Tikkun Daily Digest: Shattering Stereotypes, The Tangled Web Of Money And Love, Jesus: A Radical Jewish Rabbi,
Commanding Narrat
Click on the links below to join a sampling from the lively discussions taking place these past weeks on the Tikkun
Daily blog! Unlike the carefully edited print magazine and web magazine site, Tikkun Daily is a spontaneous, open forum to which volunteer bloggers directly post their ideas and readers post their comments.
You'll find a provocative variety of views here, including some with which Tikkun editors heartily disagree, so please remember that any given post is presented solely by its author and does not
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Apr 02, 2013 12:47 pm | MJ Rosenberg
A new Pew Research Center poll demonstrates that Republicans are much more sympathetic to Israel than Democrats, a wider
partisan divergence than has ever existed before. The poll finds that when asked if their sympathies are more with
Israelis or Palestinians, 66 percent of Republicans choose Israel compared with 49 percent of independents and just 39
percent of ...
Apr 01, 2013 03:00 pm | Levi Bridges
At home in the U.S., the fair trade labels on products in health food stores often conjures up images in my head of
happy farmers smiling as they tend their organic crops together. But an afternoon at Santez’s house shatters this
optimistic stereotype; ironically, working with the bees is what pushed Santez and his son to leave Coyutla once more in
search of work, this time as undocumented immigrants in the U.S.
Apr 01, 2013 07:31 am | Ralph Seliger
I’ve signed this petition, as have a wide array of public figures and academics across the political spectrum and of a
variety of faiths — including such accomplished Holocaust scholars as Israel’s Yehuda Bauer, Canada’s Irving Abella, and
David S. Wyman in the U.S. Israel’s initial welcome reception of African refugees has become unwelcoming and ...
Mar 30, 2013 10:55 am | Miki Kashtan
It was only when I sat down to write this piece, some version of which has been brewing for some time, that I realized
that it is, in some ways, a direct continuation of what I wrote about last week. It is a piece that’s about how we came
to make money so central to ...
Mar 29, 2013 02:55 am | Valerie Elverton-Dixon
When Holy Week and Passover are the same week, the simultaneity reminds us that Jesus was not a Christian. He was a
radical Jewish rabbi who called himself the Son of Man, teaching his followers to understand their tradition at its
basic purpose – love for God and for all of God’s creation. The Last ...
Mar 28, 2013 12:25 pm | Roger S. Gottlieb
Surrounded by the usual code words for these holidays – “freedom from slavery” for the first, “resurrection and new
life” for the second – this question may seem at the least silly and at worst an exercise of blasphemous
anti-religiosity. Yet it is actually a serious question. Consider that while freeing the Jews all, yes ...
Mar 27, 2013 03:26 pm | New Monastic -- Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove
Jesus himself cited the Old Testament law which had been given to teach the sanctity of human life: “You shall not
murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.” What is more, Jesus intensified this teaching, saying that
anyone who calls his neighbor a fool is subject to the same judgment. But Jesus knew that humans are inevitably flawed
in our execution of judgment. “Judge not lest you be judged,” he taught his followers. Instead, he said, “Love your
enemies, and pray for those who persecute you.”
Mar 27, 2013 03:03 pm | Donna Schaper
Marriage equality is an emerging story useful to both same sex and the "one man/one woman" kind of marriage. It is even
helpful to families who are single parented. By story I mean the tale we tell ourselves about ourselves. The big word
for it is narrative - and what the nation is missing right now is a narrator in chief about gender. Without a commanding
narrative about what it means to have a gender, we are each and all lost in the woods of personal confusion, which
results in national confusion, which results in many long dark nights of the soul, for those with any kind of sexual
equipment. Marriage equality is helping, not hurting, this gender confusion.
Mar 27, 2013 12:42 pm | Ira Chernus
I cheered most when I heard Obama say words that I never thought I'd hear an American president say in Israel: The
occupation is not merely harmful to Israel's national interests, it's downright immoral: "It is not fair that a
Palestinian child ... lives with the presence of a foreign army that controls the movements of her parents every single
day. ... It is not right to prevent Palestinians from farming their lands ... or to displace Palestinian families from
their home." Bravo! Predictably, though, at the same time Obama took away something equally important: his demand that
Israel stop the main roadblock to peace, its expansion of settlements in the West Bank. Instead he fell back on the
vague language we've heard from many presidents before: "We do not consider continued settlement activity to be
constructive, to be appropriate"; "Settlement activity is counterproductive to the cause of peace."
Mar 25, 2013 11:32 pm | MJ Rosenberg
Catching up on some of the news stories I missed about President Barack Obama’s visit to Israel and Ramallah, it struck
me how offensive his words and gestures must have been to Palestinians. At every stop, he made clear that the United
States is 100 percent on Israel’s side. Almost in so many words, he ...
Mar 25, 2013 03:49 pm | Saadia Faruqi
Perhaps no other country of the world has received so much censure about its treatment of women in recent years than
Afghanistan. First the cold war, then the civil war, then the oppressive rule of the Taliban, and finally the American
war on terror – Afghanistan’s female population has been continually left in poverty, danger, ...
Mar 25, 2013 02:33 pm | Sharon Delgado
This blog post is taken from the speech that The Reverend Sharon Delgado gave at a Tour de Peace event with Cindy
Sheehan in Nevada City, California, on Palm/Passion Sunday, March 24, 2013. See the video here: Sharon Speaking Peace.
Hi friends. It’s good to be here with all of you. I’m so glad ...
Mar 25, 2013 02:32 pm | Donna Schaper
At tables, during holy days, occupy our hearts with something new: Let us risk a conversation in which debt is not
considered shameful. Grant us mutual release of any embarrassment that we aren’t rich yet. Release us from the nasty
shame that says debt is our fault. Remind us to keep our resumes at home.
Mar 22, 2013 03:46 pm | Rabbi Jack Bemporad
Without safe water and sanitation, we cannot curtail malnutrition, a multitude of diseases, or poverty.We cannot support
sustainable farming and food security, promote girls' education or gender equality.Not even peace can be achieved when
some have and others don't have something as basic to life as water.
Mar 22, 2013 03:03 pm | Rabbi Elisheva Brenner
In Torah, holiness/sustainability is a living system of systems just as we humans are living systems of systems. Each
component of the system—humans, the Earth, nature, time intervals, and the Godfield—are all in recursive relationship
with every other part of the system. We humans are energy movers, drawing down from and sending up to the Divine source,
and sending out to and receiving from other people, other life forms and the living Earth. The holiness system is in
constant flux, needing to be balanced and corrected by human action.
Mar 22, 2013 08:14 am | MJ Rosenberg
Obama accomplished what he had to. He reached over Netanyahu's head and spoke directly to the Israeli people, explaining
why peace is in their own best interest and why justice for the Palestinians cannot be denied. And he was cheered.
Loudly.
Mar 21, 2013 07:45 pm | Roger S. Gottlieb
My last blog ended by comparing our lives to a song, and with the reflection: But if we live with awareness and
gratitude, compassion and love, we will face the end of the song with grace, knowing that the composer and performer is
not us, but forces vastly larger, more creative, and (almost) infinitely more ...
ENDS