Congratulations!

[Valid RSS] This is a valid RSS feed.

Recommendations

This feed is valid, but interoperability with the widest range of feed readers could be improved by implementing the following recommendations.

Source: http://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/feed/

  1. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><rss version="2.0"
  2. xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/"
  3. xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/"
  4. xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
  5. xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"
  6. xmlns:sy="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/syndication/"
  7. xmlns:slash="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/slash/"
  8. >
  9.  
  10. <channel>
  11. <title>Tikkun Daily Blog Archive</title>
  12. <atom:link href="https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/feed/" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
  13. <link>https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily</link>
  14. <description>Tikkun Daily Posts from 2009 to 2019</description>
  15. <lastBuildDate>Wed, 17 Apr 2019 23:58:58 +0000</lastBuildDate>
  16. <language>en-US</language>
  17. <sy:updatePeriod>
  18. hourly </sy:updatePeriod>
  19. <sy:updateFrequency>
  20. 1 </sy:updateFrequency>
  21. <generator>https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3</generator>
  22. <item>
  23. <title>What is really happening in Venezuela?</title>
  24. <link>https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/2019/04/17/what-is-really-happening-in-venezuela/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=what-is-really-happening-in-venezuela</link>
  25. <comments>https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/2019/04/17/what-is-really-happening-in-venezuela/#comments</comments>
  26. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Laura Wells]]></dc:creator>
  27. <pubDate>Wed, 17 Apr 2019 23:58:58 +0000</pubDate>
  28. <category><![CDATA[General News]]></category>
  29. <category><![CDATA[Politics & Society]]></category>
  30. <category><![CDATA[sanctions]]></category>
  31. <category><![CDATA[Venezuela]]></category>
  32. <category><![CDATA[venezuela elections]]></category>
  33. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://tikkundaily.tikkun.org/?p=65869</guid>
  34.  
  35. <description><![CDATA[I just returned from 11 days in Venezuela, my sixth trip there since 2005. Many people have asked me how they can understand what&#8217;s really happening in Venezuela based on information from public institutions such as the U.S. government and the mainstream media. Sources they have used include television ranging from Fox News to MSNBC [&#8230;]]]></description>
  36. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><div id="attachment_65875" class="wp-caption module image alignright" style="max-width: 225px;"><img fetchpriority="high" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-65875" src="https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/wp-content/uploads/VZLA-Plaza-Bolivar-photo-IMG_0957-e1555543529808-225x300.jpg" alt="" width="225" height="300" /><p class="wp-caption-text">Plaza Bolivar in Caracas, Venezuela</p></div><br />
  37. I just returned from 11 days in Venezuela, my sixth trip there since 2005.<br />
  38. Many people have asked me how they can understand what&#8217;s really happening in Venezuela based on information from public institutions such as the U.S. government and the mainstream media. Sources they have used include television ranging from Fox News to MSNBC and CNN; newspapers from the New York Times to more &#8220;progressive&#8221; publications; and radio from private ad-based to public listener-supported stations.<br />
  39. In order to analyze information today and in the future, there are three key points that most people in the United States and in Venezuela can agree on.<br />
  40. 1 &#8211; <strong>No war.</strong> Even Venezuelans who did not vote for Nicolás Maduro do not want to be bombed or invaded. Ironically, the threat of military intervention has increased national pride and unity among Venezuelans. Many friends were worried for my safety and the safety of the 12-member delegation. After arriving I felt safer than I expected, and my main fear was about what the United States (my own country, that I love in so many ways) might do. Even in the U.S., most people do not want another Vietnam, or another Libya or Syria.<br />
  41. 2 &#8211; <strong>End U.S. sanctions.</strong> Sanctions are a form of economic warfare. Sanctions kill, and children are primary victims. Food and medicines are greatly affected. Sanctions impede the ability of Venezuela &#8211; and other countries &#8211; to solve their own problems; and unilateral sanctions are out-of-line with the United Nations Charter.<br />
  42. 3 &#8211; <strong>Respect other nations&#8217; sovereignty.</strong> Both Venezuelans and people in the U.S. question the credibility of the U.S. government regarding its harsh critiques of Venezuela. The wealthiest country the world has ever known, the United States, has suffered from a growing gap between rich and poor, and from deteriorating schools, non-existent free neighborhood healthcare centers, infant mortality, high incarceration rates, and unjustified killings by police, along with questionable elections of public officials who could potentially solve those problems.<br />
  43. There are two additional facts: the U.S. cannot be the <em>boss</em> of the world, and recent &#8220;help&#8221; from the U.S. does not always help the <em>people</em> of the world. Other nations are letting us know this, more and more. When we are faced with Washington speeches and media pieces, we can keep these three key points and two additional facts in mind.<br />
  44. * * *<br />
  45. The answers to other questions were also revealed throughout my trip.<br />
  46. Why are the U.S. powers-that-be &#8211; both Republicans and Democrats &#8211; focused on Venezuela? The biggest reason is not oil. (Remember prior interference in non-oil-rich Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti, Grenada, Chile, and others.) The problem is that Hugo Chávez was elected president in 1998, more than 20 years after the oil industry was nationalized in 1976, and he began to <strong>share the wealth with all Venezuelans</strong>, not just the already rich. Hugo Chávez led an electoral revolution and then he empowered Venezuelans through literacy programs, neighborhood healthcare centers, and a new constitution designed with citizen participation. Also, like the Venezuelan liberator Simón Bolívar 200 years before, Chávez spread empowerment across Latin America, and beyond, by creating institutions to counterbalance the enormous economic, cultural and political influence of the U.S.<br />
  47. Another disturbing reason is that because the U.S. still uses the obsolete, slavery-based Electoral College, neither Democrats nor Republicans want to alienate a group of swing voters in the swing state of Florida: upper-income Venezuelans who moved there and who organize with hard-line Cuban-Americans.<br />
  48. What was the most encouraging part of my trip to Venezuela? An <strong>increased appreciation of the strength of the Venezuelan people</strong>. They know from history, both recent and centuries ago, that they can prevail, and they are prevailing now. The self-proclaimed presidency of Juan Guaidó has not taken hold. The vast majority, even those who did not vote for him in May 2018, recognize that Nicolás Maduro is the legitimately elected President, and they know that most other countries &#8211; especially outside of North America and Europe &#8211; stand with them in recognizing Maduro&#8217;s administration. Which reminds me&#8230;<br />
  49. What are some key signs that predict U.S. intentions to interfere in a nation&#8217;s sovereignty? One sign is using the word <strong>&#8220;regime&#8221;</strong> rather than &#8220;presidency&#8221; or &#8220;administration.&#8221; Do we refer to Theresa May&#8217;s regime? Obama&#8217;s regime? Another key sign is using the term <strong>&#8220;humanitarian crisis&#8221;</strong> followed by offering <strong>&#8220;humanitarian aid&#8221;</strong> that even the International Red Cross and the United Nations recognized as politicized rather than helpful.<br />
  50. In closing, Venezuela is a sovereign nation whose people have experienced improved education, healthcare, and housing. <strong>Venezuelans have stayed strong</strong>, despite power outages and water shortages, despite sanctions and threats, all of which I experienced during the delegation. They want peace not war, an end to sanctions, and respect for their sovereignty so they have the means to address their own challenges.<br />
  51. <em>Laura Wells blogs about the electoral and social revolutions in Latin America, and how they might apply to California and the United States. She is a Green Party political activist. For a &#8220;go to resource&#8221; on Venezuela, see <a title="venezuelanalysis.com" href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">venezuelanalysis.com</a>.<br />
  52. </em></p>
  53. ]]></content:encoded>
  54. <wfw:commentRss>https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/2019/04/17/what-is-really-happening-in-venezuela/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
  55. <slash:comments>4</slash:comments>
  56. </item>
  57. <item>
  58. <title>Call to action: hang image of menorah in your window</title>
  59. <link>https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/2018/12/05/call-to-action-hang-image-of-menorah-in-your-window/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=call-to-action-hang-image-of-menorah-in-your-window</link>
  60. <comments>https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/2018/12/05/call-to-action-hang-image-of-menorah-in-your-window/#respond</comments>
  61. <dc:creator><![CDATA[galleryeditor]]></dc:creator>
  62. <pubDate>Wed, 05 Dec 2018 22:08:36 +0000</pubDate>
  63. <category><![CDATA[Judaism]]></category>
  64. <category><![CDATA[Rethinking Religion]]></category>
  65. <category><![CDATA[activism]]></category>
  66. <category><![CDATA[Politics & Society]]></category>
  67. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://tikkundaily.tikkun.org/?p=65834</guid>
  68.  
  69. <description><![CDATA[Join us and stand in solidarity with the Jewish community: say no to anti-Semitism by hanging an image of a menorah in your window.]]></description>
  70. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<div>
  71. This is a call to Jews and allies during a Hannukah that falls in the wake of the most bloody massacre of Jews in US history. Activist Liz Friedman of Northampton, MA, sought to do what folks in a small town in Montana did in the 90s after a Jewish family was the target of a hate crime. It was Hannukah and the town&#8217;s local paper published a large photo of a menorah that people, Jewish and allies, cut out and placed in their windows in a show of solidarity. Liz created an anti-hate website, <a href="https://we-stand-together.org/">we-stand-together.org</a>, that is launching an organization to fight anti-Semitism, racism, Islamaphobia, hetero-patriarchy.<br />
  72. Please, let&#8217;s stand together against anti-Semitism and for Solidarity against White Supremacy that is strengthening all forms of oppression that are dividing us rather than uniting us to fight for a free, just, and ecological world!
  73. </div>
  74. <div></div>
  75. <div><img decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-65845" title="tree of life_shalom menorah" src="https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/wp-content/uploads/tree-of-life_shalom-menorah.jpg" alt="" width="539" height="640" /></div>
  76. ]]></content:encoded>
  77. <wfw:commentRss>https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/2018/12/05/call-to-action-hang-image-of-menorah-in-your-window/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
  78. <slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
  79. </item>
  80. <item>
  81. <title>Hanukah is NOT Hypocrisy&#8211;Despite What the NY Times Published on Sunday, Dec. 2nd</title>
  82. <link>https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/2018/12/03/hanukah-is-not-hypocrisy-despite-what-the-ny-times-published-on-sunday-dec-2nd/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=hanukah-is-not-hypocrisy-despite-what-the-ny-times-published-on-sunday-dec-2nd</link>
  83. <comments>https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/2018/12/03/hanukah-is-not-hypocrisy-despite-what-the-ny-times-published-on-sunday-dec-2nd/#comments</comments>
  84. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Rabbi Michael Lerner]]></dc:creator>
  85. <pubDate>Mon, 03 Dec 2018 21:17:14 +0000</pubDate>
  86. <category><![CDATA[Judaism]]></category>
  87. <category><![CDATA[Rethinking Religion]]></category>
  88. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://tikkundaily.tikkun.org/?p=65839</guid>
  89.  
