This is the text of a talk I gave on 24 October 2022 for the Alliance for Jewish Theatre 2022 Annual Conference. While it contains a number of specifically Jewish references, I hope it will be useful to anyone who has every been challenged about being enough in terms of identity or legitimacy. You can …
“Tikkun” is a Hebrew word usually translated as “repair.” In the phrase “Tikkun Olam,” it has a traditional spiritual meaning associated with Jewish mysticism’s creation story in which the Source of Life shaped the vessels of this world, breathing divine energy into them. The container shattered, unable to hold the infinite light. That left humanity …
If I hear one more person (however grudgingly) admire the Republicans’ “long game” and compliment them on masterminding a fifty-year strategy to overturn a longstanding consensus on rights, bodily autonomy, guns and more, I’ll scream. In fact, I’ve screamed already. It’s not that the U.S. Right doesn’t long for a Big Daddy and eagerly follow …
At around 2 pm this past Sunday, 20 year-old Daunte Wright, an African American man, drove through Brooklyn Center, MN, with his girlfriend in the passenger seat. A few miles from where Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd, he was pulled over for the what the police said was an expired registration. Kim Potter, a long-serving …
“If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, when?” Rabbi Hillel (Pirke Avot 1:14) I got the idea from Rabbi Hillel, who lived at about the same time as Jesus. The three questions at the head of this essay …
Once in a while a book calls to me such that I need to ask you to read it—perhaps half a dozen books since I began this blog in 2013. Today, that book is Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own by Eddie S. Glaude, Jr. A friend urged me …
If you’re ever on social media, you’ll see that people are up in arms over #IMPOTUS’ stated plan to hold a campaign rally (unmasked, at close quarters) in Tulsa, OK, on June 19th. This is a holiday called Juneteenth, commemorating the long freedom struggle of African Americans. The timing is one flashpoint. The rally’s planned …
What can console us in the face of the Great Unknown? I thought I understood that safety was always an illusion: any of us could be struck down at any moment. But having the illusion of safety erased, that’s uncertainty of another magnitude, so vastly out of proportion to the “normal,” default reality that words …
What do the Hallmark Channel, the Present Occupant of the White House, and some of my left-wing friends have in common? Hint: it’s not a thorough understanding of human rights. Yesterday was Human Rights Day, celebrating the 71st anniversary of the adoption of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This noble document, written …
Where on the integrity scale would you rate a candidate whose background is marked by lies and misdeeds, who is called to account and fails to show up, and who releases a glitzy campaign ad so mendacious that the Washington Post‘s fact-checker awards it three Pinocchios? I’d give Valerie Plame a zero. Back in June, …