Tikkun Daily Blog Archive (https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/author/rabbilerner/page/3/)
Faced with July 4th celebrations that are focused on militarism, ultra-nationalism, and “bombs bursting in air,” many American families who do not share those values turn July 4th into another summer holiday focused on picnics, sports and fireworks while doing their best to avoid the dominant rhetoric and bombast. We in the Network of Spiritual Progressives believe that this is a net loss.
To uproot this racism at every level in which it manifests, we need a systematic program. As spiritual progressives, we start first with the need to grieve all the suffering that victims of racism have suffered throughout human history. Please take a moment to allow your grief to be expressed (yes, right now, but also later with other people as a prelude whenever you enter a discussion about racism). And then, move on to an action agenda such as we propose below.
The best way to support the Pope is to build an interfaith movement based on these values articulated in the New Bottom Line. It is only when people begin to see a spiritual progressive movement in the public sphere with a strategy for how to save the planet that is willing to challenge the fundamentals of global capitalism that they will be able to imagine overcoming their own passivity, emotional depression, and mistaken certainty that “nothing will ever make possible a new economic system.”
Jewish liberals and progressives reacted with enthusiasm to the announcement today that the Vatican will recognize the Palestinian State. Rabbi Michael Lernner, editor of Tikkun Magazine, released the following statement.
The anger underlying the violence in Baltimore is understandable. Living in neighborhoods where there are no jobs, no quality education, no livable wage, and the resurgence of racism all leads to a sense of hopelessness and despair. “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”
As long as corporations have a fiduciary responsibility to maximize the investments of their stockholders, they have no choice but to make profits their “bottom line.” But we are promoting a New Bottom Line, so that every corporation, government policy, our legal system, health care system, educational system, and every other major system is judged efficient, rational and productive to the extent that they maximize love and caring, environmental sustainability and responsibility, ethical behavior and generosity, and our capacities to respond to the Earth with radical amazement, of which we are an important part.
What makes this year’s Passover Seders unlike any others is that a majority of American Jews have been forced to face the fact that Palestinians today are asking Jews what Moses asked Pharaoh: “Let my people go.” A disproportionately larger number of young Jews, will be asking a provocative question at their Seder tables: “If Israel won’t let the Palestinian people have their own state, then don’t we have to insist that the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza be given the vote?
Being a militarist and racist state will not help win Israel any friends around the world, and in the not-too-long-run it will weaken Israel’s support in the United States both among Americans in general and in particular among young Jews.
The biggest losers will be all those on the planet who yearn for a world based on social and economic justice, environmental sanity, peace and non-violence, and genuine caring for the peoples of the world. Those of us who talk about building a world based on love and caring will face the next five years with an Israel that scoffs at those ideas and spreads its cynicism to the rest of the world. Instead, Israel will be spouting a message of fear and championing the “Right Hand of God,” i.e. the notion that force and violence are the only way to achieve safety and security. And while few Israelis want to be involved in another war, many want to get the U.S. to do a proxy war on Iran for Israel, and that will be bad not only for the people of the Middle East but also for the many Americans who will lose their lives in such a war.
In the context of Israeli politics, the HaTikvah group is as good for Israel as the left wing of the Democratic Party is good for the U.S.