  90. <description><![CDATA[Rabbi Michael Lerner refutes a recent NY Times article by reminding us of the meaning of Chanukah: to reject the dominant sociopolitical systems.]]></description>
  91. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><div id="attachment_65840" class="wp-caption module image aligncenter" style="max-width: 640px;"><img decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-65840" title="2014-12-21 17.15.41" src="https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/wp-content/uploads/2014-12-21-17.15.41.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="480" /><p class="wp-caption-text">Image of Beyt Tikkun&#039;s annual Chanukah celebration in 2014.</p></div><br />
  92. On the eve of Chanukah, Dec. 2nd, the N.Y. Times chose to publish an article entitled &#8220;The Hypocrisy of Hanukah&#8221; by Michael David Lukas. It is worth exploring not only because of the way it reveals the shallowness of those contemporary forms of Jewishness that are more about identity politics, lox and bagels, nostalgia, or fear of the non-Jew than about any substantive belief and so quickly boil down to a mild form of liberalism or a mild form of conservatism without any ethical or spiritual content, but also because of the way it reveals how ill-suited contemporary liberalism is to understand the appeal of right-wing nationalist chauvinism and hence to effectively challenge it.<br />
  93. Lukas portrays the problem of contemporary non-religious Jews in a Christian culture with its powerful and pervasive symbols and music of Christmas. Like most Jews, he doesn&#8217;t believe in the supposed miracle of a light that burned for eight days, so he digs deeper and what he finds outrages him. Namely, that Chanukah was, in his representation, a battle between cosmopolitan Jews who wanted to embrace the enlightened thought of Greek culture and a militaristic chauvinistic fundamentalist force, the Maccabees. Since he is sure that those Maccabees would reject him and his liberal ideas and politics, he is tempted to abandon the whole thing. But instead, he decides not to do so because he needs something at this time of year to offer his young daughter who is attracted to Santa Claus. He thinks that offering his daughter something he personally believes to be worse than nonsense is, as he puts, &#8220;all about beating Santa. &#8220;He can&#8217;t understand why anyone would identify with that chauvinist and militarist Judaism represented by Chanukah, when they could become part of the attractive universalist culture (in the Maccabees day&#8211;Greek Hellenism with all its deep philosophers, theatre, and technology). To paraphrase a response from Levinas Levinas,&#8221;Oh yes, everything we need is in Greek philosophy &#8211; everything, that is, except the idea that we should care for the widow, the stranger, and the orphan. Look as you may, you won&#8217;t find that in Plato and Aristotle or Euripides or in the later works of the Hellenism that developed in Rome.. And that&#8217;s why the Torah matters.&#8221;<br />
  94. I sympathize with his plight and want to offer some very different perspectives.<br />
  95. Lukas proclaims proudly that he is part of the contemporary assimilationists, and thus wonders why he should celebrate a victory of the fundamentalists. Yet he does so because he wants to give his daughter a way to resist the pervasive Christian culture in which he is raising her. It turns out that indeed he is living in a culture which has put down and oppressed Jews for at least the past 1700 years since the teachings of the Jewish prophet Jesus were twisted into becoming the foundation for a Christian world that used religion to advance a colonialist and then imperialist culture which sought to dominate much of the world to the benefit of a small group of white men whose agenda was explicitly to maximize their wealth at everyone else&#8217;s expense.<br />
  96. To refuse to bow down to the symbols of that culture is extremely difficult for people who do not have an alternative transcendent spiritual framework that challenges the values that underlie the Christian hegemony. These values are still imposed on everyone in this society, not by law but by the powerful impact of the capitalist culture with its message that if you care for your family/friends you will spend beyond your means by buying material things that enrich the owners of the corporations. Lukas has become a victim of that culture, and only slightly alters it to participate in the idolatry of the marketplace by giving his consumption a new purpose: to make Chanukah into a pseudo Christmas, unwittingly undermining the potential liberation thrust of Chanukah.<br />
  97. The religious fanaticism of the Maccabees was generated first and foremost by the oppressive policies of Greek imperialism (not Roman, which he mistakenly identifies as the enemy), and that like America and the West of the past several hundred years, its cultural and scientific strength were used to create a global culture which subordinated the independent farmers of Judea and most of the other countries of the Mediterranean, teaching them that material rewards and physical prowess represented by the gymnasium and &#8220;perfect bodies&#8221; (which is why they criminalized the practice of circumcision) would be the best way to enforce their political and economic domination. The reason that rural farmers joined the Maccabean revolt was because the rule imposed first by Alexander &#8220;the Great&#8221; (conqueror and oppressor), forced them to give so much of their crops to the ruling Syria-based Seleucid or Egypt-based Ptolemaic Hellenists (two of the major societies that fought over control of Judea which lay between them) that these farmers were unable to adequately feed and provide sustenance to their families.<br />
  98. But why were the rebellions primarily in Judea and not elsewhere in the Greek and subsequent Roman empires? Because the Jews had the teachings of their Torah that taught them that there was a force in the universe, Yud Hey Vav Hey, (namely, that force in the universe that makes possible the transformation of &#8216;that which is&#8217; into &#8216;that which can and should be&#8217;, often mistranslated as Jehovah or Yahweh) and that force made it possible to get out of the slavery of Egypt and could again aid them to get out of this latest form of oppression. It was their faith in this force that led them to believe that the power of ordinary people could be &#8220;greater than the man&#8217;s technology&#8221; (to alter slightly the slogan of many liberation groups of the past and the present).<br />
  99. So instead of thinking that liberation lies with those Jews, past and present, who identify with the ruling powers of each historical period, whether that was the Jewish assimilationists of ancient Judaea or the Jared Kushners of our own time who cuddle up to President Trump and his bundle of liars and self-enriching imperialists, Chanukah teaches that there is another path: to utterly reject their system.<br />
  100. Now here comes the big problem: reject them for what alternative? The liberals and universalists of our time, like those of the Maccabean order, did not have a worldview that could include what was good and potentially soul-nourishing in the religious and spiritual cultures of the past. That culture challenged the selfishness and materialism of class societies even while sometimes trying to accommodate to it. Just as the liberals cannot see the positive values in religions when they correctly critique fundamentalism, so too fundamentalists cannot see the positive values in liberal insistence on fundamental human rights and individual liberties.<br />
  101. The rabbis of the Talmud understood this dilemma. They did not want to legitimate the militarism, corruption,and violence of the Hashmonaim regimes that the Maccabees installed in place of Syrian Hellenistic rule, so they created the myth of the oil that burned for eight days and made that the miracle of Chanukah. What they should have done instead is to identify the real miracle: that people can unify against oppression and win against what at first seems like overwhelming odds against the forces that have all the conventional instruments of power in their hands, if and only if they can believe that there is something about the universe that makes such struggles winnable. Don&#8217;t call it God if that term offends you, but develop some consciousness that there is something in the universe that makes liberation possible. That something is celebrated when in the darkest and (for many) scariest time of each year many of us light candles of Chanukah, or Christians light the candles celebrating their own version of that force in the birth of a baby who would become a liberator or savior.<br />
  102. So instead of capitulating to the logic of the capitalist marketplace and trying to out-buy and out-shine our neighbors, we can embrace the possibility of possibility that Chanukah and Christmas both celebrate. There is nothing hypocritical about that, even if we do that celebration using the melodies and concepts of our own traditions to do so.<br />
  103. We cannot beat the fundamentalists unless we have an alternative worldview which acknowledges what is right in their rejection of the dominant materialist cultures of supposedly enlightened societies. Providing a meaning to life that bucks up against capitalism&#8217;s celebration of material things and the money it takes to get them is an attractive element in much of the fundamentalist worlds (including the versions that flourish in sections of the Jewish, Christian, Muslim, etc). Liberal capitalists who shape much of the discourse in the Democratic Party don&#8217;t get this, and that is why they often lose. Yet the answer for us at Tikkun is not to embrace fundamentalism, but to embrace a spiritual OR religious perspective that affirms higher meaning to life but still embraces the potentially liberatory elements in Western cultures, manifested today in the struggles for human rights and support for refugees while opposing racism, sexism, homophobia, and every other form of xenophobia&#8211;yet purging out of Western societies their insane commitment to endless growth, accumulation of goods, and rejection of any higher meaning to life besides domination over others or the endless pursuit of &#8220;winning&#8221; and proving ourselves better than others while ignoring the damage we are doing to the earth.<br />
  104. Chanukah is not just about having a response to the consumption craze around Christmas, it is about affirming a different worldview, a hopeful worldview, about replacing cultures of domination with a culture of love and justice, and recognizing that that alternative is not yet fully articulated in the Jewish world and needs all of us to make that clearer not only to the larger world but to our own communities, synagogues and Jewish organizations, just as Christians need to do in reclaiming Christmas from the emptiness of capitalist consumption. That is why we should not fear Christianity, but support those elements in the Christian world that are similarly committed to rejecting the ethos of the competitive marketplace (and NO, you don&#8217;t have to be religious to do this, and we welcome secular humanists and atheists who share this perspective as well, but it&#8217;s nice to have all those values rooted in traditions that have been at this struggle for thousands of years, no matter how much they have been distorted at times, because so have marxist and socialist and even anti-patriarchal traditions been distorted as well). It&#8217;s in this consciousness that we join with all peoples to celebrate the holidays and recommit to helping the refugees and the asylum seekers at the borders with Mexico this holiday season.<br />
  105. __<br />
  106. <strong>Rabbi Michael Lerner</strong> <em>is editor of </em>Tikkun<em>, co-chair with Indian environmental activist Vandana Shiva of the Network of Spiritual Progressives, and rabbi of Beyt Tikkun Synagogue-Without-Walls in San Francisco and Berkeley, California. He is the author of eleven books, including two national bestsellers &#8211; </em>The Left Hand of God <em>and </em>Jewish Renewal: A Path to Healing and Transformation<em>. His most recent book, </em>Embracing Israel/Palestine<em>, is available on Kindle from Amazon.com and in hard copy from <a href="http://tikkun.org/eip">tikkun.org/eip</a>. He welcomes your responses and invites you to join with him by joining the Network of Spiritual Progressives (membership comes with a subscription to </em>Tikkun<em> magazine). You can contact him at rabbilerner.tikkun@gmail.com.</em></p>
  107. ]]></content:encoded>
  108. <wfw:commentRss>https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/2018/12/03/hanukah-is-not-hypocrisy-despite-what-the-ny-times-published-on-sunday-dec-2nd/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
  109. <slash:comments>2</slash:comments>
  110. </item>
  111. <item>
  112. <title>This Just In: The Latest Dispatch from Surreal World</title>
  113. <link>https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/2018/11/30/this-just-in-the-latest-dispatch-from-surreal-world/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=this-just-in-the-latest-dispatch-from-surreal-world</link>
  114. <comments>https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/2018/11/30/this-just-in-the-latest-dispatch-from-surreal-world/#comments</comments>
  115. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Arlene Goldbard]]></dc:creator>
  116. <pubDate>Fri, 30 Nov 2018 16:45:52 +0000</pubDate>
  117. <category><![CDATA[art]]></category>
  118. <category><![CDATA[Culture]]></category>
  119. <category><![CDATA[Politics & Society]]></category>
  120. <category><![CDATA[climate crisis]]></category>
  121. <category><![CDATA[Dreams]]></category>
  122. <category><![CDATA[Green New Deal]]></category>
  123. <category><![CDATA[Hanukkah]]></category>
  124. <category><![CDATA[hope]]></category>
  125. <category><![CDATA[James Baldwin]]></category>
  126. <category><![CDATA[National Climate Assessment]]></category>
  127. <category><![CDATA[not knowing]]></category>
  128. <category><![CDATA[pessimism]]></category>
  129. <category><![CDATA[predictions]]></category>
  130. <category><![CDATA[Rev Sekou]]></category>
  131. <category><![CDATA[thanksgiving]]></category>
  132. <category><![CDATA[UN climate report]]></category>
  133. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://tikkundaily.tikkun.org/?p=65830</guid>
  134.  
