Culture

Two Poems — "Ghazal: America" and "At the Banquet"

By |

by Alicia Ostriker
GHAZAL: AMERICA
My grandfather’s pipe tobacco fragrance, moss-green cardigan, his Yiddish lullaby
when I woke crying: three of my earliest memories in America
Arriving on time for the first big war, remaining for the second, sad grandpa
who walked across Europe to get to America
When the babies starved, when the village burned, when you were flogged
Log out, ship out, there was a dream, the green breast of America
My grandfather said no President including Roosevelt would save the Jews in Europe
He drew out an ample handkerchief and wiped away the weeping of America
One thing that makes me happy about my country
is that Allen Ginsberg could fearlessly write the comic poem “America”
Route sixty-six entices me westward ho toward dreaming California
I adore superhighways but money is the route of all evil in America
Curse the mines curse the sweatshops curse the factory curse the boss
Let devils in hell torment the makers of bombs over Baghdad in America
When I video your rivers your painterly meadows your public sculpture Rockies,
When I walk in your filthy cities I love you so much I bless you so much America
People people look there: grandpa please look: Liberty the Shekhina herself
Welcoming you like a queen, like a mother, to America
Take the fluteplayer from the mesa, take the raven from his tree
Now that the buffalo is gone from America
White man, the blacks are snarling, the yellows swarming, the umber terrorists
Are tunneling through and breathing your air of fear in America
If you will it, it is no dream, somebody admonished my grandfather
He surmised they were speaking of freedom in America
AT THE BANQUET
For Dunya Mikhail
I am making a banquet of death
I am swallowing the six million plus
gypsies homosexuals the feeble
the sixty million and more
as Toni Morrison declares in the dedication
to Beloved yes there are things we eat to live
and things we eat for entertainment
all the wounds the pollutions in my country
my good body takes them in plus
Vilna Dresden Nanjing Nagasaki
Palestine Memphis Baghdad the Congo
The former Yugoslavia
And the other Americas the gold and silver vanished
La Virgen weeping Los Indios bleeding
And here I am sucking that blood
in the land of the free
in the land of the free and the drugged
in the nation of money
all of us shoppers all of us holy innocents
all of us readers and writers of righteous tweets
all of us vampires and voters, all of us sports fans
sucking it up brushing our capital teeth

Politics & Society

Understanding America's Reactions to Politicians' Sex Scandals: Rep. Anthony Weiner

By |

While the media continually underplays the crimes committed by the United States government both in its daily acts of murder against innocents in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq and in its flagrant disregard for the well-being of the people of the US by ignoring the pain they suffer as a result of inadequate jobs and health care, polluted air and water, homelessness, etc., nothing is ever missed when a political leader does some lewd sexual act. The current media circus around Rep. Weiner is just another way the media focuses on the trivial and ignores the significant crimes and problems of our time. But since this is happening, we present three very different perspectives on the current reality. This is the first article I want to share:
Everything Said About Anthony Weiner Is Bull
by Michael Bader
There’s only one legitimate reason to be upset with Anthony Weiner, and that’s because his behavior and its discovery has taken away a bold and effective voice in the Democratic party. Everything else you think and feel about him is bullshit.

art

The Art of Revolution: Norman Nawrocki's Spoken Word

By |

This second installment of my Tikkun Daily series on “Spoken Word, Video, and Performance Art to Change the World” features multidisciplinary artist Norman Nawrocki of Montreal, Quebec. Nawrocki’s art is about community, it’s about activism, and he doesn’t shy away from taking a critical look at some of today’s most politically charged issues. Like all of the artists featured here, Nawrocki sees art as a means for social change, and he lives this not only in his role as artist, but as an instructor as well, helping to form the next generation of artist/provocateurs. Incorporating many genres into his work Nawrocki is an author, veteran spoken word artist, violinist, actor, educator, and sex advocate with an international reputation. He has several books of short fiction and poetry (in English, French & Italian), over 50 music albums (solo & with his different bands), and has written several theater musicals and cabarets.

General News

Consciousness-Raising, Faith Communities and Mass Incarceration, the "Moral Equivalent to Jim Crow"

By |

On Friday, May 28, I attended a lecture at St. Paul AME Church in Berkeley, California by Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. It was an interesting chance that Alexander’s lecture coincided with the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling to uphold the mandate for California to reduce its prison overcrowding by at least 30,000 prisoners. While I have been aware of systemic racism within the prison industrial complex thanks in part to the community education efforts of organizations in the S.F. Bay Area and my seminary education at Starr King School for the Ministry, I was alarmed by the facts she offered as well as the links between Jim Crow laws enacted before 1965 institutionalizing social, economic and other disadvantages based on race and today’s mass incarceration. By the end of the lecture, I became acutely aware of what people of faith can gain from understanding racism and mass incarceration as well as sharing with others their reflective milestones.

