Empathy

Why anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism – but criticising Israel isn’t

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The Labour Party has become embroiled in a row about anti-Semitism. Why the row? After all, the Labour Party is committed to challenging racism and anti-Semitism – which is a particular form of racism. It’s a row because the anti-Semitism in question concerns anti-Zionism – and not everybody in the Labour Party agrees that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism. At the heart of the current row, a tweet re-tweeted by Labour MP Naz Shah, which suggested that Israel be relocated to the United States. For those who shared the tweet, it seemed fair comment, given the support of the United States for Israel – and the fact that the second largest Jewish population in the world resides in the United States. Of the 14.2 million Jews living in the world today, six million live in Israel and over five million live in the US.

Culture

Building a Progressive Spiritual Movement

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The Crow Tribe in Montana, not unlike many other Native American communities, inner cities, and rural towns in America, does not have adequate housing, jobs, or educational opportunities. But unlike inner cities and rural towns, what the Crow Tribe does have is its own land. And the Crow Tribe’s land happens to have a lot of coal—9 billion tons of it to be exact. The tribe planning to develop a new coal mine on its land. They have contracted with Cloud Peak energy to extract coal from their land. Not all Crow Tribe members support this unusual partnership. But all agree that the Tribe is struggling to provide the services its community members need and this seems to offer one avenue of hope and possibility.

Culture

All Disasters Are Miracles

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There was silence in the chapel. The light was streaming in through the large cathedral windows. The light came in as rays of golden possibilities in an impossible situation. The inmates were sitting on pews and around the table where we were studying in the back of the chapel. Nobody raised their hands. I asked myself, what would it take to generate interest and excitement in the topic of miracles; any kind of response-something? Was the lack of responses due to the oppressive and suppressive after-effects of long term incarceration? Or was there a lack of experience among these inmates? Maybe no one experienced a miracle?

Empathy

All the News That’s Fit to Print: How the Media Hide Undocumented Workers

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In our post-modern (or post-post-modern?) age, we are supposedly transcending the material certainties of the past. The virtual world of the Internet is replacing the “real,” material world, as theory asks us to question the very notion of reality. Yet that virtual world turns out to rely heavily on some distinctly old systems and realities, including the physical labor of those who produce, care for, and provide the goods and services for the post-industrial information economy.

Culture

Provide Students with Mental Illness the Medical Care They Paid For

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I sat down to breakfast with my cereal, orange juice, and bottle of pills. Around me were several undergraduates at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), who lived with me at the cooperative house where I served as Resident Advisor from 2012 to 2014. When the conversation turned to my pills, I explained, as naturally as could be, that I was taking lithium carbonate to treat my mental-health diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder, Type II. As the students’ eyes widened, perhaps wondering about the fitness of their new RA for the job, I explained that mood disorders based in brain chemistry are extremely common, that treatment is easy, that I’ve never felt better since beginning treatment. With a confidence rooted in life experience, I said to the students that I am a high-functioning person who gets a lot done, who accomplished a lot as a student at MIT years ago, and who has continued that pattern through a leadership career in political technology and now into studying for the rabbinate.

Culture

The Need for Palliative (Humane) Care

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During our lifetime, many of us will face life-threatening or life altering illnesses or injuries, or perhaps we will watch those we love face them.  We all want to be loved and comforted; we all want and need to be supported when we are seriously ill and we want a gentle and dignified passing when it is our time.   Everyone is going to pass from this world (hopefully to a better place).  We need a healthcare system that can provide support, guidance and direction to those who are facing these challenges. This system is called palliative care. Palliative care is a medical specialty, which provides coordinated, comprehensive care to reduce pain and suffering for anyone who is given a life-threatening or life altering diagnosis.  It is care to provide comfort and support for the patient and for the patient’s loved ones. This medical specialty differs from hospice in that you are not required to have a six month or less, prognosis; curative/restorative treatment, as well as complimentary treatments, are allowed and provided.  Often this care is provided by an interdisciplinary team.  It is care to help heal, if possible, and improve the quality of life for anyone who is seriously ill.  It should start as soon as someone receives a serious diagnosis.

Culture

A Multicultural Immigrant Christmas

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Multiculturalism is an often-lauded ideal; in practice, it can be so hard to sustain. Painful misunderstandings, language difficulties, fear of shifts in power, new ways, even new foods, suspicions and misinterpretations come between us. Small wonder that many gravitate to the known, if stagnant.

Empathy

Humiliation is the Root of All Terrorism

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The idea that ISIS and other radical jihadis are simply “evil,” or that they “hate freedom” or are simply incomprehensible purveyors of a “hateful ideology” (to quote the repeated formulation of Barack Obama) just begs the question of why they are the way they are and why they believe what they believe. To actually understand Farook and Malik and those who engage in violent terrorism, and based on that understanding begin to do something to change the conditions that have produced and will likely continue to produce so much human suffering and loss, we have to attempt to grasp the terrorists’ experience of life from the inside, to see them as human just as we are, and to see what shaped them such that their thoughts and actions make sense to them.

Empathy

The Quran Speaks: ISIS and Islam are Opposites

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They have names like ISIL, Al Qaeda, Taliban, and so on. We Americans are being told by mainstream media sources that they belong to one religion: “Radical Islam.” The terrorists insist on calling themselves “Islamic,” and the media repeats this claim, but this label is a false equivalence and a very harmful false association we should be quick to avoid. Let the public not be fooled — the peace-loving, pious adherents of a beautiful faith that translates to “Submission” do not share a faith, values, or philosophy with terrorists, homicidal maniacs. The ultimate measurement of who or what is Islamic is universally accepted to be the Quran.

Empathy

For many Jews, anti-Arab racism hits home

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Following the devastating attacks in Paris, right wing forces have been fanning the frightening flames of anti-Arab racism, Islamophobia and xenophobia. There have been calls for increased surveillance of Muslim communities, unconstitutional registration of American Muslims, and religious tests for Syrian refugees seeking safety in the United States. I am Mizrahi. I’m a Jew, and like many Mizrahim, I’m also an Arab. We Arab Jews have a unique perspective to offer on the Syrian refugee crisis, and on the Islamophobic and anti-Arab backlash that we are seeing in this country and across the globe.