  135. <description><![CDATA[In the first part of last night&#8217;s dream, I was trapped in a building, but as soon as I began to wake up, I lost that image. What lingered was a swarming crowd, people rushing to join a mass on the horizon, gazes transfixed skyward. Huge fireballs were forming in the blue air, spinning as [&#8230;]]]></description>
  136. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>In the first part of last night&#8217;s dream, I was trapped in a building, but as soon as I began to wake up, I lost that image.</b> What lingered was a swarming crowd, people rushing to join a mass on the horizon, gazes transfixed skyward. Huge fireballs were forming in the blue air, spinning as they fell to earth, landing somewhere out of sight. Voices began to sound, the ordinary tones of TV newsreaders: clear, oddly animated, slightly robotic. They described the scene around me, the completely unprecedented and unexplained rain of enormous fireballs, in exactly the same way they might tell a story about a road accident or a snowstorm.</p>
  137. <p>Then they began to joke in the usual fashion of newsreaders: &#8220;Wow! The one that landed on highway 50 must have surprised those commuters.&#8221; &#8220;A whole &#8216;nother meaning to &#8216;hair on fire,&#8217; huh, Ted?&#8221; As the inanities rang out, my brain threw out that ancient joke on the idiocy of reportage: &#8220;Aside from all that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?&#8221;</p>
  138. <p>What came to mind as I emerged from the half-light of the dream was Doris Lessing&#8217;s short story, &#8220;Report on the Threatened City,&#8221; set nearly fifty years ago. It was framed as an alien dispatch, detailing failed attempts to warn the residents of San Francisco about an impending earthquake.</p>
  139. <p>Then I was fully awake, thinking about the <a href="https://nyti.ms/2Cw5MF8">October UN report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change</a> and the federally mandated <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/28/climate/climate-fwd-smartphones-solar.html">National Climate Assessment</a> released over Thanksgiving (presumably to bury its dire findings under a soothing blanket of mashed potatoes and gravy).</b> Images surged: families tear-gassed along the border, election tampering and voter suppression, crooks in high places and much, much more. In Lessing&#8217;s story, governmental authorities are aware of alien attempts to warn the populace, but write them off as what is now called &#8220;fake news.&#8221; Ground-level resistance swells, but the result is conflict between camps of opinion, not action to avoid mass extinction.</p>
  140. <p>And of course, nearly a half-century after Lessing&#8217;s story, San Francisco still stands.</p>
  141. <p>With friends on Thanksgiving, we took turns around the table sharing whatever we wished—gratitude, if we could summon it, but whatever was true for each of us.</b></p>
  142. <p>Some were certain that despite both the darkness of the moment, with a madman in the White House and moral cowardice swamping those best-positioned to stop him, despite the glimmers of light shown in recent elections, the worst is yet to come. The human project was spoken of as a failed experiment, the end of human life as a necessary cleansing, hope as a delusion.</p>
  143. <p>Some were certain that the massive resistance and remarkable flowering of alternative visions, that the Great Mystery all of us have experienced but none of us can explain, the resilience, beauty, resourcefulness, and will to live built into the human subject will carry us through. Things will change, but the earth and the life it supports will abide, and fresh possibility will emerge. History justifies hope—action grounded in hope, to be sure, but hope nonetheless.</p>
  144. <p>Some—myself among them—spoke of not-knowing. No matter how dire the predictions, how strongly rooted in scientific research, none of us can foretell the future. The end of life has been predicted many times, and always our challenge has been to live. This time may be different—indeed, it may be the end—but there is no more ground for that certainty than for its opposite, that humankind will be rescued by some remarkable and magical redemption not of our making. No one knows.</p>
  145. <p>It is not my aim to persuade people that their predictions are wrong, that they are betting on the wrong horse, that a different future surely awaits us.</b> I have no interest in debunking the science that points to the great likelihood of disaster. How could I? But likelihood is not certainty, because it cannot be known what healing actions—even what miracles—may follow the alarm that has been sounded. (Please check out the <a href="https://www.sunrisemovement.org/gnd/">Green New Deal</a>, for instance.)</p>
  146. <p>I have one aim in these times, and that is to demonstrate the power of not-knowing, to stick a pin in the illusion that we can know what has not yet come to pass, and to raise the question of desire in the place of hope. What power will be released in the act of freeing ourselves from the delusion that we can know what has not yet unfolded? What gifts will we be able to bring to the moment if we stop believing our own predictions? Sitting with the awareness of not knowing—of the impossibility of knowing—what do we desire? Beginning with not knowing, how do we move toward our desire?</p>
  147. <p>Hanukkah starts this weekend.</b> During the holiday, we&#8217;ll have another chance to be with friends, to go around the circle and ask a generative question. The holiday marks the return of light from the darkness of winter, the miracle of a small amount of oil burning for eight days to light the repair of the temple destroyed by soldiers of the Seleucid Empire a couple of hundred years before the common era. Last Hanukkah&#8217;s question was, &#8220;What light do you wish to bring into the world?&#8221; Some people chose not to answer, refusing to validate what they saw as superstition. Some denounced the idea of bringing light as trivial, counseling us to bring on the fight instead. Most shared their hopes for the Great Awakening we all desire, even those who think to hope for it is foolish.</p>
  148. <p>When I consider what to say this year, I think of shining a light of awakening on the newsreaders in my dream, to be sure, but also the countless voices in waking life who support, intentionally or not, the ordinary lies that insure us to suffering, that normalize absurdity and invite us into complicity with the indifference that perpetuates these delusions. </p>
  149. <p>I am not much of a believer.</b> I&#8217;m more given to desires, to questions, to exploration than to certitude. But I do have two convictions: first, that by joining our conscious intentions, speaking them aloud and allowing them to amplify each other, ring out, and spread, we can build energy, influencing actions to the good. Second, that if we align ourselves with the certainty of failure—if we abandon all hope despite the fact that the future cannot be known—we deplete the energy that animates healing. So at this season, I wish each of us the will to embrace not-knowing and spirit to let freedom ring!</p>
  150. <p>In his amazing short essay, <a href="https://openspaceofdemocracy.files.wordpress.com/2017/01/baldwin-creative-process.pdf">&#8220;The Creative Process,&#8221;</a> James Baldwin wrote that &#8220;the war of an artist with his society is a lover’s war, and he does, at his best, what lovers do, which is to reveal the beloved to himself and, with that revelation, to make freedom real.&#8221; I&#8217;m deeply into Rev. Sekou these days. Think about the face of this nation as you listen to <a href="https://youtu.be/PtCOGD3BXRw">&#8220;Loving You Is Killing Me.&#8221;</a></p>
  151. <p>[youtube: video=&#8221;PtCOGD3BXRw&#8221;]</p>
  152. ]]></content:encoded>
  153. <wfw:commentRss>https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/2018/11/30/this-just-in-the-latest-dispatch-from-surreal-world/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
  154. <slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
  155. </item>
  156. <item>
  157. <title>Interdependence in Action: How to Change Agreements with Care</title>
  158. <link>https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/2018/11/28/interdependence-in-action-how-to-change-agreements-with-care/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=interdependence-in-action-how-to-change-agreements-with-care</link>
  159. <comments>https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/2018/11/28/interdependence-in-action-how-to-change-agreements-with-care/#respond</comments>
  160. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Miki Kashtan]]></dc:creator>
  161. <pubDate>Thu, 29 Nov 2018 01:43:06 +0000</pubDate>
  162. <category><![CDATA[General News]]></category>
  163. <category><![CDATA[Non-Violent Communication (NVC)]]></category>
  164. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://tikkundaily.tikkun.org/?p=65806</guid>
  165.  
  166. <description><![CDATA[Engaging interdependently with others in the process of making decisions feels to many people like giving up autonomy. The freedom to make whatever decisions we want to make so long as we are not harming others is one of the core attractions of the modern world. I see it as a consolation prize for the loss of community and care. ]]></description>
  167. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-65822" src="https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/wp-content/uploads/agreement.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="464" /><br />
  168. In 2004, a few days into the first of four week-long retreats of a yearlong program I was co-leading, one participant, who I will call Barbara, informed the program leaders that she was intending to leave the program after the first retreat, because it wasn&#8217;t what she had signed up for. To her surprise, we asked her to engage with the whole group about her decision before finalizing it. Barbara, who had lived in many cultures and came from a community-based tradition, quickly recognized the reality that her leaving would have an impact on the whole group, and thus accepted the challenge and invitation to engage in this process.<br />
  169. We then brought the topic to the group. Barbara laid out her needs that were not attended to within the program; other people brought up their needs and the impact of her potentially leaving and not coming back after that retreat. We&#8217;d been in process for a while when one woman exclaimed, in utter incredulity: &#8220;Wait a minute, but it&#8217;s her decision!&#8221; We replied: &#8220;No, if you take interdependence seriously, it&#8217;s not her decision alone to make.&#8221; The woman remained stunned, and we continued the process. At the end, we reached shared clarity that what it would take to attend to Barbara&#8217;s needs would stretch the program and the group too much, and we all accepted and mourned together the decision we made <em>collectively</em> for Barbara not to come back.<br />
  170. Something similar happened three years later with another participant who was astonished to discover that other people would be affected by him leaving and, at the end of the process, decided to stay. I am still in touch with this person, and I know from him that this process shifted something in terms of his understanding and experience of interdependence. In his case the situation is more pronounced, because he actually shifted his position based on the feedback he received, rather than reaffirming his original intention.<br />
  171. Engaging interdependently with others in the process of making decisions feels to many people like giving up autonomy. The <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft  wp-image-65812" src="https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/wp-content/uploads/leaving-a-group2-300x278.png" alt="" width="197" height="185" />freedom to make whatever decisions we want to make so long as we are not harming others is one of the core attractions of the modern world. I see it as a consolation prize for the loss of community and care. <span id="more-65806"></span>It&#8217;s only within a full context of community that we have the true experience of mattering, because taking our marbles and leaving doesn&#8217;t <em>actually</em> attend to our needs in full; it only removes us from one context in which they are not met. Sometimes, the absence of true community and mattering is severe enough that nothing else will work, and unilateral leaving is, indeed, a life-affirming choice. Even then, there is loss relative to the experience of interdependent, caring community that is our evolutionary niche and from which we have been severed, especially in the last several hundred years. Only in community can we actually be cared about and included in decisions that affect the whole.</p>
  172. <h2>Embracing Interdependence</h2>
  173. <p>Interdependence is both a fact of life and an orientation to life. Whether or not we consciously engage with the interdependence of life it continues to happen. One of the consequences of modern life under conditions of capitalism is that we can ignore our interdependence. One example I have often referred to is the way that money masks our relationships and our dependence on others for the necessities of life. If I go to the supermarket and buy a loaf of bread, I can pretend to myself that I am attending to my needs without depending on others and on the rest of life, and without having an impact on others and the rest of life. The reality is quite different: people toil for the bread we buy, which makes us dependent on them for our well-being. At the same time, top soil is eroded and workers are exploited by the practices of growing most of the wheat in the world, which means that our choice about whether and which bread to buy has impacts beyond what we know and see. Whether we like it or not, whether we know about it or not, all things are interdependent. In the human field, it means that our actions affect others: our presence or absence, our smile or frown, our kindness or indifference, and the endless array of small and large decisions we make are constantly in the context of relationships, even when those are invisible to us.<br />
  174. This is why interdependence as an orientation is a conscious choice to align ourselves with life, to recognize the fundamental relationality of everything, and to attend to the mutual influence that we have on each other. One key aspect of this kind of practice is the quality of care that we bring to the moments in which we want to change agreements with others.</p>
  175. <h2>Care Is Not Binary</h2>
  176. <p>Some time ago I sat together with a colleague I will call Alex, to rebuild trust in the wake of actions of his that had affected me and BayNVC. In that meeting, which much of this post is based on, we came up with a way to map the various forms that interdependence and care can take in the process of attending to agreements that no longer work. You can see this mapping in the <a href="http://thefearlessheart.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/changing-agreements-with-care-diagram.pdf">drawing accompanying this post</a>.<br />
  177. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-65815" src="https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/wp-content/uploads/contract1-300x181.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="181" />Many of us were raised to believe that agreements are sacrosanct, and we simply don&#8217;t ever change them. So many times people remain in agreements that severely compromise their well being just because they committed to them at some point. This, to me, is not an expression of care nor a practice of interdependence. Why? Because when I compromise my well-being in service to an agreement, I am not giving the other party the option of adapting or ending the agreement as an expression of <em>their</em> care for me, our relationship, or the larger whole of which we are a part. Care, at its best, is mutual.</p>
  178. <h3>Making a New Agreement Together</h3>
  179. <p>This is why my favored way &#8211; when possible &#8211; to attend to situations in which I want to change an agreement is to connect with the affected parties <em>before</em> making the decision. This means leaving the outcome open, relying on relationships and establishing enough togetherness such that our collective human creativity can come up with a path forward that would most care for all needs.<br />
  180. This is not what Alex did when he recognized that an agreement he had with us at BayNVC was no longer working for him and that he wanted me to release him from any particular personal responsibility. Alex operated within a cultural field in which engaging in the way I am describing here doesn&#8217;t tend to happen. I know this, because when I have tried to engage with others about making such decisions together, I have rarely been met with understanding or active willingness. Instead, the person on the other end of the dialogue rushes to release me of responsibility without my asking to be released. I am quite confident this is the mirror image of the unilateral exit from agreements. Both prioritize autonomy, and the lonely responsibility of an individual to look after their own needs, in a context in which community is no longer present. In such a context, engaging mutually with needs tends to feel uncomfortable. It&#8217;s precisely this discomfort that I am encouraging and inviting here: it&#8217;s a fast track of recovering interdependence.<br />
  181. Practically speaking, it means naming that the agreement I made is no longer working for me, while also making visible and checking my assumption that it is still working for the other party. If I change the agreement without engaging with the other party, this change then creates an impact they don&#8217;t choose. If we can recognize this and engage in dialogue before choosing, we have a higher chance of finding a path forward that recognizes the impact and aims to care for all within it.</p>
  182. <h3>Tending Together to the Impact of a Unilateral Decision</h3>
  183. <p>There are many reasons why we don&#8217;t always have the option of engaging with the other party before making our decision. Sometimes it&#8217;s because of conditions external to the situation that make it unfeasible to engage before deciding. In other situations it would simply be dishonest to engage. Telling someone that we are available to dialogue about whether or not to change an agreement when a decision has already made itself within me is a charade.<br />
  184. If a decision happened already, and I know there is impact that I cannot care for before the decision is made, it means that dialogue cannot be about the decision; only about the impact. In such a situation, what I ideally want to be able to do is to acknowledge to the other party that I had made a decision, name the reasons why I couldn&#8217;t make the decision jointly, and invite dialogue about the impact. Why would I do that? Because the fact that I made a decision already doesn&#8217;t diminish my care for the other person; it only accentuates it. Since we continue to be in relationship, I want to do what I can to care for the impact, to hear about the impact on the other party, and to attend to requests they might have which I can fulfill in relation to the impact.</p>