Healing Israel/Palestine

Obama, Finkelstein & Ben-Ami Debate Israel's Borders

By |

Pres. Obama’s much publicized speech on the Middle East at the State Department on May 19th caused a stir by advocating an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement based upon the pre-June 1967 borders (the so-called Green Line), with modifications in the form of “land swaps” negotiated between the parties. This has been the general framework that moderate and pro-peace Israelis and Palestinians have promoted since at least 1995, when it was realized that most West Bank settlers live in thickly-populated “settlement blocs” contiguous with the Green Line. Unfortunately, too many people (most importantly, Prime Minister Netanyahu) seized upon Obama’s statement about the pre-June ’67 lines, disregarding his call for trading territory. That Netanyahu and so many others found this controversial, illustrates how far we’ve come from a peace agreement almost arrived at in 2008. It also indicates that the US needs to be more assertive in helping the parties finally achieve peace.

Empathy

My Response to President Obama's Middle East Address

By |

We at Tikkun magazine commend President Obama for his call for the US to align with democratic forces in the Middle East, and for a resumption of negotiations between Israel and Palestine based on the 1967 borders, his recognition that the Palestinian people have the right to govern themselves and reach their potential in a sovereign and contiguous state, and his re-affirmation of Israel’s right to complete security. However, we share with many in the peace movement a deep disappointment that President Obama is not willing to present a detailed US plan for what a just and lasting agreement would look like, and then spend time selling that plan to the people of Israel and Palestine (even though that will require going over the heads of the leaders of both countries). Instead, by putting forward only a small fragment of what a genuine peace accord would include, President Obama set himself up for the response that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu gave: that giving up the West Bank settlements would endanger Israeli security. Only a full blown plan including the details of how to provide security and justice for both sides, will advance the peace process–and the absence of such a plan was precisely what made the Oslo Accord signed under President Clinton ultimately a failure. President Obama must not hide behind the empty slogan that no one but the Israelis and Palestinians can determine the contours of the peace they seek–this merely avoids what the peace movements have asked for, namely his strong intervention to win over the hearts of Israelis and Palestinians to a peace plan that he could propose (e.g. one based on the proposal of Tikkun magazine).

Christianity

We're Here, We're Queer, We've Got Work to Do!

By |

Two decades ago someone like me wasn’t allowed to serve in the U.S. military openly, so after eight years of service, I left. Back then someone like Derrick wasn’t allowed to openly serve as a deacon, elder, or minister in the Presbyterian Church USA, so he joined a congregation that fought against that ban. That congregation, the First Presbyterian Church of Palo Alto, had a long history of working for peace and social justice. Along with fully accepting Derrick and me for who we were, the people there also introduced us to the power of nonviolent resistance against injustice in all its forms, and opened our eyes to the many ways we were called to make the world a better place. By truly embracing us as individuals AND as a couple, they also set us on a path to where we are today.

Politics & Society

Osama bin Laden's Messy (and Debatable) Demise

By |

Now that justice has finally caught up with Osama bin Laden, one hopes that sanity will finally catch up with Washington. In the indispensable TomDispatch.com, editor Tom Engelhardt rains on our very premature victory parade at bin Laden’s death, pointing out that OBL lives on in a host of crucial ways and that the fiend’s enduring victory lies in America’s self-imposed political debasement after 9/11:
Unfortunately, in every way that matters for Americans, it’s an illusion that Osama bin Laden is dead. In every way that matters, he will fight on, barring a major Obama administration policy shift in Afghanistan, and it’s we who will ensure that he remains on the battlefield that George W. Bush’s administration once so grandiosely labeled the Global War on Terror. Admittedly, the Arab world had largely left bin Laden in the dust even before he took that bullet to the head. There, the focus was on the Arab Spring, the massive, ongoing, largely nonviolent protests that have shaken the region and its autocrats to their roots.

Culture

A Mother's Day Message

By |

I look forward to the day when loving relationships with people you know and with people you do not know are the most valuable treasure you seek.

Media Tools

Thanks to Reach & Teach and Design Action!

By |

If you have been admiring our new magazine website since it debuted in March, and wondered who put it all together, well here are most of us at an evening celebrating the achievement. The two Tikkun staff who saw the project through from soup to nuts are Alana Yu-lan Price, second from left at bottom, and me, the baldy with specs at back. Our designer, with whom we worked from the get go, is Sabiha Basrai of Design Action, to the right of Alana. Sabiha has also designed the print magazine for the last four years, and the three of us have had a great time working together. The style and functionality (in design terms) of the new website owe more to these two women than to anyone else.