If you’re Jewish (like me), then tonight is the close of Yom Kippur, or "Day of Attonement". The idea is that you set aside the day to make good on your intention to be a better person in the coming year. You fast, you pray, you plan to make amends in the future, and you regret your more pointed moments of cruelty, stupidity and envy towards those you harmed in the past year. But it’s important to note that the Torah does not tell you to lament your human failings forever–rolling in the muck is not the best way to get clean. You make amends for your crimes and you move on. You have to. It’s the law.

I’m not much for religion (I was raised by atheists) but I approve of Judaism’s structure. Its origins were more pragmatic than spiritual. I’m about half-way through The Bible Unearthed which is a brilliant historical account of the political reality that the kingdom of Judah faced roughly 2500 years ago. They borrowed a lot from the mythologies of their neighbors, made up a few things to fill in the blanks and the rest, to borrow from Robert Harris, is ancient history. Religions are like that–they tend to offer some kind of spiritual salvation in exchange for physical loyalty to mostly made-up rules, customs, dietary rules and ceremonies. Spirituality, on the other hand, is a bit more open-minded.

In my experience, spirituality in general and the Ten Commandments in particular, when you distill them down their essence, all come out to one basic rule: "Do not be an asshat to those around you." Granted, this is merely my reading of the Big 10, but it’s a rule that’s served to help get me through the wacky world in which I wake up every day. One day I’ll not wake up in it, and there’s no way for me (or anyone else) to know just which that day will be, so I play the odds and figure that every day when I wake up here, I try to follow this one essential rule.

Hillel is supposed to have said it a little more precisely: "Treat others as you would wish to be treated by them. Everything else is commentary."

So don’t be an asshat to those around you. That means when you’ve done something to hurt someone else, apologize and offer make amends. If someone else shows you that same courtesy for past harm, accept their apology. Don’t be lazy, either in the mental or physical sense. Expect to work for a living. Expect to pay your debts and bills. Expect not to buy more than you can afford. Expect that the people around you regardless of distance are not slaves, servants, robots or possessions. They are people. Treat them as such. Be honest in personal affairs and in business affairs. Accept that you too are human and will do stupid, nonsensical things for bad reasons sometimes.

The articles I’ve clipped beneath the cut say all this much more eloquently than I can at the moment, but they also illustrate the amazing capacity that humans have for being asshats to those around them. Read the articles. And let’s all try to fix what problems we have now and do better in the future.

An important message!

There is so much to repent for.

Lets start with this.

No U.S. Senators were willing to engage in a filibuster against the new
authorization of torture. As the article below makes clear, some of us
reading this email may some day face torture that this bill authorizes,
because the president or a committee in the defense dept. can
arbitrarily decide that our dissent from their policies constitutes
material aid to terrorism. This is a major step toward eliminating
everything people in the West have been fighting for in way of civil
liberties and human rights since the Magna Charta and certainly since
American patriots fought for freedom in 1776. Yet our elected
representatives capitulated in order to be “realistic” given their fear
of being labeled “soft” on terror. Please read the article below on
what is at stake. The author hopes the Supreme Court will do something
to overturn it, apparently unaware of the degree to which that Court
itself reflects the same subordination to right-wing visions of
presidential power as the Congress.

All 100 Senators voted for
a budget that gives $448 Billion to the Pentagon to continue the
occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet many of us will end up voting
for these same Senators, thus ratifying their vote to continue war.

Or take the vote of many Democrats as well as Republicans to spend over
$1 billion to build a 700 mile fence along the US-Mexico border, a
fence that will push immigrant workers trying to cross the border to
get jobs that were eliminated from Mexico and Central America by the
Clinton and Democratic-backed “free trade” measures of the 90s. So now,
to keep them out, the fence will push many of them deeper into the
desert, and more of them will die because of it.

And then there
is the continuing rejection of steps that could bring peace to
Israel—by the Israeli government itself. Please read the article below
from today’s Ha’aretz newspaper in Israel.

Here is what you can do:

• Participate in a non-violent way in the October 5th mobilization against the war. Go to
http://www.worldcantwait.org/ to find a demonstration near you.