  185. <h3>Owning and Mourning the Impact of a Unilateral Decision</h3>
  186. <p>Even when I don&#8217;t have the capacity to attend to the impact, or even don&#8217;t have sufficient resilience to be in dialogue with the affected parties, there is still a clear and active expression of care that I can activate. I call it owning and mourning. This one is particularly significant within the context of a conflict, where engaging in dialogue is simply beyond capacity. Since nonviolence as I see it is about the courage to speak truth with love, even when I am not finding a way to take action that cares for the impact on another person, I can still name that this is happening.<br />
  187. Owning the action &#8211; in this case the change of the agreement &#8211; is a powerful move to release any kind of subtle blame that I might have of the other person. Especially if I change the agreement based on acute discomfort within the relationship, acute enough to where engaging is a strain, it&#8217;s incredibly tempting to make the other party responsible for my own choice to change the agreement. Instead, I want to be rigorous with myself to know that I am always the one who decides. This allows me to empower myself and to remember the humanity of the other party. In this way I can open my heart and experience the grief of the impact on the other person and, possibly, potential losses within the relationship. I consider this particular form of engagement a spiritual achievement because, in the very act of distancing myself from an agreement, I open my heart widely to feel the mourning of the effect of my unilateral decision: both the material impact and the relational impact of making a unilateral choice.</p>
  188. <h3>Acknowledging the Impact of a Unilateral Decision</h3>
  189. <p>What Alex did in the situation is a fourth option. He approached us, acknowledged his decision to change an agreement, and expressed a general sadness about the impact. How is this different from the owning and mourning?<br />
  190. For one thing, there is more substance to the previous option because it&#8217;s more transparent and vulnerable. To own and mourn I need to be in touch with my own heart, to feel within myself the needs that led me to take the actions that I took, to take responsibility for those needs and the choices I made, and to keep my heart open enough, regardless of the circumstances, so that I can feel and express the mourning that then arises &#8211; I believe naturally and spontaneously &#8211; from knowing that my actions are at cost to others.<br />
  191. Just acknowledging the impact is easier because it&#8217;s possible to do it from an orientation of protection. That ease, however, is at cost, because it tends to register with the other party as far less care. Why? Because any protection on my end can feel to others like a wall they can&#8217;t cross, and with that comes a sense of reduction in relationship. Also, in a context in which the other party is already smarting about the loss that comes from the agreement not being kept, it&#8217;s not going to be easy for them to attribute care to the person ending the agreement. Communicating the care through the mourning of the impact supports the affected party to have a sense of mattering.<br />
  192. In this particular case, since Alex&#8217;s reasons to shift the agreement had nothing to do with the relationship, and his heart remained open, owning and mourning would have been a far more effective choice for nurturing the relationship than his actual choice. Still, even acknowledging the impact is an expression of care.</p>
  193. <h3>Acknowledging a Unilateral Decision</h3>
  194. <p>The most minimal expression of care that&#8217;s possible within the context of changing an agreement is to name to the other party that we are stepping out of the agreement. I see it as an expression of care in that is recognizes the existence of the other party. It&#8217;s not much. In most respects I can think of, I see this as almost entirely exiting the web of relationship with the affected parties. And nonetheless I want to remember that almost entirely exiting is not the same as exiting. Some capacity for care remains.</p>
  195. <h3>No Acknowledgment of a Unilateral Decision</h3>
  196. <p>On the other end of the spectrum from engaging with the other party before making a decision is the option of simply making the unilateral choice and leaving it to the other party to discover it on their own. It&#8217;s not even rare. We do it all the time, mostly without recognizing what we are doing. A simple example is when I invite you to a party, you accept my invitation, and then don&#8217;t come to the party. You&#8217;re unlikely to think of your action in this way as changing an agreement, or to consider the impact it might have on me. For those of us, like me, who come from cultures of community, when someone doesn&#8217;t come, we wonder what happened, even whether the person is OK. I have often asked groups of people if they feel the impact when someone leaves the group without saying anything. They do, and more so the smaller the group.<br />
  197. More significant examples are the stories of a person saying they are going to the grocery store and disappearing from a decades-long relationship; contractors disappearing before a project is finished; or people not returning money they had borrowed, without mentioning it.</p>
  198. <h2>Mending the Tear</h2>
  199. <p>There is a fragility in us about belonging and mattering. This is true for almost all of us who came into this life in societies where shame and coercion are strong, which is most societies currently existing. A deep and paradoxical aspect of this is that, when we don&#8217;t see our presence, our needs, our contribution, our suffering, and our joys as significant within the context of a relationship or <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright  wp-image-65817" src="https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/wp-content/uploads/parents-who-experience-themselves-as-powerless-300x225.jpg" alt="" width="274" height="206" />community, we are less likely to see others and care for the impact of our actions. People who have a felt sense of being insignificant are more likely to harm others without recognizing it. A chilling example is the analysis in Steve Wineman&#8217;s <em>Power-Under: Trauma and Nonviolent Social Change</em> that indicates that much child abuse is done at the hands of parents who experience themselves as powerless in the very moment of harming their children.<br />
  200. If this is true, then the very act of caring for the impact of my actions, if done with full attention to both parties to the agreement, is a practice of mending the tears within our human fabric at the very same time that it empowers me and creates the conditions for me to take my place within the human family.<br />
  201. &nbsp;<br />
  202. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://i2.wp.com/thefearlessheart.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Changing-Agreements.jpg?resize=625%2C786" alt="" width="617" height="776" /></a><br />
  203. <a href="http://thefearlessheart.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/changing-agreements-with-care-diagram.pdf">Click here to view the full-size diagram</a><br />
  204. <strong><em>Image Credits:</em></strong><em> First</em><em>: Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash. Second: Photo by Clker-Free-Vector-Images on Pixabay. Third: Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash. Fourth: Photo by Liane Metzler on Unsplash.</em></p>
  205. ]]></content:encoded>
  206. <wfw:commentRss>https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/2018/11/28/interdependence-in-action-how-to-change-agreements-with-care/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
  207. <slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
  208. </item>
  209. <item>
  210. <title>Dear Mississippi White People</title>
  211. <link>https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/2018/11/22/dear-mississippi-white-people/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=dear-mississippi-white-people</link>
  212. <comments>https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/2018/11/22/dear-mississippi-white-people/#comments</comments>
  213. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Valerie Elverton-Dixon]]></dc:creator>
  214. <pubDate>Thu, 22 Nov 2018 20:27:18 +0000</pubDate>
  215. <category><![CDATA[General News]]></category>
  216. <category><![CDATA[Cindy Hyde-smith; Mile Espy: Jefferson Davis; Abraham Lincoln]]></category>
  217. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://tikkundaily.tikkun.org/?p=65801</guid>
  218.  
  219. <description><![CDATA[November 22, 2018 Dear Mississippi White People, Both of my parents were born and reared in Mississippi. They were part of the Great Migration of African Americans north in the early 1950s. When I was a little girl, we would go south for funerals. For most of my life, I have never felt comfortable south [&#8230;]]]></description>
  220. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>November 22, 2018<br />
  221. Dear Mississippi White People,<br />
  222. Both of my parents were born and reared in Mississippi. They were part of the Great Migration of African Americans north in the early 1950s. When I was a little girl, we would go south for funerals. For most of my life, I have never felt comfortable south of the Mason-Dixon Line. I was fine for about 48 hours, then something inside of me, something that felt like an old soul, the spirit of an enslaved ancestor, wanted desperately to head back home. Follow the North Star.<br />
  223. Even so, I have some good memories of my time in Mississippi. This is primarily due to my relatives, to aunts and uncles and cousins who made my time with them meaningful. One of the best memories of my life is getting up early one morning and having coffee with my Aunt Mary Anna on her front porch in Indianola. Her house was always full of people of all ages, and she would get up before everyone else and sit on her front porch. This morning, I was up with her, drinking coffee, listening to a rooster crow, enjoying her stories of reality and mystery. It was peace.<br />
  224. When I lived in Philadelphia, my Aunt Rosie would send me shelled pecans from her Indianola, Mississippi tree. I loved eating the pecans, and I loved her for loving me enough to take the time to shell them and to send them to me. God is Divine Love, and her love for me was a visitation of God in my life. Eating the pecans was a kind of communion.<br />
  225. A few years ago, I drove my father, who was then in his mid-eighties, down to Indianola for a funeral. The part of the cemetery where my cousin&#8217;s husband was buried was populated by the earthly remains of aunts who loved me and by cousins who I had enjoyed just being around and who had been my role models. Dad said that would be his final trip to Mississippi, and he was right.<br />
  226. One of my cousins invited me to come down when there was not a funeral and she would show me around. I wanted to visit the civil rights and the blues history of the Mississippi Delta. So, I finally did. My cousin was true to her word. We visited the Fannie Lou Hamer Museum and gravesite in Ruleville. She took me to the B.B. King Museum in Indianola, and she drove me to the various addresses in Greenville, where my mother&#8217;s family had lived. The last few times I have gone south, I have not felt the need to escape. I see my cousins living productive lives, making important contributions to their communities, and the south in general and Mississippi in particular no longer seem oppressive.<br />
  227. And then came the comments by Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith. Speaking about her regard for a supporter she said: &#8220;If he invited me to a public hanging, I&#8217;d be on the front row.&#8221; What? Then she refused to apologize until a debate with her opponent Secretary Mike Espy, saying in part: &#8220;You know, for anyone that was offended by my comments, I certainly apologize. There was no ill will, non whatsoever in my statements. I have worked with all Mississippians. It didn&#8217;t matter their skin color type, their age or their income. That&#8217;s my record.&#8221; Then she proceeded to blame her opponent for turning her comments into a weapon. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/mississippi-sen-cindy-hyde-smith-apologizes-to-anyone-offended-by-comments-about-public-hanging-as-opponent-mike-espy-says-she-gave-the-state-a-black-eye/2018/11/20/6eeb3a14-ed0c-11e8-baac-2a674e91502b_story.html?utm_term=.c68bdc76a246)<br />
  228. Hyde-Smith has also been caught on mike joking, she says, about voter suppression. In 2014, she posted a picture of herself wearing a confederate soldier&#8217;s cap and holding a gun at the home and presidential library of Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy. She called the site &#8220;Mississippi history at its best.&#8221; Is this a celebration of the Civil War?<br />
  229. According to the website Mississippi History Now, &#8220;The American Civil War (1861-1865) left Mississippi in chaos with its social structures overturned, its economy in ruins, and its people shattered.&#8221; And, the reason for the devastation was the will to preserve slavery. The Mississippi declaration of secession says: &#8220;Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery &#8211; the greatest material interest in the world.&#8221;<br />
  230. It is important to remember that the Civil War was fought with conscript soldiers. The Confederacy confiscated crops and livestock from ordinary people to feed the army, a generation of men were killed or left wounded. The south has yet to recover from the economic devastation of the war. Yet, so many white people are still enamored with that war.<br />
  231. In her novel &#8220;Gone with the Wind&#8221;, Margaret Mitchell writes of her heroine Scarlett O&#8217;Hara who is in love with Ashley Wilkes. She thinks he loves her, but he does not. The love she imagines is a dream. It is not and never was real. Such is the case with white people who love the dream of the &#8220;Old South&#8221;, a fantasy where everyone was happy occupying their assigned place. It never was, is not now, and never will be.<br />
  232. When I read Hyde-Smith&#8217;s comments about attending a public hanging, I was working on an essay about African-American soldiers home from World War I who faced beatings and lynching. How could anyone knowing Mississippi history not be offended by Hyde-Smith&#8217;s joke? What positive connotation can there be in a history rife with the violence of lynching? The violence of lynching was an attempt to re-establish white supremacy after the Reconstruction period. The violence of voter suppression is also real in a state where Fannie Lou Hamer and others took a beating because they wanted to register to vote. Civil rights workers were killed in their efforts to register voters. How could she think that joking about voter suppression would be funny given this history? How could she think such a thing as she runs for the United State Senate?<br />
  233. Then suddenly, like a flash of lightning, it occurred to me that the expression about attending a public hanging was probably an expression that Hyde-Smith heard in her youth. She very likely grew up with it, and it was a way to express regard for someone. Whenever I see pictures of a lynching, my gaze goes to the body of the person being lynched. I think of their family and of the African-American community that would resist being terrorized by such savagery. However, there is also the crowd of white people who thought of such events as entertainment. I have never considered the crowd as a group of individuals, only as a human mass of barbaric hatred and evil.<br />
  234. The truth is that these crowds were composed of people who had children and grandchildren, who were aunts and uncles and cousins, who loved their kin the way my people love me. Hyde-Smith very likely heard this expression from a beloved relative in a context of joviality and good family fun.<br />
  235. Dear Mississippi White People, you have some serious introspection to do. What is the origin of such an expression? Were the people who nurtured you and loved you also the people who populated the crowds that participated in public hangings by their presence on the front row? To what lengths are you willing to go to preserve a dream that was never true? Are you willing to keep your state at the bottom of the list of states on almost every measure of achievement because you want to hold onto the deception of white supremacy?<br />
  236. To even know that she has said something vile, Senator Hyde-Smith needs to do the difficult work of introspection and to realize that the people who raised her, who loved her, were also willing to become a part of a murderous evil mob because people will act in a mob the way they would never act as individuals. You all need to do this work for the sake of bringing about real and lasting change in Mississippi. This is your work to do White People because you are the ones holding onto a deception.<br />
  237. The good news is that we live in a country that allows us to make a choice with every election. We can choose to stay stuck in a past that has not served us well, or we can move forward. Dear Mississippi White People, this is your choice on Tuesday in the special election. In his proclamation that established Thanksgiving as a national holiday in 1863, during the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln called for repentance as an aspect of our prayers on this day.<br />
  238. He wrote: &#8220;And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and Union.&#8221;<br />
  239. On this Thanksgiving Day, we all can be thankful that we live in the United States of America where we have both a responsibility and an opportunity to work for healing, to form a more perfect union, where we can work toward the goals of human equality and universal human rights.<br />
  240. Happy Thanksgiving.<br />
  241. Peace,<br />
  242. Valerie Elverton Dixon<br />
  243. &nbsp;<br />
  244. &nbsp;<br />
  245. &nbsp;<br />
  246. &nbsp;<br />
  247. Valerie Elverton Dixon is founder of JustPeaceTheory.com and author of &#8220;Just Peace Theory Book One: Spiritual Morality, Radical Love, and the Public Conversation.&#8221;</p>
  248. ]]></content:encoded>
  249. <wfw:commentRss>https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/2018/11/22/dear-mississippi-white-people/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
  250. <slash:comments>2</slash:comments>
  251. </item>
  252. <item>
  253. <title>Ecumenism of the Deep Well</title>
  254. <link>https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/2018/11/21/ecumenism-of-the-deep-well/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=ecumenism-of-the-deep-well</link>
  255. <comments>https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/2018/11/21/ecumenism-of-the-deep-well/#comments</comments>
  256. <dc:creator><![CDATA[galleryeditor]]></dc:creator>
  257. <pubDate>Wed, 21 Nov 2018 21:53:11 +0000</pubDate>
  258. <category><![CDATA[Interfaith]]></category>
  259. <category><![CDATA[Rethinking Religion]]></category>
  260. <category><![CDATA[interfaith]]></category>
  261. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://tikkundaily.tikkun.org/?p=65787</guid>
  262.  
