General News

Who Is "The Beast?"

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As often happens in the evening when my husband Derrick has heard a lot of political rhetoric on the radio or TV (I’m the one really watching or listening – he’s the one trying to do Sudoku to escape it all), Derrick will make one comment that will spark my imagination and get my fingers flying on the keyboard. Last night his quip was that the “beast” conservatives were trying to starve or drown wasn’t government, it was, among many would-be victims, our god-daughter who has Down Syndrome. “Starve the Beast” has been a mantra of conservative politics for decades. The phrase is attributed to an un-named Ronald Reagan staffer and was most recently used publicly by Sarah Palin who called on Congress to “starve the beast” by cutting taxes. Grover Norquist, author of the coercive “Taxpayer Protection Pledge,” rather than referring to some mythical beast, actually provides language that is closer to what Derrick suggested last night, when Norquist infamously said that “My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.”

Environment

Why I'm Going to the Women's Congress For Future Generations and Why You Should, Too

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Eighteen years ago, a year after my mother’s death, almost to the day, I was diagnosed with cancer, Hodgkin’s Disease. When my mother passed, she had lymphoma. Five years prior to my diagnosis, my Dad died, after a long battle with Melanoma. It metastasized to his brain. All that cancer so close to home was my wake up call. I knew something was wrong, and I knew it couldn’t just be genetics.

Politics & Society

President Obama Calls Israel's Bluff

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For months, Israel’s leadership has made it appear as though a military strike against Iran may be imminent. However, some (including myself) have viewed such sabre rattling as nothing more than a bluff – a bluff intended to politically scare up U.S. support for a military strike in an election year. A report from The Washington Post today makes it appear as though President Obama agrees. For the Obama administration seems to be calling Israel’s bluff. In short, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has been waving Iran before the GOP like a piece of red meat, imploring Republicans to hit Obama hard politically with the spectre of Israel’s vulnerability.

General News

Was Ann Romney's Speech About "Love" or Hypocrisy?

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Watching Ann Romney’s speech to the Republican National Convention was an exercise in cognitive dissonance. First she sounded like she was making an argument for a progressive agenda, and then she defended a position that completely contradicted everything she said in the first part of the speech. Why does anyone think it was a success? Mrs. Romney began her speech by invoking the concept of “love” as what “holds us all together.” She then empathetically depicted the struggles ordinary Americans face, laying in bed side-by-side trying to figure out how to pay the bills, reeling at the price of gas and groceries, working long hours so their kids can get new clothes or to pay for them to participate in sports, which “used to be free” but now are not – none of which she has actually experienced firsthand, of course.

Christianity

"The-Not-So-Social-Gospel"

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It saddens us at Tikkun to see how twisted that Church leadership has become, just as we have been saddened by how twisted the Jewish leadership has become to give blind support to the oppressive policies of Israel toward Palestinians, and reminds us to once again invite all Christians who do feel connected to the social justice, peace and love oriented Jesus to join our INTERFAITH Network of Spiritual Progressives at www.spiritualprogressives.org so that we can work together to amplify these voices and provide comfort and support to those who are being “dissed” in their own religious communities for taking seriously the highest teachings of their God.

Healing Israel/Palestine

An Open Call for the Elections and Uri Avnery's "Ayn Rand and Paul Ryan"

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In the coming two months we welcome submissions (to me at RabbiLerner.tikkun@gmail.com) about what and who spiritual progressives should be backing in the coming elections. Below we print the article sent to us by Uri Avnery on Paul Ryan and Ayn Rand. Like every such article, we do not claim this to be an official Tikkun perspective, but rather an interesting take, in this case from the leader of the most intellectually coherent Israeli peace movement–Gush Shalom.

General News

Women's Rights and Duties

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August 18 is the 92nd birthday of the 19th amendment to the Constitution that gave voting rights to women. American women worked for at least 72 years – from 1848 to 1920–to expand the franchise to include women. And as late at the 1960s, men and women such as Fannie Lou Hamer took beatings for the right to vote. Many religious traditions teach the importance of memory and the importance of ancestor respect. In traditional African cosmology, the ancestors remain a part of the living community.