Healing Israel/Palestine

Exodus (the movie) A Passover Maundy Thursday Reflection

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When Holy Week and Passover are the same week, the simultaneity reminds us that Jesus was not a Christian. He was a radical Jewish rabbi who called himself the Son of Man, teaching his followers to understand their tradition at its basic purpose – love for God and for all of God’s creation. The Last Supper, the Lord’s Supper, the Eucharist began as a Passover meal, the purpose of which is to remember Jewish liberation from slavery in Egypt. Jesus instructed his disciples to use the table meal to remember him, and he gave a new commandment: Love one another.

Christianity

Are Passover and Easter Just Celebrations of Violence?

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Surrounded by the usual code words for these holidays – “freedom from slavery” for the first, “resurrection and new life” for the second – this question may seem at the least silly and at worst an exercise of blasphemous anti-religiosity.
Yet it is actually a serious question. Consider that while freeing the Jews all, yes all, the Egyptians’ first born – from that of the Pharaoh to the Pharaoh’s servants to the Pharaoh’s pet cat – had to die. And consider that Christianity seems to require the suffering and death of an innocent.

Christianity

Jesus, at Least, Opposed the Death Penalty

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Jesus himself cited the Old Testament law which had been given to teach the sanctity of human life: “You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.” What is more, Jesus intensified this teaching, saying that anyone who calls his neighbor a fool is subject to the same judgment. But Jesus knew that humans are inevitably flawed in our execution of judgment. “Judge not lest you be judged,” he taught his followers. Instead, he said, “Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you.”

Health

The Next Time You See The Red Sea Part…

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Without safe water and sanitation, we cannot curtail malnutrition, a multitude of diseases, or poverty.We cannot support sustainable farming and food security, promote girls’ education or gender equality.Not even peace can be achieved when some have and others don’t have something as basic to life as water.

Environment

Eco-Judaism: The Torah Mandala and the Mystical System of Sustainability

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In Torah, holiness/sustainability is a living system of systems just as we humans are living systems of systems. Each component of the system—humans, the Earth, nature, time intervals, and the Godfield—are all in recursive relationship with every other part of the system. We humans are energy movers, drawing down from and sending up to the Divine source, and sending out to and receiving from other people, other life forms and the living Earth. The holiness system is in constant flux, needing to be balanced and corrected by human action.

Healing Israel/Palestine

A Poem on the Impossibility of Passover

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I’d always been on the liberal end of the Zionist spectrum but the more I read about the history of this 100 year conflict between Zionists and the indigenous Arab population, the more I had come to realize that we had become the ‘oppressors’, we were now the Pharaoh for another people. Once my enlightenment on the Palestinian narrative was ‘out of the box’ it was impossible to put it back in. And how could we celebrate Passover without making any mention of this?
These days I use my own Haggadah, one that both acknowledges Jewish tradition and recognizes that it is possible for the victim to become the victimizer. The poem below is an attempt to express the moral question that now surrounds and profoundly challenges our annual commemoration of the Exodus:

Christianity

Remembering Baghdad, 2003

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When God’s people hold onto the hope of reconciliation through the peculiar way of the cross, we interrupt the assumptions of a culture of violence. But the truth is that all of us—not just soldiers and police officers—are well practiced in the use of worldly power. Those of us who come from positions of privilege in society lean on the silent power of money and social norms, trusting in systems of control that have favored people who speak our language or share our skin color. At the same time, people who live with their backs against the wall resort to subversive acts of violence, carving out a space for survival by manipulating the fears those who seem to be “in control.”

Islam

Muslim Women’s History Month: Spotlight on Benazir Bhutto

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Benazir’s contribution to the progress of Pakistan is hotly debated even after her death. But as a Muslim woman, the influence she had on other Muslim women like me was tremendous. Even as the nation became disillusioned with her towards the end of her political rule, they continued to love what she exemplified to all women everywhere. This month I salute her courage in the face of a chauvinistic society and hope that many more Muslim women will follow her lead to become the self-assured, independent and empowered women that Islam meant us to be. That is Benazir’s true legacy.

Christianity

The Trouble With Earthly Cities

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The confession at the heart of Tyler’s book is one that exposes how much the early 20th century Social Gospel and the late 20th century Religious Right had in common–namely, the assumption of power and privilege. At different times and in different settings, these movements had differing opinions about which way to steer history. But the purchase of each–the energy that drove the activists in both movements–was the belief that it is our job to save America.