Tikkun Daily Digest: Shattering Stereotypes, The Tangled Web

Tikkun Daily Digest: Shattering Stereotypes, The Tangled Web Of Money And Love, Jesus: A Radical Jewish Rabbi, Commanding Narrat

Click on the links below to join a sampling from the lively discussions taking place these past weeks on the Tikkun Daily blog! Unlike the carefully edited print magazine and web magazine site, Tikkun Daily is a spontaneous, open forum to which volunteer bloggers directly post their ideas and readers post their comments. You'll find a provocative variety of views here, including some with which Tikkun editors heartily disagree, so please remember that any given post is presented solely by its author and does not represent Tikkun's editorial stance. To sign up for a FREE daily email digest with links to the day's posts, click here:

MJ Rosenberg: Democrats Not So Into Israel Anymore

Apr 02, 2013 12:47 pm | MJ Rosenberg

A new Pew Research Center poll demonstrates that Republicans are much more sympathetic to Israel than Democrats, a wider partisan divergence than has ever existed before. The poll finds that when asked if their sympathies are more with Israelis or Palestinians, 66 percent of Republicans choose Israel compared with 49 percent of independents and just 39 percent of ...

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Levi Bridges: How Fair is Fair Trade? A Dispatch from Veracruz

Apr 01, 2013 03:00 pm | Levi Bridges

At home in the U.S., the fair trade labels on products in health food stores often conjures up images in my head of happy farmers smiling as they tend their organic crops together. But an afternoon at Santez’s house shatters this optimistic stereotype; ironically, working with the bees is what pushed Santez and his son to leave Coyutla once more in search of work, this time as undocumented immigrants in the U.S.

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Ralph Seliger: Petition for Int’l. Solution to African Refugee Crisis

Apr 01, 2013 07:31 am | Ralph Seliger

I’ve signed this petition, as have a wide array of public figures and academics across the political spectrum and of a variety of faiths — including such accomplished Holocaust scholars as Israel’s Yehuda Bauer, Canada’s Irving Abella, and David S. Wyman in the U.S. Israel’s initial welcome reception of African refugees has become unwelcoming and ...

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Miki Kashtan: Money and the Web of Love

Mar 30, 2013 10:55 am | Miki Kashtan

It was only when I sat down to write this piece, some version of which has been brewing for some time, that I realized that it is, in some ways, a direct continuation of what I wrote about last week. It is a piece that’s about how we came to make money so central to ...

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Valerie Elverton-Dixon: Exodus (the movie) A Passover Maundy Thursday Reflection

Mar 29, 2013 02:55 am | Valerie Elverton-Dixon

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 ...

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Roger S. Gottlieb: Are Passover and Easter Just Celebrations of Violence?

Mar 28, 2013 12:25 pm | Roger S. Gottlieb

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 ...

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New Monastic -- Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove: Jesus, at Least, Opposed the Death Penalty

Mar 27, 2013 03:26 pm | New Monastic -- Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove

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.”

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Donna Schaper: Retelling the Story of Marriage and Families

Mar 27, 2013 03:03 pm | Donna Schaper

Marriage equality is an emerging story useful to both same sex and the "one man/one woman" kind of marriage. It is even helpful to families who are single parented. By story I mean the tale we tell ourselves about ourselves. The big word for it is narrative - and what the nation is missing right now is a narrator in chief about gender. Without a commanding narrative about what it means to have a gender, we are each and all lost in the woods of personal confusion, which results in national confusion, which results in many long dark nights of the soul, for those with any kind of sexual equipment. Marriage equality is helping, not hurting, this gender confusion.

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Ira Chernus: Obama Brings His Theology to the Middle East

Mar 27, 2013 12:42 pm | Ira Chernus

I cheered most when I heard Obama say words that I never thought I'd hear an American president say in Israel: The occupation is not merely harmful to Israel's national interests, it's downright immoral: "It is not fair that a Palestinian child ... lives with the presence of a foreign army that controls the movements of her parents every single day. ... It is not right to prevent Palestinians from farming their lands ... or to displace Palestinian families from their home." Bravo! Predictably, though, at the same time Obama took away something equally important: his demand that Israel stop the main roadblock to peace, its expansion of settlements in the West Bank. Instead he fell back on the vague language we've heard from many presidents before: "We do not consider continued settlement activity to be constructive, to be appropriate"; "Settlement activity is counterproductive to the cause of peace."

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MJ Rosenberg: Obama’s Sycophancy Toward Netanyahu Damaged Chances Of Peace

Mar 25, 2013 11:32 pm | MJ Rosenberg

Catching up on some of the news stories I missed about President Barack Obama’s visit to Israel and Ramallah, it struck me how offensive his words and gestures must have been to Palestinians. At every stop, he made clear that the United States is 100 percent on Israel’s side. Almost in so many words, he ...

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Saadia Faruqi: Muslim Women’s History Month: Spotlight on Afghani Women

Mar 25, 2013 03:49 pm | Saadia Faruqi

Perhaps no other country of the world has received so much censure about its treatment of women in recent years than Afghanistan. First the cold war, then the civil war, then the oppressive rule of the Taliban, and finally the American war on terror – Afghanistan’s female population has been continually left in poverty, danger, ...

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Sharon Delgado: Speaking Peace on Palm/Passion Sunday

Mar 25, 2013 02:33 pm | Sharon Delgado

This blog post is taken from the speech that The Reverend Sharon Delgado gave at a Tour de Peace event with Cindy Sheehan in Nevada City, California, on Palm/Passion Sunday, March 24, 2013. See the video here: Sharon Speaking Peace. Hi friends. It’s good to be here with all of you. I’m so glad ...

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Donna Schaper: A Prayer for the Seder Horseradish, A Hope for the Easter Ham: Conversation Starters for the Holy Holidays

Mar 25, 2013 02:32 pm | Donna Schaper

At tables, during holy days, occupy our hearts with something new: Let us risk a conversation in which debt is not considered shameful. Grant us mutual release of any embarrassment that we aren’t rich yet. Release us from the nasty shame that says debt is our fault. Remind us to keep our resumes at home.

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Rabbi Jack Bemporad: The Next Time You See The Red Sea Part…

Mar 22, 2013 03:46 pm | Rabbi Jack Bemporad

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.

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

Mar 22, 2013 03:03 pm | Rabbi Elisheva Brenner

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.

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MJ Rosenberg: Obama Trip: No Big Surprises But Mission Accomplished

Mar 22, 2013 08:14 am | MJ Rosenberg

Obama accomplished what he had to. He reached over Netanyahu's head and spoke directly to the Israeli people, explaining why peace is in their own best interest and why justice for the Palestinians cannot be denied. And he was cheered. Loudly.

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Roger S. Gottlieb: About Death, II

Mar 21, 2013 07:45 pm | Roger S. Gottlieb

My last blog ended by comparing our lives to a song, and with the reflection: But if we live with awareness and gratitude, compassion and love, we will face the end of the song with grace, knowing that the composer and performer is not us, but forces vastly larger, more creative, and (almost) infinitely more ...

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ENDS

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