Snowbird
24th December 2011, 21:41
Rabbi Michael Lerner normally writes passionate words of good sense. He hasn't let us down here.
Occupy Chanukah and Christmas
Friday 16 December 2011
by: Rabbi Michael Lerner, Tikkun | Op-Ed
All the more tragic to witness how both religions have been twisted in our own time to serve the powerful. Major forces in the Christian world have sided with the war-makers, ultra-nationalists, and the blame-poverty-on-the-poor cheerleaders for vast inequalities and protection of the rich against the needs of the rest. Jews, while retaining their commitment to domestic liberalism, have become tone-deaf to the cries of the oppressed in Palestine, to the huge inequalities of wealth in Israel, and have allowed their American institutions to be governed not by “one person, one vote” but “one dollar, one vote.”
One of the reflections of the way both religions have lost their ethical core is that the vast majority of people in both religious worlds have allowed their winter holidays to be turned into orgies of consumerism. The ethos of materialism and selfishness that is the dirty secret and driving force of global capitalism has infected the religious world almost as much as the secular.
The good news is that a counter-movement of spiritual progressives has emerged in the past few decades—spiritual progressives who are willing to challenge the distortions in their own religious communities while simultaneously doing battle with the institutions and practices of the wealthy and powerful.
http://www.truth-out.org/occupy-chanukah-and-christmas/1324403400
Occupy Chanukah and Christmas
Friday 16 December 2011
by: Rabbi Michael Lerner, Tikkun | Op-Ed
All the more tragic to witness how both religions have been twisted in our own time to serve the powerful. Major forces in the Christian world have sided with the war-makers, ultra-nationalists, and the blame-poverty-on-the-poor cheerleaders for vast inequalities and protection of the rich against the needs of the rest. Jews, while retaining their commitment to domestic liberalism, have become tone-deaf to the cries of the oppressed in Palestine, to the huge inequalities of wealth in Israel, and have allowed their American institutions to be governed not by “one person, one vote” but “one dollar, one vote.”
One of the reflections of the way both religions have lost their ethical core is that the vast majority of people in both religious worlds have allowed their winter holidays to be turned into orgies of consumerism. The ethos of materialism and selfishness that is the dirty secret and driving force of global capitalism has infected the religious world almost as much as the secular.
The good news is that a counter-movement of spiritual progressives has emerged in the past few decades—spiritual progressives who are willing to challenge the distortions in their own religious communities while simultaneously doing battle with the institutions and practices of the wealthy and powerful.
http://www.truth-out.org/occupy-chanukah-and-christmas/1324403400