BARBARA'S TCHATZKAHS

UNEASY BEDFELLOWS - RELIGION & POLITICS The mix of religion and politics has always disturbed me and intrigued me. Its a very easy and often very volatile mix. It chaps my hide when one political group co-opts God and faith to push their agenda(s). I don't think Hashem would be too thrilled about it either. Like the joke says " God's fat, black and she's pissed off. " I would be too. This intrigue is why I started blogging in the first place. The 'disturbed' part is why I went to the Network of Spiritual Progressives conference last year and the Progressive Faith BlogCon last over a year ago. Our country has struggled many times with the theocracy rumblings. My own patriarchal ancestors, the Puritans, were such fundamental extremists - England asked them to leave. Fast forward to these days - and Muslims Extremists have moved into the U.K. and a fast growing unease has gripped people there. Particularly British Jews. And the dhimmitude has...

The Talibanization of Iraq Under mounting repression, courageous women fight for their rights and their lives. Is this how the U.S. brought “freedom” to the country? by Bay Fang Yanar Mohammed returned to Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime because she thought the veil of tyranny had finally been lifted from her native country. She and two other women started the Organization for Women’s Freedom in Iraq (OWFI), with the goal of fighting for women’s rights. But since those days, her OWFI cofounders have fled the country, and Mohammed herself has received numerous death threats for her work. OWFI , one of the few remaining nongovernmental organizations left in Iraq, has been forced to operate in complete secrecy. “Because of the chaos on the streets and in the government, women have been forced to leave work and hide at home,” says Mohammed, 47. “ We live in a state of continuous fear—if our hair shows on the street, if we’re not veiled enough at work,” says Mohammed. “It’s...

For God’s Sake One of the reasons I blog is to vent. Yes, I will admit it - to VENT. And one of the biggest boils on the face of American culture and politics is THEOCRACY and THE RADICAL RELIGIOUS RIGHT (emphasis on RADICAL). Extremism is bad in my opinion. It precludes anyone else from having a difference of opinion. And I feel its just a hop, skip & small jump to ANY differences - different religion, different sect or division of religion, different skin color, different sexual orientation - all things that are neither our business nor our call. Hashem's garden has many many different flowers, and was made to be that way for a reason. The Radical Christian Right's infiltration via the Bush Administration is deeply troubling. They won't stop with Bush either. A spiritual leader is one thing but a leader who wants to homogenize all Americans into Bible thumping Christians - that's scary. I don't shove my beliefs down anyone's throat. In fact, ...

Has God Changed the Rules? A psychiatrist takes the pulse of America's Christians by Carol Wolman This is a very confusing time. The most powerful nation in the world, led by a "Christian" president and backed by a "Christian" coalition, is flouting every law of God and man, slaughtering and torturing at will. Yet Bush is so thoroughly identified as a man of God in the eyes of his followers, that they put his name inside the fish symbol, and use it as a bumper ornament. Eighty-five percent of Americans identify themselves as Christians, as followers of Jesus Christ. Jesus taught us to love our neighbors, love our enemies, and to forgive seventy times seven, not to punish and retaliate. As Jim Wallis and Sojourners magazine repeatedly point out, Jesus was nonviolent, healing people and raising them from the dead rather than maiming and killing as the "Christian" government of the US is doing. How can we understand this schizophrenia, this refusal to see...