About

“The day is short, the task is great, the master is insistent. It is not your duty to complete the task, but neither are you free to desist from it….”
–Pirkei Avot, 2:21

I’ve been writing Tikun Olam since February, 2003. It’s one of the earliest liberal Jewish blogs. It focuses on Israeli-Palestinian peace but includes commentary on U.S. politics, a world music mp3 blog, and other writing on food, Jewish life, literature, and culture. I also created the Israel Palestine Forum, a discussion forum for progressives about the I-P conflict. Israel Palestine Blogs aggregates 40 peace blogs writing about the conflict. I wrote a chapter for the Independent Jewish Voices essay collection, A Time to Speak Out, to be published by Verso Books in October. I contribute to Haaretz, the Jewish Forward, and the Los Angeles Times. I write weekly for the Guardian’s Comment Is Free, The Seminal, and also blog at Huffington Post. My work has also been in American Conservative Magazine and Beliefnet and I have guest blogged at Jewcy. I’ve been quoted in the New York Times, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Jewish Week, Slate and Computerworld.

I attended the Joint Program of the Jewish Theological Seminary and Columbia University, earning a BA and Bachelor of Hebrew Literature. I earned an MA in Comparative Literature from UCLA and studied toward a PhD at UC Berkeley. My language specializations were Hebrew and Yiddish. I spent an undergraduate and graduate year studying Hebrew literature at the Hebrew University. I was a co-founder, with Gerry Tenney of the Bay Area Jewish Music Festival.

I was born and raised in the Hudson River Valley. My father’s family’s roots go back to Peekskill, NY in the 1920s. I’ve always had a deep and abiding affection for the River and the beautiful Hudson Highlands. In 1969, I had the opportunity to crew for a week on Pete Seeger’s sloop, Clearwater. I have been interested in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since I was a teenager in 1967 and have worked all my adult life to promote dialogue and mutual recognition. I am a progressive Zionist. I support a two state solution to the conflict involving Israeli withdrawal roughly to pre-67 borders (with some adjustments) and an internationally guaranteed peace agreement with the Palestinians.

I love photography and have an online photo gallery, Into the Great Wide Open, devoted to my passions: the outdoors and gardening. Images there are available for purchase.

I love hiking in the Cascades and try to go every week during summer though that’s become increasingly difficult with three very young children.

I have always loved folk and traditional music including world music.

My wife, three children and dog live in a Craftsman home (1906) near the western shores of Lake Washington.

Favorite Yiddishism: “Sleep faster, we need the pillows!”

Tikun Olam is a Mishnaic term meaning “repair [or mend] the world.”

Unlike some religious traditions, Judaism comprehends evil as something inherently human. In the Zohar, it is this evil or impurity which causes the sacred keylim (”vessels”) to break. Performance of mitzvot (”commandments”) are the means to repair the vessels and so transmute evil into good.

A Kabbalist would have no problem understanding that hatred and violence between Israels and Palestinians are evils that pollute the world. Likewise, I’d like to think such a Kabbalist might look favorably on efforts like this blog to repair this battered region with acts of gemilut chesed (”lovingkindness”).

Speaking: I am available to give talks, lectures, workshops about any of the subjects I write about in this blog.

Support Tikun Olam: This blog is a no-profit enterprise done for love and passion. I gratefully accept donations from those who find value in what I do (see Paypal link above). Another way to support the site is by buying books and CDs through the Tikun Olam Store or links in individual posts. If you visit Amazon through this site, anything you buy there will provide a 5% fee back to me.

Promotion: Another way to boost readership is to participate in social networking/bookmarking sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Facebook and MySpace and link my posts there. Friends of this site generate a substantial amount of site traffic, which promotes the idea of Israeli-Palestinian peace. Click on the Share This logo at the bottom of each post to submit it to whichever site you belong to.

If you are a Wikipedia “editor” I urge you to link my posts to pertinent articles in Wikipedia. This not only boosts site traffic, it lends this site more gravitas in the online world and blogging community.

Tell your friends about this site. Send them links to posts. Link to my posts at other sites you visit. This is an excellent way to raise the “still small voice” of peace.

Subscribe: I encourage you to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by clicking on the sidebar link. You may subscribe to specific categories by registering at this site and then subscribing.

Story Tips: I welcome story ideas from readers. Please include a link and any other documenting information you can provide (stories based on rumors or thinly sourced material are problematic). And PLEASE make sure you’ve verified the accuracy of your story and that the information is up to date.

E-Mail: E mail sent to me may be quoted in posts unless the e-mail author specifically requests that a message be considered private. If it seems obvious to me that a message is meant to be private I will consider it such, but don’t assume I know your intentions unless you state them. The more abusive an e mail is the less likely I may be to honor any demand for privacy.

Pro-Israel: a note about the term ‘pro-Israel’ as used in this blog. I consider myself pro-Israel. However, this term has been hijacked by Israel lobby groups like AIPAC. I’ve found it difficult to come up with an all-round phrase to characterize those who are right-wing regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. So if you read the term “pro-Israel” with an adjective like “nationalist,” “extremist,” “right-wing,” etc. please know that it’s not the term “pro-Israel” that I’m disparaging but a particular type of right-wing perspective on Israeli-Palestinian politics.