•
Demand that every Congressional or Senatorial candidate seeking your
support explain why they didn’t filibuster against torture, war
funding, and the fence in the Senate, or use other techniques in the
House (sit-ins, blocking the normal order non-violently, or at least a
massive walk out and refusal to participate in the vote).
•
•
*If you happen to be going to Yom Kippur services tonight or tomorrow,
please download and take with you the High Holiday supplement and use
it—it will make the process of repentance much more real to you.
• http://www.tikkun.org/magazine/tik0609/frontpage/high_holidays_download
•
•
Join and become active with the Network of Spiritual Progressives to
help us build an alternative way of thinking to that which allows
Democrats and Republicans both to act in these humanly destructive
ways. www.spiritualprogressives.org,

• Create an evening
gathering at your home and invite friends, coworkers, members of your
community, your church/synagogue/mosque/ashram, your professional
colleagues or members of your union, and show them the Spiritual
Progressives
dvd or video tape—and have a discussion with them about the kinds of changes
that are needed in American politics. Don’t wait till after the election to boo-hoo:
Act
now. Contact Allyson@tikkun.org or 510 644 1200 (we’re closed on Yom
Kippur, Monday the 2nd, but open on Tuesday and thereafter).
If
you haven’t gotten your Members’ Manual in the mail, you probably
haven’t yet joined or haven’t renewed your membership in The Tikkun
Community or The Network of Spiritual Progressives. Please help us save
paper and money that we will otherwise have to spend sending you letter
appeals—join or renew now at
www.tikkun.org or www.spiritualprogressives.org. Membership comes with a o
one year subscription to Tikkun magazine.
•
• Send this email to everyone you know, and post it on your websites

And
then, after reading all this, go to the bottom and re-read the prayer
for forgiveness–a necessary component of what we need to do to stay
centered as spiritual progressives.

AND PLEASE FORGIVE US FOR SENDING LONG EMAILS!!!! WE KNOW MANY PEOPLE WILL

NOT TOLERATE READING SOMETHING THIS LONG, AND YET….TRYING TO SUMMARIZE

PLAYS INTO THE HANDS OF THE DUMBING=DOWN THAT IS CENTRAL TO HOW THE

POWERFUL KEEP THEIR CONTROL OVER ALL OF US.

**************************************************************

Sayonara to Checks and Balances?

By
Aziz Huq, HuffingtonPost.com. Posted September 30, 2006.

You — citizen or non-citizen, resident of Topeka or Timbuktu — can become an "unlawful enemy combatant."

"Checks and balances" has a nice ring. But it’s a currency that doesn’t go a long way in Washington today.

The
Military Commissions Act of 2006, of MCA, passed by the House and
Senate is a wholesale assault on the idea of a limited government under
law.

It will be taken by the Bush Administration as a blank check
to torture, to detain indefinitely without just cause, and to trample
the values that win America respect in the world. From tomorrow,
counter-terrorism is the "land of do as you please" for the President
and the wise men of the Defense Department — those savants who brought
you Iraq, the gift that keeps on giving (at least if you’re a jihadist).

The
MCA comprehensively assaults two ideas: The idea of checking executive
power by laws. And the idea of a separate branch of government ensuring
those limits are respected. These are the basic tools of
accountability. The MCA frontally attacks both of these — although
only time will tell whether it succeeds.

How does the Military Commissions Act assail checks and balances? Consider the key issues of detention and torture.

The
MCA says nothing explicit about the detention power. Indeed, I would
argue that nothing in the legislation ought to be read to imply

Here’s
how the Addington play for detention power will work. The opening
definition of the Act describes elaborately what an "unlawful enemy
combatant" is. Why? The term is a neologism. The laws of war do not use
or define this term. Indeed, it is a mutation of a phrase used in a
subordinate clause of a 1942 Supreme Court opinion. Nothing else in the
Act directly turns on this definition–although only an "alien unlawful
enemy combatant" can be subject to trial by military commission. So why
bother with the elaborate definition? And why extend the definition to
U.S. citizens as well as non-citizens?