  263. <description><![CDATA[Pat Devine reflects on the need for deep ecumenism, given that "we now live in an interdependent world and that the quality that is needed in order for the human species to survive is cooperation."]]></description>
  264. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><div id="attachment_65788" class="wp-caption module image aligncenter" style="max-width: 519px;"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-65788" title="Ecumenism" src="https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/wp-content/uploads/Ecumenism.png" alt="Graphic of books surrounded by circle of interfaith symbols" width="519" height="510" /><p class="wp-caption-text">Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons</p></div><br />
  265. What does ecumenism have to offer the postmodern world? How do major religions of the world work together in the spirit of ecumenism? How does ecumenism embrace new reemerging, indigenous traditions? To find an answer to these questions, let us first look to the word &#8220;ecumenism,&#8221; its roots and its evolution to the present day.<br />
  266. According to the Columbia Encyclopedia, the word &#8220;ecumenism&#8221; comes from a family of classical Greek words: oikos, meaning a &#8220;house,&#8221; &#8220;family,&#8221; &#8220;people&#8221; or &#8220;nation;&#8221; oikoumene, &#8220;the whole inhabited world,&#8221; and oikoumenikos, &#8220;open to or participating in the whole world.&#8221; The early ecumenical movement in Christianity is a child of the Reformation. Since the splitting of Christianity into multiple sects, there have been attempts to bring the &#8220;family&#8221; together again into one united &#8220;house&#8221; and to become one united &#8220;people.&#8221; Since 1948, the World Council of Churches is the main organization that has been responsible for fostering Christian unity in the world.<br />
  267. In the decade of the 1960&#8217;s, the ecumenical movement became filled with the energy and passion characteristic of this period of great social change in America. Ecumenical efforts started out simple and grew. Initially, Catholic and Reform clergy began to socialize together. Priests and ministers started holding congregational meetings to educate their parishioners about a new idea called &#8220;ecumenism.&#8221; Later, Protestant ministers and Catholic priests were invited to give joint lectures about their traditions and to speak at length about their respective worship styles, liturgies and belief systems. Communities began to sponsor interfaith dinners. Interfaith services began to be held. These were all positive developments for faith traditions that a few years earlier had barely tolerated each other.<br />
  268. In addition to ecumenism evolving in Christian communities, the era of the 1960&#8217;s was breaking down barriers and posing new religious challenges; for example, the Anti-War Movement, the Women&#8217;s Movement and the Environmental Movement to name a few. Americans soon saw strange people dressed in orange robes, who they called &#8220;Hare Krishnas,&#8221; chanting and dancing at airports and in the downtowns of major U.S. cities. They heard about a peaceful looking man called the Dali Lama, who had just lost his home in a faraway land. They watched on their television sets Buddhist monks in crimson robes setting themselves on fire in protest over the Vietnam War. An Eastern group calling themselves &#8220;Moonies&#8221; tried to enlist converts on American city streets. Eastern gurus established rural communities in Iowa and Oregon. One of the Beatles traveled to the East to visit a &#8220;spiritual master.&#8221; A Zen retreat center on the coast of California became a desired &#8220;destination.&#8221; Meditation and yoga began to be incorporated into the lifestyles of many Americans. The East was meeting the West and, at the same time, indigenous spiritualities were beginning to reemerge. Where did ecumenism fit in this new spiritual landscape? To find an answer to this question, let us look to two sources: Christian Theologian Matthew Fox and to a leader in the interfaith community.<span id="more-65787"></span><br />
  269. Fox gives us a broader definition of ecumenism in his book &#8220;<em>One River, Many Wells</em>&#8221; where he writes, &#8220;there is one underground river but there are many wells into that river;<em> </em>for example, a Christian well, a Buddhist well, a Jewish well, a Muslim well, an Aboriginal Well, a Taoist well, a Goddess well. Many wells, one river. That is Deep Ecumenism.&#8221; (1) Matthew Fox, &#8220;<em>One River, Many Wells&#8221; </em>(New York: Tarcher/Penguin Books, 2000) 5. (Deep Ecumenism and &#8220;Ecumenism of the Deep Well&#8221; are terms used interchangeably in this writing.) Deep ecumenism is a paradigm shift that more aptly addresses the religious pluralism of the present day and leads one into the world of interfaith which is the practical application of deep ecumenism.<br />
  270. According to Rev. Will McGarvey, a Presbyterian minister who heads an Interfaith Council in northern California, the dialoguing and mutual sharing that took place between the various Christian groups in the 1960&#8217;s, laid the groundwork for the interfaith movement that emerged in the 1970&#8217;s. In the following years, an interfaith movement has grown and matured. There is now an interfaith infrastructure in America that is made up of networks of interfaith organizations on the regional, state and national levels. According to Rev. McGarvey, the goal of interfaith work is the living out of shared values as people representing the various faith traditions and to speak from these common values, especially in protecting the vulnerable in society. (2) (Rev. McGarvey Interview February 1, 2018) Interfaith is deep ecumenism at work in the world.<br />
  271. Today the religious landscape in America and abroad reflects Christians, Jews and Muslims joining with the Eastern faith traditions of Buddhism and Hinduism and other world traditions in the sharing of core values and in working towards establishing relationships based on mutual respect and understanding. Attempts have also been made to help bring indigenous and nature-based spiritualities into the interfaith world and to give them a voice in the sharing of core values. Interfaith settings are diverse and encompass every aspect of life; for example, youth and young adult programs; airport, hospital, hospice and nursing home interfaith chaplaincies; an Interfaith Worker Justice Program; an Interfaith Power and Light Program; an Interfaith Democratic Rights Program to name a few. (3) (The Interfaith Infrastructure: Citizenship and Leadership in the Multireligious City. http://pluralism.org/interfaith/report/)<br />
  272. On the congregational level, inspiring programs based on deep ecumenism are being established. One such program is the Neighbor-to-Neighbor partnership (N2N) founded by Elder Terence Clark of Lafayette Presbyterian Church in Northern California. Clark was able to interest the local synagogue and local Islamic Center in joining him to bring the three Abrahamic faith traditions together to create an interfaith community based on mutual respect and understanding. (Clark Interview March 17, 2018) Similarly, in western Omaha, negotiations over sharing a parking lot led to Christians, Jews and Moslems crossing the faith divide and engaging in dialogue and cooperation and eventually establishing the Tri-Faith Neighborhood Project. (4) (<a href="http://pluralism.org/case-study/an-invitation-to-a-tri-faith-neighborhood-b/">http:/pluralism.org/case-study/an-invitation-to-a-tri-faith-neighborhood-b/</a>) These two projects serve as wonderful examples and templates for what can be done at the grassroots level to help bring about mutual respect and understanding between the faith traditions. In addition to sharing core values, these programs work hard to educate the participants in cross-faith understanding and to create an environment which facilitates social bonding.<br />
  273. Another wonderful example of deep ecumenism is how our major faith traditions are coming together to help and support indigenous peoples in their fight for their lands and their rights. A recent example is when Christian clergy and Jewish rabbis joined in coalition with environmentalists and representatives from the various Indian tribes involved to help save Bears Ears, a 1.35 million acre protected area in southeast Utah that was being threatened by Governmental development. (5) (Connie Larkman, UCC clergy, interfaith leaders join native people to protect sacred site in Utah November 20, 2017. (<a href="http://www.ucc.org/news-ucc-clergy-interfaith-leader-join-native-people-to-protect-sacred-si">http://www.ucc.org/news-ucc-clergy-interfaith-leader-join-native-people-to-protect-sacred-si</a>) On another occasion, June 19, 2017 marks the first time that religious leaders representing twenty-one countries as well as the Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, and Daoist religions came together to work in unison with indigenous people to end deforestation and protect the planet&#8217;s tropical rainforests.<br />
  274. (6) (Religious leaders join interfaith rainforest initiative in Oslo today. June 19, 2017. (<a href="https://www.oikoumene.org/en/press-centre/news/religious-leaders-join">https://www.oikoumene.org/en/press-centre/news/religious-leaders-join</a>&#8230;) There was another &#8220;first time&#8221; that occurred in February of 2018 in Vienna when 200 religious leaders from the Middle East met at a conference to affirm social cohesion and peaceful coexistence in the Arab region between Christians, Jews and Muslims. (7) (<a href="http://www.oikoumene.org/en/press-centre/news/christian-jewish-and-muslim-leaders-in-vi">http://www.oikoumene.org/en/press-centre/news/christian-jewish-and-muslim-leaders-in-vi</a>..)<br />
  275. According to the Harvard Pluralism Project, there is positive reflection taking place among various Christian denominations regarding religious diversity. The Presbyterians, for example, have the document &#8220;<em>Interfaith Relations</em> <em>Denominational Principles and Policies</em>&#8221; to guide them. Other faith traditions have created their own documents to address religious pluralism as well. (8) (&#8220;From Diversity to Pluralism.&#8221; <a href="http://pluralism.org/encounter/todays-challenges/from-diversity-to-pluralism/">http://pluralism.org/encounter/todays-challenges/from-diversity-to-pluralism/</a>)<br />
  276. The seminary level responsible for the training of priests, rabbis and ministers is also broadening to include deep ecumenism. The future priest, minister, or rabbi will need to be well versed in the other major religions in addition to being a good counselor and spiritual leader. Many predict that within the next ten years monotheistic trialogues will develop more and more frequently. (9) (<a href="http://pluralism.org/research-report/jewish-interfaith-endeavors-academic-programs/">http://pluralism.org/research-report/jewish-interfaith-endeavors-academic-programs/</a>)<br />
  277. On a broader level, deep ecumenism is at work in the areas of intergroup apology, forgiveness and reconciliation. Age-old divides are being crossed between Christian denominations as well as between major faith traditions. A recent example of the former is the 500<sup>th</sup> anniversary of the Reformation in 2017 when not only the gifts of the Reformation were celebrated but the pain and suffering perpetrated by all sides was lamented. Catholics and mainline Protestants are now facing the future together. (10) (<a href="http://www.thetrumpet.com/16392-catholics">www.thetrumpet.com/16392-catholics</a><span style="text-decoration: underline"> and protestants commemorate the reformation)</span> Intergroup apology among religious groups gives hope for a future based on religious respect, cooperation and the sharing of core values.<br />
  278. The following is a small sample of religious divides that have been crossed in recent years: (1) The Evangelical Lutheran Church apologized for the antisemitism of Martin Luther and the harm perpetrated against the Jews in his name. (2) The Pope apologized for Catholic prejudice and dehumanization of Jews and Muslims and he also apologized for the Crusades and slavery. (3) Cardinal John O&#8217;Connor apologized for the pain inflicted on the Jews by many Catholics over the millennium. (4) France&#8217;s Catholic clergy apologized for their silence during the Holocaust. Clergy asked for the Jewish people to hear their repentance. (5) Nine Protestant churches sought forgiveness for the sin of division by seeking to unify their twenty-two million members around a campaign to fight racism. (6) The United Methodists apologized for the 1864 massacre of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians which had been led by a Methodist minister. According to Samuel P. Oliner, in his book &#8220;<em>Altruism, Intergroup Apology, Forgiveness and Reconciliation</em>,&#8221; he wrote, &#8220;although some of them [apologies] are of dubious quality, and the long-term results of most are still in doubt, we are heartened by the fact that so many are finding the apology and forgiveness process of merit.&#8221; (11) Samuel P. Oliner. &#8220;<em>Altruism, Intergroup Apology, Forgiveness and Reconciliation. </em>(St. Paul MN: Paragon House, 2008) pp. 245-249.<br />
  279. The prominent Buddhist leader, The Dali Lama, reminds us in his writings how we now live in an interdependent world and that the quality that is needed in order for the human species to survive is cooperation. The narratives that were included in this writing are just a small sampling of the world&#8217;s religions sharing core values in new ways. They are a bellwether projection of how deep ecumenism will define the religious landscape of the future. Modern-day physics tells us that on a subatomic level, all of life is interconnected. Modern-day economists tell us that the world&#8217;s economies are all interwoven. Modern-day democracies seek unity out of diversity. Modern-day technology has created a worldwide web of connectivity &#8211; cooperation, interconnectedness, interwoven, unity out of diversity, and connectivity. These are the qualities we also need today when speaking of our faith traditions. Just as the interweaving of modern-day economies bodes well for a more peaceful world, so too does the interweaving of our faith traditions bode well for a more peaceful world. The arc of human progress is a long one and, despite present day religious intolerance and violence both at home and abroad, it appears to be pointing to a species that is evolving towards being &#8220;interconnected&#8221; and to faith traditions that are evolving towards being &#8220;interconnected&#8221; as well. The bellwether signs seem to be pointing to the fact that people of faith are being called to be an &#8220;intra&#8221; people and an &#8220;inter&#8221; people. They are being called to be an &#8220;ecumenical&#8221; people and a people of &#8220;deep ecumenism.&#8221; They are being called to be an &#8220;oikos&#8221; people and a people of the &#8220;well.&#8221; They are being called to a new religious pluralism that is not only a pathway to peace between religious traditions but a pathway to peace in the world.<br />
  280. &nbsp;</p>
  281. <p style="text-align: center">BIBLIOGRAPHY</p>
  282. <p style="text-align: left">1. Matthew Fox, &#8220;<em>One River, Many Wells&#8221; </em>(New York: Tarcher/Penguin Books, 2000) 5.</p>
  283. <p style="text-align: left">2. (Rev. McGarvey Interview February 1, 2018)</p>
  284. <p>3. (The Interfaith Infrastructure: Citizenship and Leadership in the Multireligious City. <a href="http://pluralism.org/interfaith/report/">http://pluralism.org/interfaith/report/</a>)<br />
