[Dialogue] Fw: Occupy Christmas and Chanukah - Part 1 of 2

[Janice Ulangca]

Michael Lerner is a great hero of mine.  I first heard of him through our late great colleague Dick Kroger.  Then I attended a conference in D.C. that he organized and spoke at, and I was captivated.  Such openness to the Spirit, in any religion or no religion, and such passion for "healing, repairing, transforming" the world!  All contained in a man full of delighted wonder at the world and always ready to laugh, dance, and celebrate in the midst of courageous strategizing.  Or at least that's how it seems to me.  So I send you something he wrote that I really like - with wishes that you might have a joyful and inspiring holiday season.
Love,
Janice Ulangca


----- Original Message ----- 
From: Rabbi Michael Lerner, Network of Spiritual Progressives 
To: aulangca at stny.rr.com 
Sent: Friday, December 16, 2011 7:44 PM
Subject: Occupy Christmas and Chanukah


            Tikkun  to heal, repair and transform the world  
     
           A note from Rabbi Michael Lerner  Join or Donate Now! 
     

            (To read this article on our website instead, click here)


             Occupy Chanukah and Christmas



            by Rabbi Michael Lerner



            Chanukah was the first recorded national liberation struggle against Greek imperialism, and Christmas celebrates the birth of a hoped-for messiah to free the Jewish people from Roman imperialism. The symbolism of a homeless couple giving birth in a manger surrounded by animals because the more comfortable people have not been able to make room for them inside a roofed home is akin to the symbolism of the candles lit on Chanukah to celebrate the victory of the powerless over the powerful: both offer a powerful reminder that both Judaism born of slaves in Egypt and Christianity born of a movement of the poor and powerless were in their times the “Occupy” movement that confronted the powerful and those who served them.



            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. 



            Continued in Part 2


           

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