Back in 2004, the Supreme Court, in the now well-known Hamdi v. Rumsfeld decision,
stated that an "enemy combatant" captured in hostilities could be held
for the duration of those hostilities. The Court made very clear it was
talking about only the limited context of the ground war in
Afghanistan, not some amorphous and unending "war on terror." But
Addington et al. will, however, take Hamdi’s sanction of detention–and
extend it far, far beyond Hamdi. It will be a detention power that applies anywhere and anytime.

There
are two ways in which you — citizen or non-citizen, resident of Topeka
or Timbuktu — can become an "unlawful enemy combatant."

The
first way is if you engage "n hostilities" or "purposefully and
materially support" hostilities. This sounds reasonable enough until
you realize that no-one has the slightest clue what it means to "purposefully and materially support" hostilities. Do you need to intend to aid the hostilities? Or is it enough to intend to give
the support? Would purposely giving to a charity that then gave money
to Hamas count, even if you knew nothing about the Hamas? What about
writing an editorial that gave "aid and comfort" to the enemy — say,
by criticizing the Administration’s Iraq policy?

The second way
is — if it’s even possible — more dangerous: You are designated an
enemy combatant by a Combatant Status Review Tribunal — the Potemkin
proceedings jerry-rigged at Guantánamo — or you are designated by
"another competent tribunal" created by the Defense Secretary.

It’s
the latter that catches in the throat, because the MCA does not define
what Rumsfeld’s "competent tribunal" must look like. Rummy himself with
the always-fair-and-impartial Addington? Five Syrian torturers (like
the ones to whom the U.S. sent the hapless Canadian Maher Arar)?
A bunch of guys who flip coins for your liberty? Sure, why not? The MCA
doesn’t stop the executive from using any of these, provided Rumsfeld
gave them power and hence made them "competent."

At least for
non-citizens, moreover, that would be that: For the first time in U.S.
history, an Act of Congress singles out a group of
persons–non-citizens–and deprives them of any right to challenge
their detention wherever they are picked up. No non-citizen would, the
MCA seems to say, be able to challenge this detention. And while
citizens are certainly entitled to a hearing, the Government will fight
tooth and nail to make sure this hearing doesn’t allow any effective
inquiry into the facts on which a detention is based. So no judicial
review — and no accountability.

The same dynamic is at play in
the anti-torture rules. The MCA alters a criminal statute called the
War Crimes Act, which imposed criminal sanctions for certain violations
of the laws of war.

Until recently, the United States could
proudly point to a long history of supporting a universal ban on
torture, and to a strong record in ensuring that those who in fact
tortured did not escape accountability. No longer. Now a gamut of
horrendous kinds of treatment will be non-criminal — and, the Bush
Administration will argue, within the discretion of the President.

Start
with the substantive anti-torture rules themselves (which cover both
torture and the lesser "cruel and inhuman" treatment). The MCA contains
an incredibly complex and convoluted set of definitions. Despite all
the cant about clarity, the rules no longer in plain English — as they
were in Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions — and they are so full of holes they might have been tortured themselves.

Here are three examples of the duplicitous ambiguity of the MCA when it comes to torture and abuse.

First,
"cruel and inhuman" treatment is defined as acts that cause "severe or
serious" pain. We know "severe" is worse than "serious" because
"severe" is used to define torture (yes, we’ll get there in a moment). But then "serious pain" is defined as "bodily injury" that causes "extreme
physical pain." So "serious" pain is only "extreme" pain? Isn’t extreme
worse than serious? It would seem so–but the MCA is deliberately
confusing and circular.

And why the reference to bodily injury?
Does that mean that hypothermia and long-time standing and those other
wretched "enhanced" techniques more fitting for Stalin’s gulags than
American facilities are not criminal? Well, yes, I reckon it does.

Second,
in another convoluted section, "serious mental pain" is defined in
terms of "non-transitory" harms. Thus, if a CIA agent threatens to kill
a detainee, or to rape his spouse and his children — all
long-recognized as forms of torture — that’s not torture; it’s not
even the lesser "cruel and inhuman" treatment.