  285. 4. (<a href="http://pluralism.org/case-study/an-invitation-to-a-tri-faith-neighborhood-b/">http:/pluralism.org/case-study/an-invitation-to-a-tri-faith-neighborhood-b/</a>)<br />
  286. 5. (Connie Larkman, UCC clergy, interfaith leaders join native people to protect sacred site in Utah November 20, 2017. (<a href="http://www.ucc.org/news-ucc-clergy-interfaith-leader-join-native-people-to-protect-sacred-si">http://www.ucc.org/news-ucc-clergy-interfaith-leader-join-native-people-to-protect-sacred-si</a>)<br />
  287. 6. (Religious leaders join interfaith rainforest initiative in Oslo today. June 19, 2017. (<a href="https://www.oikoumene.org/en/press-centre/news/religious-leaders-join">https://www.oikoumene.org/en/press-centre/news/religious-leaders-join</a>&#8230;)<br />
  288. 7. (<a href="http://www.oikoumene.org/en/press-centre/news/christian-jewish-and-muslim-leaders-in-vi">http://www.oikoumene.org/en/press-centre/news/christian-jewish-and-muslim-leaders-in-vi</a>..)<br />
  289. 8. (&#8220;From Diversity to Pluralism.&#8221; <a href="http://pluralism.org/encounter/todays-challenges/from-diversity-to-pluralism/">http://pluralism.org/encounter/todays-challenges/from-diversity-to-pluralism/</a>)<br />
  290. 9. (<a href="http://pluralism.org/research-report/jewish-interfaith-endeavors-academic-programs/">http://pluralism.org/research-report/jewish-interfaith-endeavors-academic-programs/</a>)<br />
  291. 10. (<a href="http://www.thetrumpet.com/16392-catholics">www.thetrumpet.com/16392-catholics</a><span style="text-decoration: underline"> and protestants commemorate the reformation)</span><br />
  292. 11. Samuel P. Oliner. &#8220;<em>Altruism, Intergroup Apology, Forgiveness and Reconciliation. </em>(St. Paul MN: Paragon House, 2008) pp. 245-249.<br />
  293. __</p>
  294. <div><strong>Pat Devine </strong> <em>is a Church deacon, writer, community advocate, and strong supporter of &#8220;deep ecumenism.&#8221;</em></div>
  295. ]]></content:encoded>
  296. <wfw:commentRss>https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/2018/11/21/ecumenism-of-the-deep-well/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
  297. <slash:comments>2</slash:comments>
  298. </item>
  299. <item>
  300. <title>Linda Sarsour, the Women’s March, &#038; Anti-Semitism</title>
  301. <link>https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/2018/11/21/linda-sarsour-the-womens-march-anti-semitism/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=linda-sarsour-the-womens-march-anti-semitism</link>
  302. <comments>https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/2018/11/21/linda-sarsour-the-womens-march-anti-semitism/#comments</comments>
  303. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Tikkun]]></dc:creator>
  304. <pubDate>Wed, 21 Nov 2018 16:00:51 +0000</pubDate>
  305. <category><![CDATA[Inter-Culturalism]]></category>
  306. <category><![CDATA[Politics & Society]]></category>
  307. <category><![CDATA[activism]]></category>
  308. <category><![CDATA[Culture]]></category>
  309. <category><![CDATA[empathy]]></category>
  310. <category><![CDATA[interfaith]]></category>
  311. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://tikkundaily.tikkun.org/?p=65791</guid>
  312.  
  313. <description><![CDATA[Rabbi Arthur Waskow reflects on a letter from Linda Sarsour, leader of the Women's March, which he reads in both spiritual and ecological terms: "In our very diversity, our different cultures, our disagreements, we are the rainbow refractions of ONE light."]]></description>
  314. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><div id="attachment_65794" class="wp-caption module image aligncenter" style="max-width: 640px;"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-65794" title="31102001428_518fa21b0e_o" src="https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/wp-content/uploads/31102001428_518fa21b0e_o.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="512" /><p class="wp-caption-text">Image of Linda Sarsour courtesy of Mobilus In Mobili/Flickr.</p></div><br />
  315. In recent days there have been some calls from some people in the Jewish community to boycott the planned Women’s March on January 19. This call has been explained on the ground that some of the March leaders have been unwilling to specifically denounce Minister Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam for his many blatantly anti-Semitic views and speeches.<br />
  316. One of the March leaders cited in this call has been Linda Sarsour, an important leader of the Women’s March movement that became powerful the day after Mr. Trump’s inauguration as President, and onward from then.  Ms. Sarsour has not only spoken words but also taken action strongly condemning anti-Semitism.  She has, for example, raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to help repair desecrated Jewish cemeteries and to assist the survivors of the “Tree of Life” synagogue mass murders in Pittsburgh.<br />
  317. Ms. Sarsour privately circulated a letter explaining her views on these matters.  I was and am deeply moved by it, and asked her permission to share it with the Jewish public.  She wrote back, “Please share as you see fit. Hope it brings some healing to broken hearts.  – Linda”<br />
  318. Here is her letter, followed by some comments of my own about ways in which she and I disagree, and other ways in which we agree.</p>
  319. <blockquote><p>I am requesting for all who read my email to approach it with an open mind and an open heart with the understanding that you may not agree with what I will put forth and that is okay with me. This is not an email to persuade or to convince, it is an email with my voice and my experience and my truth &#8211; one that may not be comfortable for some.<br />
  320. I know and recognize that our Jewish family is experiencing real pain, hurt and trauma. I know this stems from generational trauma and history of genocide and that these past few weeks have triggered insecurity, fear and anxiety. This is a difficult time and it requires us to be clear-eyed and also recognize the real threats so we can protect each other. We are all we got and this movement is all we got.<br />
  321. <strong><span style="text-decoration: underline">Background</span></strong><br />
  322. The Farrakhan controversy began 8 months ago when Jake Tapper and Jonathan Greenblatt of the ADL &#8220;exposed/ promoted&#8221; a video of the Minister Farrakhan at an annual gathering for the Nation of Islam called Saviour&#8217;s Day where Tamika D. Mallory was present along with 15,000 other people including many Black celebrities, business people, dignitaries and pastors. She was not a speaker.<br />
  323. Tamika has already discussed in length her longstanding relationship with the NOI after the brutal murder of her son&#8217;s father 17 years ago and the positive role NOI played in this Black single teen mother&#8217;s life. I won&#8217;t rehash this but note it here for context. We heard painful and yet loving critiques from our Jewish friends, we had conference calls, meetings, we put out a statement that came out a few days late BECAUSE we have Jewish women on our staff who were impacted personally and working through a statement that was going to speak to all the concerns was not something that could happen overnight. Since then conversations continued and our important work continued.<br />
  324. Then the horrific Tree of Life shooting happened that took the life of 11 innocent Jewish Americans and all of a sudden Women&#8217;s March was being asked to condemn the Minister Farrakhan. There was nothing new that happened between Women&#8217;s March and the Minister. Folks decided to rehash 8 months ago. A white supremacist walked into a synagogue and killed 11 innocent people and the focus became the Minister Farrakhan and the NOI.<br />
  325. A few days before that a white supremacist sent dozens of pipe bombs to notable figures and a day before that a white supremacist killed two Black people at Kroger&#8217;s (my Muslim American community also raised funds for these two innocent souls as well) after he could not get in to a locked Black church but here we were three women of color who are leading a powerful effective movement with millions of members being demanded to denounce Minister Farrakhan who had no relation to these white supremacists or these acts of violence.<br />
  326. Instead of coming together as a country to call out white supremacy and the violence being inspired by this Administration &#8212; the deflection went to a Black man who has no institutional power. &#8212;  This is a feature of white supremacy. <span id="more-65791"></span><br />
  327. This is not an email in defense of Minister Farrakhan. He can do that for himself. <strong>We have been CRYSTAL CLEAR in BOTH of our statements that we REJECT antisemitism and all forms of racism.</strong> We have been CLEAR that Minister Farrakhan has said hateful and hurtful things and that he does not align with our Unity Principles of the Women&#8217;s March that were created by Women of Color. Minister Farrakhan will tell you himself that he does not belong to nor adhere to our progressive movement or yours.<br />
  328. We are trained in Kingian nonviolence, the ideology of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. that at its core calls us to attack the forces of evil not those doing evil. We believe in redemption for people of color who have been discarded, denounced and condemned for centuries in this country. People who engage in acts or behaviors or hold beliefs based on their own historical trauma. It&#8217;s why we are not ashamed to work with formerly incarcerated individuals who have committed crimes that for some in society would have determined and decided to give them death. We have been slandered for working with criminals &#8211; but we are committed to a movement that leaves no one behind.<br />
  329. Some folks who claim to be in the resistance or represent the resistance have no ideology or theory of change and have no understanding of the nuance that comes with organizing with communities of color because they have not done the work &#8211; and I pray that they do meet, build and learn because it will transform how they show up so they can help and not harm.<br />
  330. Last year when a St. Louis Jewish cemetery was desecrated, with no hesitation I raised close to $165K for its restoration and because of the generosity of many in my community it allowed for the restoration of another Jewish cemetery in Colorado that was neglected for years. Immediately after the Tree of Life shooting, my colleague Tarek and I (through MPower Change) raised $206K to pay for ALL the funerals of the 11 innocent Jews that were killed. My role as a movement leader is not just to say profound words it is to set an example of what meaningful allyship looks like that is beyond thoughts and prayers. This was all erased.  Oped after oped after oped after quotes from people who want to see their names in print and barely any mention of our contributions when they decided to tear us down.<br />
  331. The labels of antisemitism were here before the Minister Farrakhan controversy 8 months ago. Who remembers when a campaign was started by the alt-right and right-wing Zionists to get me disinvited from a CUNY commencement speech last June? Who remembers the campaign against me last fall around my participation in a New School panel about the importance of combatting antisemitism in this moment with Jewish Voice for Peace and Jacobin Magazine? Minister Farrakhan was not even a factor yet in the conversation. I was already being labeled an antisemite and by extension the Women&#8217;s March.<br />
  332. It&#8217;s very clear to me what the underlying issue is &#8211; I am a bold, outspoken BDS -supporting Palestinian Muslim American woman and the opposition&#8217;s worst nightmare. They have tried every tactic at their disposal to undermine me, discredit me, vilify me but my roots are too deep and my work is too clear and they have not succeeded so by proxy they began attacking my sister Tamika Mallory &#8211; knowing all too well that in this country the most discardable woman is a Black woman.<br />
  333. Tamika has been disinvited from some things, and her twitter account that I have access to is full of hate that is unfathomable, saturated with the N-words and worst things said to Black women. I will NEVER throw Tamika away. My loyalty to Black women who have risked their lives for all of us is and will be unshaken. I will continue to hold Tamika up because she has done that for too many people that society has written off.<br />
  334. Tamika and I are women with our own agency. We speak for ourselves and ourselves alone. We are being stripped of our agency when every few months we are asked to condemn the Minister about words that we did not say, nonetheless the words of a man who did not consult us on his words. We are being held to standards that no one would hold themselves to.<br />
  335. I can share numerous examples of times when movement leaders could have said more and done more for various communities or in response to hateful things that have come from their communities and their &#8220;leaders&#8221;- blatant anti-blackness,  Islamophobia, anti-Palestinian rhetoric &#8211;  yet that is UNFAIR which is why I don&#8217;t expect it nor demand it. As a Muslim, I know all too well that I am expected to answer for other Muslims’ actions when white folks never have a second thought about having to do that. &#8212;  This is a feature of white supremacy.<br />
  336. Let&#8217;s also recognize who the majority is that leads the attacks against women of color leaders &#8211; not people of color led institutions or activists.  Wonder why. Who benefits when a powerful, effective and proven organization is attacked? Who benefits when the movement is divided? Who benefits from the confusion and the fractures? Not us. Not marginalized people. Not those who are counting on us to win.<br />
  337. Let us not fall for the longstanding tactics of white supremacy of divide and conquer. Unity is NOT uniformity. I am not building a unified movement where we will all agree on every single point and issue. I am building a complex, intersectional movement with the clear understanding that it will be messy and uncomfortable because if it was going to be easy someone would have done it a long time ago and we would all have our rights and be enjoying our lives in a free democratic country that treats us all with dignity and respect. But here we are.<br />
  338. We have seen UGLY. I pray that none of you have to experience what we have. A litany of death threats, unsolicited hate mail some with threats of violence. FBI visits to notify me of credible threats to my life that I had not even seen, the need for security detail, surveillance systems for my home &#8211; I don&#8217;t say this for any pity or sympathy because I am NOT a victim, I am a survivor of a white supremacist system that wants to ban and rid itself of people like me and Tamika, I say this to say that these public toxic conversations invite these things to happen to us and we all have a responsibility to want us to be safe and out of harm&#8217;s way. Tamika and I did not choose to be activists, this work chose us.<br />
  339. This is not a side job, or a labor of love &#8211; this is a matter of life and death for the communities we love and come from.<br />
  340. I ask you all to model how we approach each other in the movement. Have conversations, reach out, ask questions, give benefit of the doubt, contextualize moments outside of your own personal feelings, remind yourself of the good this person or persons or organization has done. Use critical thinking skills.<br />
