other. His remarks intimate that government is some tyrannical bogey man out to debilitate righteous free enterprise, binding it with red tape and stealing our liberties and our hard-earned money through taxes.

Politics & Society

Can Syria Remain Unified If/When Assad Falls?

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Uri Avnery, veteran Israeli peace activist and chair of Gush Shalom, combines personal recollections with political analysis to give us some idea of what might happen in Syria in the coming years. We in the Network of Spiritual Progressives pray for peace and liberation for the Syrian people, an end to all the violence and the oppression of the monstrous actions of those sending an army against their own civilian poulation, internal reconciliation between the many different communities of Syria, and reconciliation with Israel.

Culture

Are Judgments Wrong?

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For myself, based on years of learning, practicing, and teaching, I can say with definite clarity that I prefer the consequences of speaking without judgments to what happens when I use judgment words.

General News

Torah Commentary: Perashat Ekev- Feminist Theology Within Traditional Texts; Justice Underfoot

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Ekev I: Towards a Feminist Theology within Judaism
Devarim 8:9- “a land whose stones are iron and from whose hills are quarried copper”. The Avodat Yisrael points us to a reading of this verse by the Targum Yonatan, an early Aramaic translation/Midrash (parts of which are quite ancient, others as late as the seventh or eighth century) in which this verse is read as “a land whose sages proclaim decrees as forceful as steel and whose wise men ask questions as solid as copper”. He then points us to a verse from Isaiah 49:18 referring to being dressed like a bride in ornaments and jewelry, which is read by the Alshich as also referring to the arguments of the sages. The AY goes on to explain that while arguments per se might be perceived as a negative phenomenon, in the end they will all coexist as part of a more complex structure, serving as the “ornaments of the bride”. He argues that the differing positions in Talmudic disputes reflect the limited nature of the individual soul operating within its own perspective; but in the future we will see how all the different positions taken on spiritual matters will all be part of one totality, like a work of art, like ornaments of a bride, which work not as individual objects but as part of an array, of a full image.

General News

Something Amazing Is Happening in Joplin, MO

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On Monday, the Islamic Society of Joplin – the only mosque within 50 square miles of Joplin, Missouri – burned to the ground in what authorities suspect was a hate-fueled arson attack. This painful incident occurred a mere 24 hours after the Sikh temple massacre in Wisconsin, and the two tragedies broadcast to America (and to the world) the dangerous depths of Islamophobia and hatred for the other by white extremists in this country. However, a different message is now being broadcast in Joplin, a town which just last year demonstrated its strong communal spirit in the wake of a devastating tornado. And it is a stirring message of tolerance and a rejection of hatred, a message that’s being delivered in the form of both communal support and the sudden success of a donation campaign to help rebuild the mosque. Local religious institutions have stepped forward, showing an outpouring of support and offering communal spaces where citizens can hold an iftar – the meal which breaks the day’s fast during Ramadan.