Finally, the
torture statute itself. Almost unnoticed, the Bush Administration has
gutted the no-torture rule. It has added the requirement that a person
"specifically" intend to cause the pain that amounts to torture. This
technical change–foreshadowed in the August 2002 OLC memo — has
tremendous implications. It means that any government agent who says
his goal was to get information, and not to cause pain, hasn’t tortured no matter how bad the things he does. If the person water-boards or knee-caps a person, or buries them alive, if it’s to get information — well, that’s just dandy.

Once
again, it’s not just the substantive rules that have been assailed:
It’s also the mechanisms to ensure the rules are followed. Under the
MCA, there is no accountability for torture. The MCA cuts off courts’
power to hear claims of torture by aliens held as "unlawful enemy
combatants." And it vests the President with power to interpret the
relevant laws of war. So if he says that "cold cell" and sexual abuse
are not "cruel and inhumane," that’s the end of the matter.

There
are two reasons for hope. First, any reading of the Act that reaches an
untrammeled detention power may be unconstitutional. The Supreme Court
in the 2004 case of Rasul v. Bush
— in what one day will be called "famous footnote 15" — strongly
hinted that even non-citizens captured overseas have Due Process
rights. Combined with another clause of the Constitution called the
Suspension Clause, this means the unchecked detention power and the
jurisdiction-strip are likely unconstitutional.

Second, even if
the War Crimes Act has been amended, the Due Process Clause also ought
still to protect detainees held overseas: Torture is un-American. It’s
also unconstitutional–and that doesn’t change depending on where it’s
done. Moreover, the law of war, embodied in the Geneva Conventions, is
clear: There is no "specific intent" requirement for torture. Countries
— whether it’s the United States or North Korea — cannot unilaterally
define down the rules against torture.

"Unchecked and unbalanced" government — I argue at length in a forthcoming book—
is antithetical to American government. The MCA is also anathema to our
best traditions. We must hope it is our traditions that win, and not
the selfish partisan posturing that animated this week’s votes.

Aziz Huq is co-writing a book on national security and the separation of powers called Unchecked and Unbalanced, to be published by the New Press.

***************************************

Operation Peace for the Winery

By Gideon Levy

What
do you call a rejection of peace that is liable to lead to war? What is
the term for a state that is not even willing to sit at the negotiating
table with the head of a state who publicly issues an explicit peace
proposal? If there is a positive angle to the Israeli refusal to
consider the Syrian president’s proposals, it is the exposure of the
bitter truth: Israel does not want peace with Syria – period. No
linguistic trick or diplomatic contortion can change this unequivocal
fact. We will no longer be able to declare that we are seeking peace
with our neighbors; we are not turning toward them for peace. In the
Middle East, a new rejectionist axis has formed: Israel and the United
States, which is saying "no" to Syria. Not only is Iran endangering
peace in the region, Israel is too. It would be best for us to admit
this.

Common sense makes it difficult to understand and the
heart refuses to accept how it happened that an important Arab state
offered to forge a peace accord with us and we arrogantly rebuffed it.
"It’s not the right time," the statesmen in Jerusalem say. With Syria,
it is not the right time. With the Palestinians, it is not the right
partner. And when is the right time? Only after the next war. This type
of refusal, which is liable to lead to another cycle of bloodshed, is a
crime.

Behind the latest Israeli refusal is cowardice and
behind this cowardice is the prime minister. Ehud Olmert knows very
well that Israel will ultimately withdraw from the Golan Heights, but
he lacks the courage to lead this move. Just like his predecessor, Ehud
Barak, who was on the verge of an agreement with Syria, Olmert also
lacks the most important quality required of an Israeli leader –
courage.

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Especially
after the fiasco of the war in Lebanon, with his public standing at a
nearly unsalvageable low, one might have expected that Olmert would try
to lead a bold move – a relatively easy one when compared to peace with
the Palestinians. But Olmert is A-F-R-A-I-D. Perhaps he is afraid of
Israeli protestors outside his home, or maybe of America turning up its
nose. These are not sufficient reasons to refrain from putting Assad’s
intentions to the test.

