Dear Bella
I receive daily or weekly emails from Algemeiner, the Forward, Chabad, Mondoweiss, Jewcy, ZNet, and Tikkun, which gives me interesting spectrum of opinion on what’s going on.
I thought I’d share this with you since tikkun olam is a big part of your life; I received an email from Rabbi Lerner and I asked Max to offer a comment on the opening paragraph:
Lerner: Though the first day of our 30th anniversary celebration (Saturday, Nov. 12) will largely be devoted to developing understanding and strategy for the coming years as we face a centrist President who will herself be facing immense pressures to satisfy the agendas of the 1% who have largely funded her political career, and to abandon the trajectory and idealism revealed by the near-successful Bernie Sanders primary campaign, we will also spend much time the second day (Sunday, November 13) honroing [sic] everyone who has been engaged in social change activism at some point in their lives on the second day of the conference, with special attention to a few whose lives made major contributions to the healing and transformation of our world–by giving them the Tikkun Award.
Max: That is an undifferentiated stream of consciousness that betrays a willful suppression of the truth. In other words, false consciousness and lying to self and others. He knows as well as anyone that Clinton never adopted the trajectory and idealism of the Sanders’ campaign, so there is nothing for her to abandon, not to even get into whether the Sanders’ campaign was what he makes it out to be. As far as awards go, I’d give the Weasel Word of the Year award to Lerner for anointing Clinton a “centrist.” Tell that to Netanyahu. At least he’d have the sense to laugh. Clinton will be facing immense pressures to satisfy the 1%. Beautiful. James Baldwin would rather call it going where her blood beats, and has for her entire political career. Lerner should be ashamed, but of course he’s not, and that’s the real tragedy for liberals like him.
I’ve invited Max to join us in the sangha on Saturday mornings, but he’s not interested in the least. One of these days, the three of us should meet up. He was a dear friend of Henry’s.
Barukh hashem,
Perry
–from novel-in-process, Our Heroic and Ceaseless 24/7 Struggle against Tsuris