  341. Be honest with your feelings, speak from the I, propose solutions and not demands. Challenge people in your circles, engage people. Tearing down, threatening movement leaders with &#8220;say this or else we won&#8217;t do this or if you don&#8217;t say this then its meaningless&#8221; is not the way.<br />
  342. The Women&#8217;s March is an important institution in this resistance. We have organized the largest single day demonstration in American history, we have been the catalyst for 20,000 women to run for office, we have trained thousands of women in civil disobedience and direct action, organized the largest women led civil disobedience back in June around family separation, co-led close to 30 days of organizing around Kavanaugh and shifted the entire narrative, worked diligently with many of you on elections in key states winning back the House and NOW we are in the midst of organizing another HISTORIC mobilization to remind the Administration that we are still here as a resistance and send a message to Congress and yes to our friends in Congress that we will create the political will for them to be brave and hold them accountable to the platforms they ran on.<br />
  343. Thank you for reading this far. I know for some this may not have been easy and may have triggered you and I see you. Sit with this. Absorb it from a place of love and commitment to making this movement work. I pray that our Jewish family recognizes that this resistance is for you too and that you embrace the solidarity we have shown because we have a lot more to give. I am available for one-on -ne conversations and am committed to making the time.<br />
  344. Stay focused. The real threat is white nationalism and white supremacy. They want to destroy us all. We are all we got and you know that you can count on me and the Women&#8217;s March leaders to continue to be bold and put it all on the line. We hope to see you on January 19th, 2019. We promise you that we have remarkable things in store and you will leave inspired once again.<br />
  345. <strong>I will leave you with a quote that guides the way I show up in this work and I hope that it speaks to all of you. It is by an aboriginal woman by the name of Lila Watson and she said:</strong><br />
  346. <strong>&#8220;If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time; but if you have come here because you believe that your liberation is bound up with mine, let us work together.&#8221;</strong><br />
  347. My liberation is bound up with all of yours.<br />
  348. In solidarity, <em>Linda Sarsour </em></p></blockquote>
  349. <p>*** *** ***<br />
  350. (Arthur Waskow back again:) I am deeply moved by this letter. I hear it as a profound statement of what we might call an “ecological” view of the movement to oppose Trump and to renew and remake American democracy &#8212;  seeing it as a cultural/ political eco-system. In a biological eco-system, it is crucial that the different species are in fact different. And it is also crucial to see that their differences in fact are what make possible the system as a unified whole.<br />
  351. Ms. Sarsour is calling for not just an conventional “coalition” of organizations to accomplish a single limited goal (e.g., “End the Vietnam War”) but a more organically linked multi-issue movement in which it is both inevitable that there be differences among the constituencies, and crucial that the constituencies sense that those differences themselves contribute to a broader unity.<br />
  352. To use religious language that converges with the ecological sciences: In our very diversity, our different cultures, our disagreements, we are the rainbow refractions of ONE light. The Quran teaches that humanity was created in many different cultures precisely so that we can learn to understand each other. Jews affirm in the Sh’ma that the Divine Interbreath of Life is ONE. The Torah’s call that we pursue “justice, justice” – in its different voices &#8212;  is ONE. The love we owe each other is ONE.<br />
  353. So it is no surprise and no disaster that I do not agree with all of Ms. Sarsour’s views. I have, for example, publicly disagreed with the call of the “official” BDS [“Boycott Divest Sanction”] movement for total boycotts of all Israeli institutions, and I have publicly debated with its Palestinian leaders. At the same time, I recognize that BDS is an ethical improvement on murderous terrorist attacks on Israelis; I have supported boycotts of companies that are directly assisting the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories on the West Bank; I approve Congressional efforts to end all US support for the Saudi war against Yemen; and I opposed Trump’s destruction of the brilliantly successful agreement preventing Iran from achieving a nuclear arsenal.  So from our different perspectives Ms. Sarsour and I have a “meta-unity,” an ecological unity, of opposition to the Trump-Netanyahoo- Saudi Prince axis that is destroying Yemen, threatening aggressive war against Iran, and subjugating the Palestinians.  And a meta-unity of protecting Israel from the murder of its civilians and from the danger of a nuclearized Iran.<br />
  354. My own opposition to a total BDS directed against all of Israeli society, along with my strong opposition to the Israeli government and the Occupation, comes from my own ties to the decent elements in Israeli society. So from my own responses I learn to respect the responses of a Palestinian-American with strong ties to the Palestinian community under military Occupation in its homeland, and to understand why such a person would feel drawn to BDS. In this way I honor our disagreement  &#8212;  both sides of it – even while I hold strongly to my own view.<br />
  355. <strong>Should my disagreement on this question push me toward boycotting a movement that I strongly support – the Women’s March &#8212; in which Ms. Sarsour is a leader? God forbid!</strong><br />
  356. Indeed, just the opposite.  Contempt for women and their subjugation is an aspect of the white nationalism that also encourages fear and hatred of immigrants and refugees, Muslims, Blacks, Latinx, Native Americans, and the free press; that emboldens anti-Semitism;  that poisons and burns the Earth; and that through the Trump-Netanyahoo alliance subjugates Palestinians. Resistance to white nationalism connects the fuller liberation of American women from sexism with the fuller liberation of the Jewish community from anti-Semitism.<br />
  357. We are facing a President of the United States who in public policy and vile dog-whistles is encouraging a level of anti-Semitism that murdered eleven Jews at prayer. And  at this moment of our history, some among us are ready to dismantle the strongest single element of the struggle against this neo-fascist white nationalism out of fear of the utterly disgusting but powerless Minister Farrakhan? Out of hostility to leaders of the Women’s March who have, as Ms. Sarsour does in her letter, made clear their utter rejection of Farrakhan’s anti-Semitism? To me this stance makes no sense.<br />
  358. <strong>To Lila Watson&#8217;s and Linda Sarsour&#8217;s challenge, I respond: We have indeed come together </strong><strong>because we do believe that &#8220;your&#8221; liberation is bound up with &#8220;mine.&#8221;  So let us work together!</strong><br />
  359. __</p>
  360. <div lang="EN-US"><strong>Rabbi Arthur Waskow, Ph. D.,</strong> <em>is the founder (1983) and director of The Shalom Center, a prophetic voice in the Jewish, multireligious, and American worlds. See <a href="http://theshalomcenter.org/" target="_blank" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://theshalomcenter.org&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1542828340048000&amp;usg=AFQjCNH0qDnhwr8pZdcZ2787q1dQlJn_ww" rel="noopener">theshalomcenter.org</a>.</em></div>
  361. ]]></content:encoded>
  362. <wfw:commentRss>https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/2018/11/21/linda-sarsour-the-womens-march-anti-semitism/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
  363. <slash:comments>4</slash:comments>
  364. </item>
  365. <item>
  366. <title>A Visit to a Settlement: A Catalyst for Righteous Anger</title>
  367. <link>https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/2018/11/17/a-visit-to-a-settlement-a-catalyst-for-righteous-anger/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=a-visit-to-a-settlement-a-catalyst-for-righteous-anger</link>
  368. <comments>https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/2018/11/17/a-visit-to-a-settlement-a-catalyst-for-righteous-anger/#comments</comments>
  369. <dc:creator><![CDATA[galleryeditor]]></dc:creator>
  370. <pubDate>Sat, 17 Nov 2018 19:15:15 +0000</pubDate>
  371. <category><![CDATA[Healing Israel/Palestine]]></category>
  372. <category><![CDATA[Politics & Society]]></category>
  373. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://tikkundaily.tikkun.org/?p=65777</guid>
  374.  
  375. <description><![CDATA[Paul Von Blum reflects on his first and last visit to an Israeli settlement, activism, and how writing can be a powerful tool to channel political anger. ]]></description>
  376. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p dir="ltr"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-65780" title="jerusalem-342813_1280" src="https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/wp-content/uploads/jerusalem-342813_1280-300x168.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="168" />I have opposed the Israeli occupation and its settlements in the West Bank for as long as I can remember. I have been public about these views in my teaching, my public presentations, and in some of my writings. But until last July, I had never actually visited an Israeli settlement and seen how it works and how some of the people live. The experience has not changed my mind; indeed, it has actually reinforced my view that these settlements remain a colossal impediment to peace in the region and are an egregious violation of international law.</p>
  377. <p dir="ltr">How it happened: I was part of a group organized by Academic Exchange for almost two weeks in early to mid July, 2018. Consisting of approximately 30 academics and a few other legal and diplomatic professionals, the group toured Israel and listened to experts from several fields with multiple perspectives. We mostly heard from Israeli authorities and spent the majority of time in Israeli settings but we also listened to several thoughtful Palestinian figures when we visited Ramallah. To its credit, Academic Exchange provided a multiple perspectives and experiences without any attempt to indoctrinate any particular viewpoint. It offered an outstanding opportunity to gain first-hand experience in Israel and Palestine, including a moving tour of Yad Vashem, and to meet and talk with many people living in this troubled and complex region of the world.</p>
  378. <p dir="ltr">One of the early Academic Exchange visits was to the settlement of Eli in the occupied West Bank. Our bus from Tel Aviv had no trouble entering the area and going through the Israeli checkpoint; that, of course, would not be the case for Palestinians. Shortly before we arrived, an energetic, American-born, middle-aged woman joined us. She became our guide for the next several hours. Well educated, articulate, and extremely engaging, she accompanied us to her home in the settlement.</p>
  379. <p><span id="more-65777"></span></p>
  380. <p dir="ltr">It is unimportant to identify her by name. She is an experienced guide to what the settlers call Judea and Samaria and a skillful defender of her particular settlement and of the settlement movement generally. She has conducted these tours professionally, leading her to be glib and verbally adept as she conducted our tour on a hot July evening.</p>
  381. <p dir="ltr">Eli, as I learned then but mostly later, is a large and mixed settlement near biblical Shiloh, which our guide spoke about with great vigor and pride. It has a population of over 4,000 people, a sports academy, cultivated gardens, a shopping center, synagogues, ritual baths, and other amenities and facilities. It includes many highly religious Jews and secular Jews. The latter presumably come to Eli because housing there is less expensive than in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, both of which are relatively close by.</p>
  382. <p dir="ltr">Our guide&#8217;s home was extremely pleasant and from what I could observe, the community looked like the kind of well-groomed suburb that I could find in the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles or in many other regions of the United States. She was extremely gracious as she invited us into her home. She introduced us to her husband and some of her polite eight children; her three-year old, though shy, was absolutely adorable. She laid out a delectable spread on her table for us. She also provided an abundance of bottled water, which was essential in the Palestinian July heat. In her backyard, we had a stunning view of the mountains and our guide told us of the long Jewish presence in the region and of the recent archeological discoveries from those ancient Jewish civilizations.</p>
  383. <p dir="ltr">In her home and earlier on the bus, she told of meeting Arabs during shopping excursions and having friendly relations with them. She spoke of connections with Arab mothers and of the obvious and universal bonds of mothers and children that transcend religious and political boundaries and differences. I had absolutely no reason to doubt her sincerity when she made those comments.</p>
  384. <p dir="ltr">Shortly thereafter, we had dinner in a nearby restaurant, where we had a superb meal and tasted the outstanding wine produced from a winery in the occupied territories. As it happened, our guide sat at my table and we had the opportunity for some informal conversation. During dinner, I asked the single most important question of the entire trip: if, in a hypothetical political settlement in the future, this land were returned to an independent Palestine but she and her fellow settlers were permitted to remain in their homes and become Palestinian citizens, would that arrangement be acceptable? She bristled at the question and reiterated strongly that she and her family were eternally Israelis, living in a land that was theirs by divine right. She remained as outwardly friendly as ever, but I discerned a crack in her façade.</p>
  385. <p dir="ltr">Our experience that evening was markedly different from the image of gun-toting Israeli settlers ready to shoot any intruding Arab marauder who dares threaten a settler&#8217;s territory or hegemony. To be sure, there are such examples. Extremist settlers have set fire to Palestinian orchards with olive trees and other acts of violence, including fire bombings resulting in deaths, have occurred. Attacks on Palestinian shepherds and graffiti markings on Moslem and Christian sites have also been reported.</p>
  386. <p dir="ltr">Academic Exchange was clearly not going to bring us anywhere near any of these religious zealots. My sense was that my temporary academic colleagues on this trip probably found the visit educational although some expressed unease at the Occupation in general. In subsequent conversations with a few of them, I shared my own critical views, but with little of my accompanying emotion. I actually had a stronger, angrier response, although I refrained from expressing it at the time for two reasons: one, I saw no reason to be impolite to a woman who, after all, was gracious and hospitable to the group and two, I was unfamiliar with my temporary cohort and saw no particular reason to reveal any excessive negativity or emotion under the circumstances.</p>