Because what do we have to lose? Let’s
assume that Assad is not ready to live up to his words. Let’s assume
that he is not capable of signing an agreement with Israel. Why not
challenge him? What hair would fall from Israel’s head if Olmert would
take up the Syrian gauntlet and tell Assad: Let’s meet. Instead,
Zhdanov-Olmert forbids his ministers from speaking in favor of
negotiations and even threatens to expel them from the government.
Olmert is more cowardly than Barak: He is not even ready to come to the
negotiating table. History will remember him, therefore, as someone who
torpedoed a possible peace accord that could have changed the face of
the Middle East. This is a more severe failure than embarking on the
futile war in Lebanon. When the next war with Syria breaks out – a war
that will be immeasurably more difficult than the one with Lebanon – we
will remember well who is responsible for it. There will be no need for
a commission of inquiry on this.

The Golan Heights are
desolate. Perhaps "The people are with the Golan," but the people
stopped coming to the Golan Heights a long time ago. During Rosh
Hashanah, hikers kept away from this gorgeous piece of land. Anyone who
visited there saw roads without any human presence, eternally rocky
fields and some settlements whose fate was decreed long ago. So why
should we keep the Golan Heights at the price of war? Is it conceivable
that because of territorial lustfulness we will bring about another
war, the "Peace for the Winery" war? Are a successful winery and
prosperous factory for mineral water enough to affix us to an occupied
land, which has no value except for its grapes and clear waters? After
all, in the era of missiles, no one can speak seriously any more about
the Golan Heights as a "strategic asset."

The Golan Heights is
occupied land, despite the annexation law we enacted, which no country
in the world has recognized, and its Israeli settlers are like any
other settlers. Who decided that a resident of Itamar was an
"extremist" settler, while a resident of Merom Golan was a different
kind of settler – one of us? A hidden hand determined that in Israeli
consciousness the Golan Heights was not occupied and its residents were
not, like other settlers, in violation of international law. But this
is a ridiculous word game we play with ourselves. Just as peace seekers
in Israel should boycott products originating in the West Bank
settlements, the same should apply to the products of the Golan
Heights. They originate in a land that is not ours. Questions of
morality that still surface here and there in regard to the act of
occupying the West Bank and Gaza Strip are not on the agenda at all
when it comes to the Golan Heights. Who remembers that about 100,000
people who lived in the Golan Heights were forced to flee their homes
in 1967? The ruins of their homes are still on the Golan Heights and
they live in refugee camps near Damascus. They, too, long for their
land, while the residents who remained live under Israeli occupation,
albeit a relatively comfortable occupation.

In a situation in
which the prime minister is too cowardly to respond to the Syrian
proposal, a cry of protest should have arisen from those who wish to
prevent the next war, especially after the last one. If the IDF
reservists and the rest of the protest movements want to also do
something to prevent the next war and not just rummage through the
previous one, they should issue a determined cry to say "yes" to peace
with Syria. Syria’s conditions are clear and simple, and even just –
peace for land – and the impression is that there is a partner in
Damascus. A meeting with the foreign minister of Oman is good for
making headlines and a secret meeting with a Saudi prince sparks the
imagination, but peace must be made with Syria and the Palestinians.
Syria said yes, Israel said no. For reasons we know and remember well,
there is no better time than Yom Kippur to think about this.

****************************************************

A
central message of the Tikkun Community is that inner healing and
transformation is an important element in, though not the totality of,
the social, economic and political transformation of the world.

