Lita Kurth: Doing the Right Thing: From Tolstoy to Minimum Wage
Recently two seemingly unrelated events came together: I volunteered for Measure D to raise the minimum wage in San Jose to ten dollars an hour, and I watched another episode of the BBC’s excellent...
View ArticleDave Belden: Can Forgiveness Play a Role in Criminal Justice? Indeed it can.
Don't miss this major New York Times Sunday magazine article on a significant story we covered first a year ago in Tikkun in The Day the Jail Walls Cracked: A Restorative Plea Deal by Sujatha Baliga. A...
View ArticleStephen Phelps: Weekly Sermon: Break Through To Beloved
This Sabbath afternoon, the church will be packed with people who don't go in for church, but who will come here to hear proclaimed good news to the poor, release to the captives, and new eyes for the...
View ArticleLita Kurth: Gimme Shelter: (un)affordable housing
The cost of mere shelter is destroying the present of deserving people and the future of our youth, preventing our area from reaping the full benefit of motivated, educated people. I just came back...
View ArticleGary Smith: Exploring the Shared Values of Vegans and Jews at Passover
We see the liberation of animals as another social justice movement for which the Jewish community should naturally feel sympathetic. Jews and vegans share common values such as justice, fairness,...
View ArticleSharon Delgado: Speaking Peace on Palm/Passion Sunday
We live at a time of global empire, held together by an interconnected global economy, dominated by huge corporations, supported by an ideology of unrestrained free market capitalism, dependent upon a...
View ArticleArlene Goldbard: My New Normal
Something is happening to me. I can scarcely bear to read the news, that compendium of availability cascades in which the compulsion to repeat whatever bit of fatuous received wisdom occupies the top...
View ArticleSharon Delgado: Hope and Guantanamo
Those of us who live freely here in the United States may not realize how connected we are to the prisoners in Guantanamo. Their pain and their struggles may seem to have nothing to do with us. But we...
View ArticleSaadia Faruqi: The Price of a State Religion
The benefits of a separation of church and state are innumerable and undeniable. What Americans have never experienced firsthand is perhaps the most dangerous impact of establishing a state religion:...
View ArticleMiki Kashtan: Does Anyone Deserve Anything?
Today, in this piece, I want to address an area where I am still learning, a collection of words and phrases I still don't fully know how to translate seamlessly into the language of needs. This...
View ArticleSharon Delgado: No Jury Trial in Beale Case
Last October, I was arrested for civil disobedience with eight other people during an anti-drone demonstration at Beale Air Force Base. Charges were dropped against four of my co-defendants. The case...
View ArticleSaadia Faruqi: Trayvon Martin and the American Muslim Perspective
The racial inequality that thrives in the United States today is prevalent not only in the African American community but also other minority groups. Perhaps more than any other minority, American...
View ArticleCat Zavis: Hey, It’s Not A Meritocracy!
"So what do the rich do every day that the poor don't do?" I read this in an article posted to a Facebook business group. I was deeply disturbed by this article because it failed to mention the...
View ArticleStephen Phelps: Weekly Sermon: Learner’s Mind- The Unexpected Hour
Whoever means to be serious about the possibility that there is a God somewhere needs to be serious about the possibility that the way we worship is no good. The trouble with worship is that we have it...
View ArticleLita Kurth: Glory, Fame, and Ambition: the Custer Model
This achievement-compassion nexus can make one’s head spin. A writer friend, Tarn, however, has an approach I admire: she always seems to consider her writing in a spiritual light, as part of her...
View ArticleJanice Kamenir-Reznik: Photo Gallery: Surviving Genocide in Sudan and Congo
Ten years ago, the first genocide of the 21st century started in Darfur. It was another in the long list of 46 genocides since the Holocaust, when the world first promised “Never Again!” Despite that...
View ArticleIra Chernus: When Did “the 60s” Begin? Here’s Why It Matters.
When, exactly, did the era of radical ferment we remember as “the ’60s” begin? Exactly one half-century ago, PBS tells us in its recent documentary titled “1964,” kicking off a year when we’ll...
View ArticleTara Kipnees: Dylan Farrow’s Regret: Why We Need a New System for Rape Testimony
A victim may be told that she must testify, or she never will have the opportunity to testify because charges are dropped. And if a victim is given the choice, does she expose herself, her story, and...
View ArticleIbrahim Sundiata: A Not So Modest Proposal: Africa and Homophobia
I urge the pastors and bishops of my own Methodist denomination in Africa and elsewhere (as well as all right-thinking people) to sign a covenant condemning, at minimum, the extra-judicial murder of...
View ArticleJerome Richard: Leaving Auschwitz
Remembering the Holocaust as history is one thing; remembering it as a memorial to its victims and a tribute to the brave people who saved many from the Shoah is another, but brandishing it as a shield...
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