Tikkun Daily Blog Archive (https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/2013/10/page/3/)
For preachers of the so-called “prosperity gospel,” business is booming. They even have their own cable reality TV show. What First Amendment-sound legal reforms might we consider to stand against the commodification of God?
A Pew Survey has found that American Jews are becoming increasingly critical of Israel and its leaders’ efforts to make peace with Palestinians. This shift is occurring among American Jews under 30 who are beginning to see the settlements as self-destructive and disagree with the amount of United States support for Israel, considering the country’s policies. Could this group be the influence the US needs to exert more pressure on Israel policy?
Youth Spirit Artworks is an interfaith job-training arts program co-founded by Sally Hindman. Hindman – who’s also responsible for the Telegraph Avenue drop-in center for homeless youth and Street Spirit, the Bay Area’s homeless newspaper – created the organization in 2007 in order to provide training for young people in need.
In Britain, the BBC has recently finished airing a landmark documentary ‘The Story of the Jews’, written and presented by the British historian Simon Schama. The ratings were good and the praise was high from both the mainstream media critics and from most British Jews. It was a highly passionate and emotional telling of ‘our story’. This time, unlike Schama’s previous television histories, it was personal. I had certainly enjoyed much of Schama’s presentation until he said this:
“…in some sense if you don’t live in Israel – I don’t live in Israel – you’re morally obliged to be nearly silent, nearly silent.”
Does Outrage Work?
When I consider how my own mind has changed, it was never because someone attacked and judged me harshly. It almost always arose from the surprising response of someone I respected. One example: I grew up literally and genuinely homophobic, one of those who are called “haters” though it was not true that I hated homosexuals.
Text:Jeremiah 29: 1-7; Luke 17: 11-18
In the first pages of Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, the reader confronts a Columbus quite different from the one we learned in school. Some may be aware that he sailed on condition of receiving a large share in the profits from his gold-seeking adventure, but everyone knows that early on October 12, 1492, a sailor finally sighted land. Columbus’ ship was met by Arawak Indians swimming out to greet the visitors. In his journal, the explorer wrote of these Indians:
They are well-built, with good bodies and handsome features. .
If Radical Decency challenges us to be decent at all times and without exception does this mean that those of us who are not saints are doomed to fail? This blog tackles this issue; framing Radical Decency as an aspirational practice; arguing that we realize its promise – not when we’re perfect – but when we practice it with focus, persistence, imagination, and guts.
The bottom line is that we in this country, as well as in others with burgeoning Muslim populations, must start a dialogue, come up with solutions that allow us to move forward together and stop discriminating against each other based on labels. We cannot keep denying groups of people drivers’ licenses or student IDs or public services based on what’s on their heads or in their hearts. We must start talking, to figure out what can be done to balance safety and civil liberties, democracy and religion. Until we do that, we are not truly human beings, just labels.
Chuck Hagel is a good Nebraskan. But he can’t connect the dots between a for-pay soldiery and military sexual assaults.
Yesterday, President Obama invited Malala Yousafzai to the White House, where he, Michelle and Malia embraced her and thanked Malala for her courageous activism in Pakistan.
The teenager, who miraculously survived an assassination attempt by the Taliban and has since become a fierce advocate on behalf of women’s education in Pakistan, has been spreading her message of nonviolence and peace throughout America – a message that left Jon Stewart speechless.