Media analyses of President Obama's health care speech were divided on whether he had indicated serious support for a public option or had, instead, cleverly tossed a bone of "recognition" to the progressives while simultaneously demanding that they drop their insistence that the health care reform undercut insurance company profits.

Why I Signed This Very Weak Statement

On the one hand, I wanted the Network of Spiritual Progressives to be included in a list of some of the most important religious forces in the U.S. I was honored that we had been invited to be among them. On the...

While doves in the American Jewish community are lining up to support President Obama in his supposed confrontation with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, the hard-nosed supporters of the Occupation can sigh with relief. Nothing proposed by Obama is likely to change the realities on the ground in the West Bank.

When representatives of many Arab and Muslim nations publicly applaud Ahmadinejad's racist rant, the real losers are the Palestinians.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's speech at the Durban II conference on racism turned into a racist rant against Israel and the Jewish people. The conference, intended to give the people of...

Observing Passover, the holiday celebrating the liberation of Jewish slaves from Egypt roughly 3200 years ago, has become a problem for many Jews this year.

In the past, poll data indicated that more Jews attended a Passover Seder than participated in any other Jewish holiday. Whether religious or atheist, Jews...

For Ethically Sensitive Jews and our non-Jewish allies.

(You don't have to be Jewish to create or attend a seder -- or to adopt the approach to spiritual reality embodied in this text).

This text is not meant to be a replacement for but a supplement to the traditional Haggadah....

White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel famously warned in November that "you never want a serious crisis to go to waste." But that is exactly what the White House and Congress have allowed to happen. Secular progressives are disappointed, but spiritual progressives are doubly so. This is a...

I wish my father and mother had been alive to experience the joy and incredible relief that went through our country as Barack Obama took the oath of office. I wanted to be able to say to them,"It will be alright now, things will never be as bad again as...

On Wednesday Jan. 1st the Tikkun Community and the Network of Spiritual Progressives purchased an full page Ad in The New York Times (it appears on page A17 of Wednesday's issue). It was signed by about 3000 people and funded almost entirely by small donations from about 1200 people. We...

Israel is still using a strategy of domination in its struggle with Hamas, trying to use force to gain security. But this is a recipe for endless war.

Gaza, December 31, 2008
Israel's attempt to wipe out Hamas is understandable, but it cannot work.

No...

The leadership of the State of Israel has rejected the latest calls for a cease fire. Only President-Elect Obama has the moral authority to make a call for a cease fire that could be listened to seriously by the Israelis. But if he is going to take that step, he...

Christmas and Chanukah share a spiritual message: that it is possible to bring light and hope in a world of darkness, oppression and despair. But whereas Christmas focuses on the birth of a single individual whose life and mission was itself supposed to bring liberation, Chanukah is about a national...

The Network of Spiritual Progressives wishes to be a place in which progressives from various religious communities (as well as "spiritual but not religious" people) can feel safe in coming together to work for a New Bottom Line to replace the materialism
and selfishness in the world with an...

The choice of Joe Biden, the foreign policy chair...

I had expected the World Conference on Dialogue convened by the King of Saudi Arabia to be little more than a photo op for the King, a cheap way to buy good public relations for a regime that has refused to increase production of oil as a way to reduce...

When I was a child, Zionism was the national liberation struggle of the Jewish people. While the United States and all other countries-including the Christian, Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist countries-closed their doors to Jews seeking refuge from the murder of millions of Jews by the fascists, and while the Palestinian...

A continuing irony of American politics is that the candidates of the ruling elites have been able to convince many Americans that the candidates who seek to redistribute wealth to the less fortunate, provide health care for all, and provide jobs and housing for the poor are the real elitists....

Now that the toothless resolution disapproving of the Bush escalation has passed without making any impact on the President, a growing number of Americans are beginning to realize that the war in Iraq is unlikely to end until Congress specifically cuts the funding for the war and refuses to...