Tikkun Daily Blog Archive (https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/2014/08/page/3/)
Hedy Epstein, a 90-year-old Holocaust survivor was arrested in Ferguson while protesting Governor Jay Nixon’s actions. Epstein said after her detainment, “I’ve been doing this since I was a teenager. I didn’t think I would have to do it when I was 90. We need to stand up today so that people won’t have to do this when they’re 90.”
Is this Missouri or Palestine? Palestinians take to social media in empathy with the people of Ferguson.
Standing on the site of the Warsaw ghetto, hearing Israeli Hebrew spoken around me, I thought about Gaza. And a deeply cynical, deeply hurt, deeply hopeless voice within me thinks: do Israelis really need to come all the way to Warsaw to learn about ghettoes? And a more hopeful voice, the voice of a student and a teacher wonders, what if more of us came to Warsaw not to reinforce a history of oppression, but to study the legacy of those proposing ways to eradicate it?
Florida pastor, T.W. Jenkins, canceled Julion Evans’s funeral when he found out Evans was married to a man. Warren Blumenfeld comments on how other faith communities are treating LGBT people and hopes Jenkins apologizes.
A group of 10,000 activists gathered in Rabin Square in Tel Aviv over the weekend protesting against war and for a political solution that creates peace.
The murder of Mike Brown and response by the St. Louis Police Department to nonviolent protestors is emblematic of the persistent racism in our country and disproportionate response to peaceful actions and protests. It was only 13 months ago when a jury acquitted George Zimmerman of murder for his shooting of Trayvon Martin and here we are again, this time with a police officer shooting an unarmed black man as, according to witnesses, his hands were raised – the officer not in any danger.
The Zionist movement was not an innocent victim of Arab fanaticism and antipathy to Jews. It was an active participant and initiator of an intercommunal conflict which resulted in the expulsion of a million Palestinians in 1948 and then 1967, which has produced a brutal and illegal occupation that continues and even intensifies to this day. Do you think this is fair, Mr. Voight?
Hinduism and its principles go far beyond ethnic identities and national borders. In fact, the universality of Hinduism makes it applicable in almost every aspect of our daily lives, particularly when it comes to the equality of all beings and our inherent need to help them.
In conversations about Gaza, I have heard many thoughtful people in the Jewish community lament the loss of Palestinian lives in Gaza but then say, “But Hamas…,” as if that were the heart of the problem. I’d like to suggest that, when we have these conversations about Hamas and Israel’s current bombing campaign, we begin with the necessary context and historical perspective.
“Tisha b’Av is a holiday about adding to the heap whatever calamity Jews have most recently experienced. The profound insight of Eicha, Lamentations, and the rabbis of the Talmud, is to understand our calamities by focusing not our attackers or their moral status, but on our own moral failures.”