6 seeds of joy & hope
Dear friends,
A moment off from the dark forebodings that often color our Shalom Reports to share six seeds of joy and hope. Two films, a gathering of 6,000 students to combat global scorching, a book on Heschel, a gathering of 80 people for a dialogue on "Islamophobia," and a sad-sweet memory.
Shalom, Arthur
1. Lior Liebling is a teen-age kid who plays drums, watches TV, and runs track. He is the son of friends of mine. He is a person with Down syndrome - and a "Chesed Broadcasting Station," radiating loving-kindness into the world.
"Praying with Lior" is an extraordinary new documentary film focused on Lior's preparations for and celebration of his becoming a bar mitzvah.
See it!! See it!! See it!! See it!!
You will find your self moved not into pity but into joy. Joy in watching Lior's hard work filled with love for other human beings, for all creation, and for God.
The movie premiered this past summer in San Francisco -- got a great review in Variety! -- and is now playing at many film festivals:
Boston Jewish Film Festival
Screening Thursday, November 8th (7:00 PM) West Newton Cinema
Margaret Mead Film Festival -- American Museum of Natural History, New York City
November 11th (5:15 pm) http://www.amnh.org/programs/mead/
Washington DC Jewish Film Festival
Saturday, December 1st at 6:00 pm and Tuesday, December 4th at 1 pm
Lior, his family, and Ilana will be there for a post-screening Q & A on 12/1. http://www.wjff.org
New York Jewish Film Festival
in collaboration with the Jewish Museum and the Film Society of Lincoln Center
Walter Reade Theater, Lincoln Center
January 9th - 24th, 2008. Screening dates TBD. http://www.filmlinc.com/wrt/onsale07/nyjff07.html
Atlanta Jewish Film Festival -- January 16 - 27, 2008 Screening times TBD http://www.ajff.org
Denver Jewish Film Festival -- February 13th, 2008
Hartford, CT -- March 23rd or 30th
New Jersey Jewish Film Festival -- West Orange, NJ, March 30th, 2008
Seattle Jewish -- April 5th - 13th. Screening dates TBD
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2. Another film, just released in DVD: "A Mighty Heart," the story of Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal truth-seeking journalist who was kidnapped in Pakistan and killed. - And the story of his wife Marianne, suffering through the days of his disappearance and his death.
Marianne suffered without souring. She pursued justice, not vengeance. She kept clear that the answer to her husband's murder was not, is not, the torture of suspects but the transformation of the society from which terrorism sprouted.
Angelina Jolie is brilliant as Marianne Pearl, whose pain intensifies and deepens her beauty. Just as the pain of the desperate millions on the streets of Karachi intensifies their beauty.
Once again, as at several astonishing times in the last two years, Hollywood's skills are skillfully put at the service of profoundly political and spiritual vision.
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3. Last weekend, on the University of Maryland campus, there gathered about 6,000 students from all across America -- to demand action against the global scorching that threatens our planet.
Not just to demand action , not just to act. To learn how to act more effectively.
One of the strands of the conference was focused on religious and spiritual paths for change. I shared a panel on this question with Fred Small, a renowned folk singer who has become a Unitarian minister, and Allison Fisher, coordinator of Greater Washington Interfaith Power and Light.
For me, the most interesting aspect of our workshop was that a majority of the students defined themselves as "former Christian" or "grew up Jewish" who are now spiritual seekers, finding their spirituality rooted in the earth. A sizeable number of them said they have found Wicce attractive.
All of them seemed excited not only to learn that some Christians and Jews have been drawing on authentic but neglected strands of their traditions to heal the earth, but also to learn ways of approaching the dangers of climate disaster that could speak powerfully to mainstream Americans about our crisis.
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4. A book. The second volume of the biography of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, who prayed and marched alongside Martin Luther King, who shared with King the courage to speak out against the Vietnam war despite the demands of many of their friends and supporters that they shut up: Spiritual Radical: Abraham Joshua Heschel in America, 1940-1972, by Edward K. Kaplan, a humanities professor at Brandeis University.
Not a book of saintly adoration. For example, Kaplan tells with honesty and clarity the difficult story of Heschel's missteps in dealing with the Vatican over the role of Jews in Catholic theology.
