Is Obama the Tikkun Olam Candidate?
What does it mean that we are now seeing the language of Tikkun Olam pop-up in mainstream political discourse?
Does this make Obama our messiah? ; )
Hat-tip to Aliza for the link.
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The Progressive Jewish Alliance and the Muslim Public Affairs Council have extended the deadline to apply for their New Ground Project. This is an amazing project to bring LA based Jews and Muslims together to build connections, community, and understanding. This project is unique because it is actually an equal and joint partnership between local Jewish and Muslim organizations.
Angelenos who are interested in working and learning together should apply. Applications are due Feb 8th.
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Which now has… America’s Highest Intermarriage Rate. Expect an army of Jewish educators and philanthropists to descend on Maine like a pack of vultures ready to save acculturated Jews from themselves.
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The NYTimes has posted an article about The December Dilemma facing interfaith families.
The best quote from the article (referring to a shellacked bagel one father places at the top of his christmas tree):
In the late ’80s it finally fell apart, and I had to shellac another one
While I am certainly a proponent of multi-faith families, the Times article points to some of the unforeseen emotional difficulties of negotiating a mixed practice household. I actually think much of the trouble would be eliminated if the members of the household actually had robust religious lives, rather than dumping all their ethnic and religious identity into one month of the year.
Perhaps the most notable thing about the article, however, is their inclusion of a gay couple with a young son. I recall a few year ago when the Times’ decision to print gay and lesbian commitment ceremonies led to headlines in other papers.
That first Times couple? Jewish.
Sometimes I feel like the Times covers more Jewish news than the The Forward.
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“If the day comes when the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights (also for the Palestinians in the territories), then, as soon as that happens, the State of Israel is finished,” Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told Haaretz Wednesday, the day the Annapolis conference ended in an agreement to try to reach a Mideast peace settlement by the end of 2008
So now even Olmert is making apartheid allusions? Does this mean he is ready to support the creation of a viable Palestinian state via negotiations, or is this just an attempt to implement the unilateral separation he has been supporting since 2003, which is itself just a recasting of the Allon Plan from ’67, which is basically pockets of ‘autonomous’ Palestinian population surrounded by large settlement blocks?
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While most “organized” Jews are downplaying the importance of Annapolis, Leonard Fein thinks the future of Zionism is at stake.
Time does not favor the concept of a Jewish state. Not the concept, not the reality.
Is a two state scenario even possible, or is it to late for that, given that the matrix of control is entrenched deeper and deeper everyday?
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Well, in the battle between the “Jews” and the “Israelis” over whether Israel will be a secular democratic state or a fundamentalist theocracy; it seems that the “Jews” have been stepping up the attack.
First (as previously reported on this site) Haredim riot to gain the release of a man who admitted to killing his own child.
Who are you rooting for?
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The US and Israel plan on taking down the democratically elected Hamas government of the PA, without anyone noticing.
The United States and Israel are discussing ways to destabilize the Palestinian government so that newly elected Hamas officials will fail and elections will be called again, according to Israeli officials and Western diplomats.
yet
The strategy has many risks, especially given that Hamas will try to secure needed support from the larger Islamic world, including its allies Syria and Iran, as well as from private donors.It will blame Israel and the United States for its troubles, appeal to the world not to punish the Palestinian people for their free democratic choice, point to the real hardship that a lack of cash will produce and may very well resort to an open military confrontation with Israel, in a sense beginning a third intifada.
and of course
The United States and the European Union in particular want any failure of Hamas in leadership to be judged as Hamas’s failure, not one caused by Israel and the West.
Here’s to hoping that nobody notices that the downfall of Hamas was orchestrated in advance by the US and Israel. Whoops, I guess the existance of this NYTimes article means its too late for that.
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In all this talk of Iran’s nuclear ambitions, we have forgotten that perhaps they are following Israel’s example.
ìäáãéì, of course, as Jacob Heilbrunn explains
Israel conducted its search for a nuclear bomb with restraint and diplomatic dexterity. The bluff and bombast emanating from the lunatics in Tehran could not be further removed from Israel’s emphasis on nuclear weapons as a last resort. Israel has always understood something that Iran does not: how to keep a secret secret.
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Well it seems that Christmas has come and gone, and that despite all the fears of a War on Christmas the christ-child’s birthday was celebrated without much state repression of Christian religious freedom. The incredible irony of this supposed War on Christmas has clearly been lost by most of the talking heads working the front-lines of the right-wing assault. One version of their claim is that secular Americans (and their Jewish partners) are imposing on their religious freedom by demanding an absolutely secular public square. As the fundies see it they are a repressed minority whose expression is silenced by demands for inclusivity. “Holiday Sales” rather than “Christmas Sales” are offensive expressions like these are forced upon the Christian public by a cabal of “PC” unbelievers.
The irony is that by styling themselves as defenders of religious freedom while actually hiding a fundamentalist agenda, these right-wing activists are embodying the story of Chanukah (not Christmas) more closely than any American Jews today. The story of Chanukah as fundamentalist civil war has already been linked from Jewschool here, here, and here. Given this irony are the Christian fundamentalists more true to Chanukah than multicultural assimilated Jews?
