Culture

The Crisis in Israel's Holocaust Education

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Israeli Minister of Education Shai Piron’s plan to introduce Holocaust education to Israeli public schools starting as early as the first grade has been controversial. Alongside the concern voiced by many parents about traumatizing young children with gruesome details of systematic ethnic cleansing, many begin to question how the continued rehashing of communal wounds shape the development of national identity and what political interests the perpetuation of historical trauma might serve.

Culture

No "Honor" or Respect in Colonizing Native American and Jewish Culture

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The continued use of American Indian likenesses and images by sports teams has resulted in widespread racial, cultural and spiritual stereotyping which promotes hatred and disrespect of American Indian people. Using American Indian slurs like ‘Redskins’ is no different than the use of Black Sambo which offended African Americans or the Frito Bandito which is offensive to the Hispanic community.

Culture

Hirsi Ali, Islam, and Cultural Relativism: The Brandeis Controversy

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In an age of identity politics can we criticize the formerly colonized or semi-colonized “Two-Thirds World” (in the faculty letter’s terminology)? How to address female genital mutilation in Somalia, slavery in Mauritania and the lynching of gays in Kenya? Especially when such occurrences are clothed with the authority of religion, how do we respond?

art

Jeff Gipe’s “Renegade Art”: Protesting Development Near Rocky Flats Plutonium Plant

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When artist Jeff Gipe talks about the renegade sculpture he created to protest the construction of a housing development near the former plutonium plant Rocky Flats, what he has to say sounds incredible. The entire Rocky Flats’ story reads like a made-for-Hollywood movie, replete with leaking drums of nuclear waste, FBI raids, and so-called government cover-ups. Gipe grew up near the mysterious facility, leaving him with experiences he’ll never forget.

Culture

A Seed on the Seder Plate

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Returning in springtime, with Passover on the horizon, has given us time to reflect on the liberation story of our ancestors and ask what needs liberating in our current world. Control over seed means a control over our lives, our food and our freedom: a dangerous and deadly business. It’s time we collectively stand up for seed freedom, which is why this year we are proposing adding a seed to the Seder plate.

Culture

The Challenges of Seder Night

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The challenge of Seder night is not just to remember the past, not just to recall the extraordinary longevity of our story with its roots in servitude and its mythos of the Jews as a people liberated into a different kind of servitude – servitude to a vision of how things could be, how freedoms of many kinds could be the inheritance of all peoples

Culture

In One Word: Poof!

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Uri Avnery’s analysis helps cut through the cloud of lies and distortions in the American, Israeli, and Palestinian media so we can understand and face reality.

Culture

The Art of Revolution: The River and the Sea, A Documentary Play by Danny Bryck

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When it comes to Israel/Palestine, Actor and Writer Danny Bryck isn’t the first to consider this question: “When everyone tells a different story, how do we tell the truth?” He may, however, be the first to work so hard to hear quite so many different stories that come from the thin strip of land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River.