  387. <p dir="ltr">That is not the case with this essay. Over the years, some of my writings (and much of my teaching) have reflected a sublimated aggression where I have attempted to turn my strong feelings of anger about political events into what I hope will be constructive outlets. And my expressions are often passionate, which makes some of my academic colleagues uneasy. Reasoned discourse is the usual (and entirely proper) hallmark of academic discourse, but we are not cognitive machines. The academic world&#8217;s unease with passion and anger, in fact, reflects the subtle way that it often reinforces the dominant political order. I offer no apology for this; since my early days as a civil rights activist on the front lines in the South with SNCC and beyond, the world has deeply disappointed me. Organizing, protest, and demonstrations, then and now, are all proper examples of sublimated aggression. Writing and teaching need not be any different.</p>
  388. <p dir="ltr">The Trump regime today only underscores my sadness as I enter my senior years. Its assault on reason and truth, its attacks on members of racial and ethnic minorities, women, and the LGBTQ communities, labor, and on a free press are appalling. All of that should and does evoke my anger and I should hasten to add (unnecessarily, I hope) that my political anger does not mean being personally disagreeable or unfriendly, even to adversaries.</p>
  389. <p dir="ltr">The trip to the Eli settlement and the comments from the guide there evoked powerful feelings from my past. Above all, seeing a lovely suburb in a region that I believe belongs to Palestine evoked distant personal memories where strong feelings of anger also rose up within me. Many years ago, for example, my wife and I were briefly in Panama before total sovereignty returned to that nation. We walked through the Canal Zone where we saw beautifully manicured houses that looked right out of affluent Southern California. Then there was the fence dividing it from the grinding poverty of Panama City &#8211; a striking visual signifier of U.S. colonialism. My emotions of anger at the glaring disparity of privilege and wealth remained with me for the rest of the day and beyond.</p>
  390. <p dir="ltr">Likewise, I visited South Africa after the fall of apartheid, after years of personal anti-apartheid efforts in the U.S. I couldn&#8217;t resist a quick glimpse of Sun City, the luxury resort and casino two hours from Johannesburg. During apartheid, it had been the venue for several performers who broke the international boycott of South Africa on the fraudulent ground that Sun City was located in a bogus independent state. On my visit, I saw mostly affluent white &#8220;guests&#8221; playing golf, enjoying drinks, gambling, and being served by black waiters and waitresses. A few kilometers away, black South Africans continued to live in squalor, dramatically contrasting to the manufactured entertainment of Sun City. My personal rage manifested itself again; I found myself muttering under my breath and sought to exit that place as quickly as possible. That was remarkably similar to my feelings in the West Bank settlement of Eli in July.</p>
  391. <p dir="ltr">Two other examples from my past welled up in me during our Eli visit. Our host mentioned that she had pleasant relationships with local Arabs, especially mothers. I have no doubt that this is her perception. When I worked in the South in the early civil rights movement in the early 1960s, I recall many whites who remarked how friendly they were with local &#8220;Negroes.&#8221; But I stayed with Black communities during my civil rights efforts and I had ample opportunity to talk at length with many African Americans at the time. Their perceptions were usually very different; they often remarked that they feigned friendliness with whites to avoid conflict. Typically, they noted that they well understood that they were the subordinate parties in an oppressive racist hierarchy. Some even expressed open hostility at the act they seem required to play. I cannot, of course, extrapolate this specifically to the Eli experience. But in all candor, it would hardly surprise me.</p>
  392. <p dir="ltr">Finally, I visited the North Shore of Chicago synagogue of the rabbi who officiated at my marriage in 1971. This was, I recall, in approximately 1977 or 1978, at the height of the anti-apartheid struggle. I attended a meeting where a Jewish woman from South African spoke and, in a subsequent question/answer session, noted that blacks were not ready for self-government. Once again, the anger rose in my body. This time, I put decorum aside and went at the woman with whatever verbal resources I could muster&#8211;and aggressively to the evident discomfort of some audience members.</p>
  393. <p dir="ltr">All these reactions are, I believe, perfectly righteous. More important, they are specifically relevant to the presence of Jewish settlements in Palestine. Our Eli guide&#8217;s graciousness and hospitality only served as a malevolent cover for a fundamental colonial injustice. Those settlements violate international law, despite Israeli denials and propaganda and the attempts of some Israeli and American lawyers to argue the contrary. Those attempts are among the worst examples of legal sophistry.</p>
  394. <p dir="ltr">The settlements need to be dismantled and a new progressive Israeli government must reverse this movement as quickly as possible. I would rather see this done peacefully, but I have no personal objection to the use of force. I&#8217;m not unconcerned with the emotions of our guide&#8217;s children, especially the little three year-old and the profound dislocation they would face. But Eli and the others are in Palestinian territory and our guide&#8217;s biblical injunctions about Judea and Samaria are smokescreens for colonialism and racism. American complicity in the construction of these settlements must also end, although this is unlikely with Donald Trump as President, Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State, John Bolton as National Security Advisor, and David Freidman as U.S. Ambassador to Israel.</p>
  395. <p dir="ltr">These prescriptions are, for the moment, utopian. But so was the end of Jim Crow, the end of apartheid, and many other progressive political advances. All these developments required the energetic and relentless organizing of angry women and men. That, more than anything, was my personal take away from my first and final visit to an Israeli settlement.</p>
  396. <p dir="ltr">____________________</p>
  397. <p dir="ltr"><strong>Paul Von Blum </strong>is a senior lecturer in African American studies and communication studies at UCLA and author of a new memoir, <em>A Life at the Margins: Keeping the Political Vision</em>, and a short biography of Paul Robeson, <em>Paul Robeson For Beginners</em>(2013).</p>
  398. ]]></content:encoded>
  399. <wfw:commentRss>https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/2018/11/17/a-visit-to-a-settlement-a-catalyst-for-righteous-anger/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
  400. <slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
  401. </item>
  402. <item>
  403. <title>Armistice-Veterans Day 2018</title>
  404. <link>https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/2018/11/12/armistice-veterans-day-2018/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=armistice-veterans-day-2018</link>
  405. <comments>https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/2018/11/12/armistice-veterans-day-2018/#comments</comments>
  406. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Valerie Elverton-Dixon]]></dc:creator>
  407. <pubDate>Tue, 13 Nov 2018 01:06:01 +0000</pubDate>
  408. <category><![CDATA[General News]]></category>
  409. <category><![CDATA[World War I; African-American veterans of World War I; Equal Justice Initiative]]></category>
  410. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://tikkundaily.tikkun.org/?p=65755</guid>
  411.  
  412. <description><![CDATA[As human beings, we are a carbon-based life form. We are close kin to the higher order apes. We are homo sapiens, a bit of earth that can think. We stand up straight; have an opposable thumb; have the capacity for rational thought; are able to use symbols to communicate abstract thoughts; we can use [&#8230;]]]></description>
  413. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>As human beings, we are a carbon-based life form.<br />
  414. We are close kin to the higher order apes.<br />
  415. We are homo sapiens, a bit of earth that can think.<br />
  416. We stand up straight; have an opposable thumb; have the capacity for rational thought; are able to use symbols to communicate abstract thoughts; we can use symbols to communicate about symbols; we can remember the past and plan for the future.<br />
  417. The gospel according to Jamie Lannister of the television version of &#8220;Game of Thrones&#8221;: &#8220;Strange thing, first time you cut a man, you realize we&#8217;re nothing but sacs of meat, blood and some bone to keep is all standing.&#8221;<br />
  418. I say: we are bags of water, flesh, blood, and bone called by a proper name.<br />
  419. We are body soul mind mysteries as long as we breathe the breath of life. We are character and personality that loves and hates, that laughs and cries, that sings and dances, that wills and desires, and sometimes just does not give a care. And when the breath leaves for the last time, our bodies become dust and ashes. We leave an empty space. Other human beings grieve.<br />
  420. The chemicals in our bodies are worth about one dollar.<br />
  421. So, what sense does it make to think that the color of the bag of water flesh blood and bone called by a proper name makes an individual more or less than any other? What sense does it make that the shape of it or the strength of it gives an individual the right to treat the Other as an object for one&#8217;s own drunken pleasure to be tossed away and forgotten like used tissue? What sense does it make that some bags think that they are superior because of the bit of earth upon which they were born or upon which they now stand or that they have a right to keep other bags from coming to that place? What makes the bags that we are fear the Other, hate the Other, and want to kill the Other to point of war?<br />
  422. World War I stands as one of the most deadly wars in the history of humankind. Between 15 and 19 million human beings died. Some 23 million military personnel were wounded. We do not know how many lives were shattered because of post-traumatic stress disorder, known at the time as shell shock.<span id="more-65755"></span><br />
  423. The bits of thinking earth that we are thought of horrific ways to kill -chemical warfare, flame-throwers, the first tanks and war in the sky. The stupidity of war was then and still is breathtaking.<br />
  424. However, more than the war itself, this was a time of genocide and pogroms across the world and even in the United States of America. As we commemorate the centennial of the end of World War I, we have already commemorated in the last few years the centennial of America&#8217;s pogroms against African-American people in Springfield, Illinois in 1908 and in East St. Louis, Illinois in 1917. Next year will be the centennial of Red Summer when there were pogroms and race war in America from coast to coast.<br />
  425. As we remember the end of World War I, the war that was supposed to make the world safe for democracy, the war that was supposed to end war, as we remember the veterans who have fought in all of America&#8217;s wars before and since the Great War, it is important to remember that African Americans also served. According to armyhistory.org:<br />
  426. &#8220;By the end of World War I, African Americans served in cavalry, infantry, signal, medical, engineer, and artillery units, as well as serving as chaplains, surveyors, truck drivers, chemists, and intelligence officers.&#8221; (https://armyhistory.org/fighting-for-respect-african-american-soldiers-in-wwi/)<br />
  427. An estimated 350,000 African Americans served in World War I and 171 were awarded the French Legion of Honor. However, when they returned to the United States, proud of their service to their country and proud of the uniform, they were reminded in brutal, violent, savage, barbaric, no uncertain terms that they were not equal citizens in the United States. Not only were they killed and in many cases lynched, but their bodies were burned and mutilated. It was not enough to kill them, they had to be torn limb from limb in order to strike fear into the hearts of African Americans across the country. No amount of bloodshed, or sacrifice of body and mind; no amount of heroism would be enough to earn equality in the United States.<br />
  428. Again I ask: what sense does it make for one bag of water, flesh, blood, and bone called by proper name to think that the color of the bag or the god to whom it prays or the people it loves gives one the right to desecrate another human being in this way? The stories of the violence are horrific. The Equal Justice Initiative has issued a report on the targeting of African American veterans for lynching. (https://eji.org/reports/lynching-in-america-targeting-black-veterans) It is a history that ought to be remembered.<br />
  429. This is especially true for people who want to represent We the People of the United States in Congress. Today, I read about the remarks of a white woman candidate for the United States Senate from Mississippi. She made what she thought was a joke, saying of a supporter: &#8220;If he invited me to a public hanging, I&#8217;d be on the front row.&#8221; She defended her statement as an &#8220;exaggerated expression of regard.&#8221;<br />
  430. This woman is at once ignorant and insensitive.<br />
  431. There was a time in America that white people did attend public hangings and mutilations of African Americans as entertainment. They packed picnic lunches to go. They made post cards of the events to send to friends. They kept body parts as souvenirs. Much of this barbaric history happened in Mississippi. Yet, she wants to represent a state where 37 percent of the population is African American. (https://www.npr.org/2018/11/12/667050590/gop-senators-public-hanging-comment-roils-mississippi-runoff-election)<br />
  432. The greatest deception that has deceived humankind is the idea the one bag of carbon based material, one human being, has the right to disrespect and to demean another human being in any way. This is why the moral teaching of most spiritual teachers is to see ourselves in the Other. They are us and we are them. And, time makes dust and ashes of us all.<br />
  433. &nbsp;<br />
  434. &nbsp;<br />
  435. &nbsp;<br />
  436. &nbsp;<br />
  437. Valerie Elverton Dixon is founder of JustPeaceTheory.com and author of &#8220;Just Peace Theory Book One: Spiritual Morality, Radical Love, and the Public Conversation.&#8221;</p>
  438. ]]></content:encoded>
  439. <wfw:commentRss>https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/2018/11/12/armistice-veterans-day-2018/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
  440. <slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
  441. </item>
  442. </channel>
  443. </rss>
  444.  

If you would like to create a banner that links to this page (i.e. this validation result), do the following:

  1. Download the "valid RSS" banner.

  2. Upload the image to your own server. (This step is important. Please do not link directly to the image on this server.)

  3. Add this HTML to your page (change the image src attribute if necessary):

If you would like to create a text link instead, here is the URL you can use:

http://www.feedvalidator.org/check.cgi?url=http%3A//www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/feed/

Copyright © 2002-9 Sam Ruby, Mark Pilgrim, Joseph Walton, and Phil Ringnalda