Perhaps… Though on the other hand I am proud that the rabbis of the Talmud intervened to promote the story of eight days of oil in place of fundamentalist rebellion and that two thousand years of diaspora history have largely upheld that change. These days the Jews most strongly reviving the Chanukah story of fundamentalist theocracy are religious zionists bent on imposing a single (Orthodox) religious observance in Israel. Once again the Christian fundies and the Jewish fundies aims converge. I say that we run speedily away from both of these groups and continue to celebrate the liberal multiculturalism of the “new” Chanukah story, history be damned.
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So, I’ve been spending my year studying at a liberal-Orthodox Yeshivah in Jerusalem. This was my first opportunity to celebrate the Chagim of Tishra’i in Israel. I was really looking forward to it, as I had been told that it was a special experience to be able to celebrate the holidays in a place where the whole society recognizes the holiday and where the natural phenomenon (in this case the harvest and the beginning of the rainy season) match the themes and prayers of the holidays. While the experience of walking in the streets on Yom Kippor and seeing zero cars, but hundreds of people dressed in white, or waking up in a succah to the first drops of rain for the season certainly added a nice touch to the holidays, mostly I was disappointed.
I realized that what was most disappointing was the pedestrian nature of the holidays in a culture where the dominant forces are Jewish. The holiday’s here just happen. Every friday shabbat comes, no matter what you do. The the siren goes off, traffic stops and unless you want to be a hermit, you’ve already accepted an invitation to someone’s dinner. Of course, it takes some effort. There is still the last minute scrambling, and the shabbat bride still needs to be received by the community, but the actions of Jewish life here require much less consciousness and deliberate action than in the wider world.
At home, in the glorious diaspora, Jewish belief, culture, and action stands at an oblique angle to dominant culture. Of course Judaism in any place is influenced by its host culture, but no matter how one chooses to “do Jewish” the process of making different choices and consciously creating a different meaning can provide some critical distance with which to engage and evaluate the host culture. This ability to be simultaneously inside and outside of western culture is one of the reasons I love being Jewish. It is also one of the gifts that Jewish culture can provide to the western world.
The dissonance between my own community, mythic-history, and meaningful symbols and those of the host culture also requires me to really work hard to make Judaism compelling and meaningful to me, and perhaps more significantly, to those around me. At home I need to investigate the possible meanings of the holidays and create communal experiences that will draw together a diverse community. This hard work helps me own the holiday as my own. I’m taking what others before me have thought and done, and re-fashioning it to make it relevant and compelling.
The ease of Jewish expression in Israel may explain why, for the most part, religious expression here is a yes or no question. Here you either participate, or you don’t. If you are a Jew, you are either Dati (religious) or Chiloni (secular). With some important exceptions, few communities are seriously reevaluating the possibilities of Jewish religious experience. Despite all the problems of movement politics in America, I’ve really come to value to tremendous diversity of options that exist there. Even more, I have come to value the space that is created for individuals and communities to fashion their own Jewish meaning. Because “normative Judaism” has a much weaker grip in America, all sorts of incredible possibilities spring up.
Despite ease and comfort of being a Jew in Israel, I’ll take the messy, hard, creative, exciting, reconfigured Judaism of the diaspora any-day.
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Jews come in all sorts of theological flavors, but these days I would bet that most of us, when we actually think about it, fall somewhere on the atheist/agnostic end of things. We may create theologies that work for us – transcendent forces, historical continuity or the holistic totality of all being – but few people I know believe in a God who imposes his will on history and can defy the laws of nature. I know that I pride myself on being invested in the tradition (hell, I’m spending the year in Yeshivah) without being hoodwinked by the theological superstitions. Yet, I know I am always searching for firm ground on which to rest my convictions of universal justice.
Perhaps I should be looking more closely at theological approaches, after all, as Roy Hattersley claims in the Guardian, “People of faith are just better people.”
Given all the religious fundamentalists (of all faiths, ours included) who want to impose their misogynist, homophobic, territorial maximalist, ethnocentrist world-view on the rest of us, I’m pretty shocked. But I think Hattersley makes a convincing argument that when it comes to down and dirty work of saving the world, believers may be doing most of the work.
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Political Zionism, Cultural Zionism, Revisionist Zionism, Socialist Zionism, and now… Sexual Zionism
Well, at least we have our priorities in order, more Jewish babies! Forget about creating meaningful Jewish communities, if Jews are fucking other Jews all is well with the world.
As Alex Sharone, the 24-year-old national director of Habonim Dror, says:
Somewhere along the line, major Israel providers figured this was a good way to appeal to the youth market…. It’s about sexualizing a love for Israel. You’re 15, going through puberty and visiting Israel for the first time. While you’re learning the history and culture of the land, you’re simultaneously scoping out potential mates. It’s about forging a positive association with Israel, and for teens and young adults that often means sex. Zionism always has had a sexualized aspect to it. The strong, bare-chested men working the land. All that talk of ‘blooming’ and ‘bearing fruit’ is so Freudian. And today, all the soldiers protecting the motherland. It’s definitely sexy.
The goals may be a bit vapid, but I can’t argue with her analysis of the gendered implications of Zionism. Full story.
PS: In case you are wondering, I’m a new JewSchool contributer, currently living in Jerusalem.
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