I
thought I’d share with you a prayer that I use each evening before I go
to sleep. Perhaps you might want to use this prayer, or modify it in
any way that fits for you (for example, eliminate the prayer element
and turn it into a before-sleep meditatin). If you decide to use it,
then after using it for a few months, tell me if it has had any
positive impact in your life! It has been a powerful tool for me in
getting through the past years when the events in the larger world
might have made it hard for me to get to sleep at night, by helping me
transform the righteous indignation I’d been feeling during the day
into a sense of compassion for others as I contemplated the ways that
I, too, might have gone astray. Of course, prayer is not a form that
works for everyone–and I admit to being very uncomfortable with any
notion that suggests that there is a God who is a cosmic bellhop
waiting to take our orders if only we say them with the right words (to
paraphrase my teacher Abraham Joshua Heschel). But prayer can also work
when one thinks of God as I do–as the Force of Healing and
Transformation in the Universe, the Force that makes possible the
transformation from That Which Is to That Which Ought to Be, the Force
that makes possible the transcendence of the repetition compulsion
(these ideas are developed in my book Jewish Renewal: A Path to Healing
and Transformation, and they are not just for Jews, but for anyone
thinking about God or the meaning of life or about the spiritual
reality of the universe, but that’s not what I’m writing about, so lets
get back to this particular prayer, which you can use in any way that
seems fitting to you–it is based on a rendition from Hebrew by my
teacher Rabbi Zalman Schachter Shalomi).
Bedtime Prayer of Forgiveness
YOU,
my ETERNAL FRIEND, WITNESS now that I forgive anyone who hurt or upset
me or who offended me– damaging my body, my property, my reputation or
people that I love; whether by accident or purposely; with words,
deeds, thoughts or attitudes.

I forgive every person who has
hurt or upset me. May no one be punished because of me. May no one
suffer from karmic consequences for hurting or upsetting me.

Help
me, Eternal Friend, to keep from offending You and others. Help me to
be thoughtful and not commit outrage by doing what is evil in Your
eyes.

Whatever sins I have committed, blot out, please, in
Your abundant kindness, and spare me suffering or harmfulillnesses.
Help me become aware of the ways I may have unintentionally or
intentionally hurt others, and please giveme guidance and strength to
rectify those hurts and to develop the sensitivity to not continue
acting in a hurtful way. Let me forgive others, let me forgive myself,
but also let me change in ways that make it easy for me to avoid paths
of hurtfulness to others.

I seek peace, let me BE peace. I
seek justice, let me be just. I seek a world of kindness, let me be
kind. I seek a world of generosity, let me be generous with all that I
have. I seek a world of sharing, let me share all that I have. I seek a
world of giving, let me be giving to all around me. I seek a world of
love, let me be loving beyond all reason, beyond all normal
expectation, beyond all societal frameworks that tell me how much love
is "normal," beyond all fear that giving too much love will leave me
with too little. And let me be open and sensitive to all the love that
is already coming to me, the love of people I know, the love that is
part of the human condition, the accumulated love of past generations
that flows through and is embodied in the language, music, recipes,
technology, literature, religions, agriculture, and family heritages
that have been passed on to me and to us. Let me pass that love on to
the next generations in an even fuller and more explicit way.

Source
of goodness and love in the universe, let me be alive to all the
goodness that surrounds me. And let that awareness of the goodness and
love of the universe be my shield and protector. Hear the words of my
mouth and may the meditations of my heart find acceptance before You,
Eternal Friend, who protects and frees me. Amen.
The Tikkun Community

There
are many orthodox atheists in our community who might mistakenly think
that by suggesting a prayer I’m challenging their worldview. I don’t
mean to be entering into such a dispute, but only intending to offer
something that may be of value no matter what your metaphysical
commitments. This is a spiritual practice–try it, and you may find it
useful. If not, not. But forgive me if in any way the suggestion of the
usefulness of this prayer offends you or makes you feel uncomfortable.
In my own synagogue there are many people who tell me that they don’t
believe in God, but nevertheless feel comfortable praying in the way
that we do so in Beyt Tikkun synagogue in San Francisco, in part
because we start each service by making clear that the vision of a God
as a big man in heaven looking down and judging us is not the way we
think, and so we give permission to people at the start of every
service to stop worrying about the God that they don’t believe in so
that they can have space to find whatever spiritual truth is true for
them. If you want to share high holidays with us this year in
September, you are certainly invited to do so–go to www.BeytTikkun.org
to find details.

Many blessings to you and all who seek a world of love, kindness, peace, social justice, ecological sanity and generosity.

May peace prevail on earth and let it begin with you and me.
Rabbi Michael Lerner
Tikkun

web: http://www.spiritualprogressives.org
email: community@tikkun.org
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An important message!

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