Tikun Olam-תקון עולם: Make the World a Better Place

When I first began this blog in 2003, you could’ve put every progressive Jewish blogger comfortably inside a phone booth.  There were Dan Sieradski,  Aaron Trauring and maybe a few others.  Now, just look at my Mideast Peace blog directory in my sidebar.  There are 90 sites listed there.  Not all are blogs written by progressive Jews, but well over half are.  It’s an extraordinary flowering and a testament to a historic trend toward a just peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors.

There are two categories of bloggers who are underrepresented among us in my opinion: academics and rabbis.  I’ve felt that in order for the world to begin to take us more seriously we needed to include more “experts” among us who could add gravitas to our efforts.  And that is precisely what has happened.  Mark LeVine for years was one of the few academics willing to put his name out there.  Now there is Jerry Haber, Bernard Avishai, Aryeh Cohen and others.  For years, Velveteen Rabbi was one of the few blogs written by a rabbi.  Now there are Shalom Rav, Marc Gopin and others.

Now, I’d like to welcome Rabbi Brian Walt to our chevra.  He writes Rabbi Brian’s Blog and began blogging in May, 2009.  He is the executive director of Rabbis for Human Rights-North America (a group founded in Israel by Rabbi Arik Ascherman).  I hope you’ll check out his blog, subscribe to his RSS feed, and keep tabs on his work.

Baruch Ha-ba.