General News

Saving Mohammed Abu-Mustafa: the Complexities of Israel/Palestine in Shlomi Eldar's 'Precious Life'

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One of our readers just emailed me (I’m back from vacation, and from getting our Sept/Oct issue to print before that, which is why you haven’t heard from me for a while):
For the last several; weeks I have been following Tikkun Daily. I watch Israel get beaten into the ground as if it is the bad guy in the region. Rarely do I see columns that reveal the complexity of the conflict from all perspectives. Recently I came upon the review of a documentary by Shlomi Eldar entitled “Precious Life”. I checked to see if anything in Tikkun Daily was written about it and I found nothing. I am hoping it comes to the US so I have the opportunity to see it.

General News

Park 51 and America's Unresolved Pain

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Whenever we allow resentment and pain and fear and unforgiveness and will to revenge have place in our hearts or in our country, we continue to be subject to the event that caused us the pain and to the people that caused the event. We are never free of them. When we forgive and remember, when we love and remember, when we do good while we remember, we are free. We have taken back our moral agency.

General News

When Positive Thinking Becomes Religion: How "The Secret" and Law of Attraction Poison Spirituality

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We must understand that the founder of a cult or new religion has no room for compromise: absolutes are necessary. True believers in mystical psychotherapy will not embrace a gospel with modest claims: it must be all or nothing. – Martin Larson
“He could go to school and daydream.” That was the advice given by positive thinking guru, law of attraction teacher and “channel” Esther Hicks aka “Abraham” to a black woman who asked how her son should approach learning about the difficult history of slavery in school. After telling the curious mother “none of that [slavery] has anything to do with him,” and that “he won’t have to deal with it” Abraham-Hicks proceeded to equate the teaching of African-American history with a family legacy of passing down “bad” feelings.

Gender and Sexuality

WBAI Radio on Right Wing "Feminism"

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Last Thursday July 15th Fran Luck interviewed Abby Scher and me about right-wing “feminism.” I wrote about it after our talk, and I just wanted you to know that you can hear us at http://archive.wbai.org. Just scroll down the page until you come to the “Joy of Resistance” on Thursday July 15 at 11:00am (the listing is in reverse chronological order). The first half of the show concerns current news about women around the world, and the interview begins at 31:17 (i.e. 31 minutes and 17 seconds into the program). Hope you enjoy it.

Christianity

Does Religion Cause Bad Behavior? Hitchens Can't Decide

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Christopher Hitchens’s book God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything is a lengthy and detailed description of what happens when religious people behave badly. And this apparent correlation between religion and bad behavior is perhaps one of the most common reasons cited by the new atheists as to why all religion should be abandoned. But does Hitchens really believe religion causes people to do bad things? As I illustrate his position is unclear. An interview with Jian Ghomeshi on QTV reveals the double standard that Hitchens has about the cause/effect relationship of religion and human behavior.

Culture

When a child's behavior suddenly changes, it could be a sign of abuse. In a New Orleans School, Abuse is Policy

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I recently attended a training session for adults who work with children in our faith community. The training included the signs people should look for that might indicate that a child has been abused. For example, a six year old boy who was always happy, outgoing, and loved playing outside with his friends, suddenly withdraws, only wants to stay in his room, doesn’t want to go to school… Could that be a sign of abuse? Yes.

Gender and Sexuality

Right-Wing "Feminism" Nothing New — More Thoughts

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This morning I had the pleasure of talking with Fran Luck on WBAI-FM , a Pacifica affiliate in NYC. Fran hosts the “Joy of Resistance,” a show that covers “the ongoing and world-wide struggle for the full liberation of women–as it continues to unfold dynamically in every country and culture on the planet.” She had read my original post about Sarah Palin and wanted to interview me about the parallels I saw between Palin’s “feminism” and the Nazi militants, about whom I wrote part of my dissertation. It was a great conversation. I’m a conversation junkie.

art

New book on Israel's Relationship with Apartheid South Africa

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Sometimes a review of a book is a good substitute, for those with limited time, for actually reading the book. This may be the case with what appears to be a thoughtful review by Bernard Porter of a new book by Sasha Polakow-Suransky, The Unspoken Alliance: Israel’s Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa. Although the book does not seem to concern itself with the extent to which Israeli society itself is similar to apartheid South Africa, the reviewer discusses that question in passing, noting disanalogies. Not discussed, so far as I can tell, is whether the term “global apartheid” can be applied to the global socioeconomic system and if so, to what extent Israeli society, like our own, is complicit in it. The review starts by considering the issue of whether Israel did or did not offer nuclear weapons technology to South Africa in 1975 and then continues:
We have known for some time that Israel consistently dissembled, in the 1970s and 1980s, about its wider alliance with South Africa: this is the far more interesting puzzle that Polakow-Suransky’s well-researched, readable and (I think) balanced book sets out to unravel.

Inter-Culturalism

Outrage at Involuntary Manslaughter Conviction in Trial of Oscar Grant's Killer

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Involuntary manslaughter. It is with great sadness and bitterness that those two words are echoing through California right now. Protesters have massed in downtown Oakland in response to this disturbingly lenient verdict in the trial of Johannes Mehserle, the former transit police officer who shot and killed unarmed train rider Oscar Grant. Involuntary manslaughter — it’s a verdict usually reserved for accidental killings such as car accidents. That conviction alone usually carries with it a maximum prison sentence of four years, but in this case the maximum sentence has been upped to fourteen years due to Mehserle’s use of a firearm in the killing.

art

Jesse Rifkin: Real "Bad Jew"

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I’m a bad Jew,” a friend said, grinning ear to ear and then biting into a bacon-egg-and-cheese bagel sandwich. Even looking back on the Jewish gangsters of the 1920’s, socialist Jews of the 1930’s, hippies of the ’60’s and punks of the ’80’s, seldom has being a “bad Jew” seemed so trendy. Time and time again, American Jews simultaneously act and critique their own actions, rigidly adhere to ancient precepts and then question them. As a community, we create the counter thesis to our own tradition through rebellion, with the rebellion itself long since becoming a tradition. The problem is that “bad Jews” don’t always play their part so well.