The Weather and Everyone's Health

Monday, April 10, 2006

Rabbi Michael Lerner on Passover and Easter

This guy cracks me up. I wonder if he's ever done any coalition building with UUs or vice versa.

"[...] for many American Christians the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus, so beautifully affirming that the powerful forces of empire cannot defeat the God energy within us that was embodied in the Jewish prophet Jesus so exquisitely, feels deeply tarnished and perverted by the appropriation of this spiritually engaging story by a Religious Right that uses the story to validate a vision of a muscular God who will return to harshly judge all who do not follow the path of the Christianfundamentalists. How it undercuts the hope of resurrection to see it used to justify the power of the powerful as they proceed to kill tens of thousands of people in Iraq, cut the taxes on the rich and the programs for the poor, and preside over the continuing erosing of environmental protections and the dismantling of civil liberties.

And yet, progressive Jews and Chritians will not allow those beautiful symbols and the stories of hope to be the exclusive property of those who distort them to justify oppression and insensitivity to “the Other.” That’s why we will build our Passover Seder (see the downloadable version of Tikkun’s liberation Seder at www.Tikkun.org) and our Easter celebrations in ways that affirm the liberatory message that was learned by the Israelites as they were freed from Egypt, and our Easter celebrations to affirm the hopeful message of a world that can overcome its death-orientation and renew the life forces and the yearning toward physical, spiritual and emotional renewal that is the God energy of the universe. "

In other news, I am spending most of today and tomorrow at the stomach-churning excitement of the annual meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society (in SF again this year, downtown at the Hyatt). Have been taking some notes--hopefully a more detailed post will follow.

- posted by k @ 2:34 PM