Climate change is the result of colonialism

Climate change is the end result of a process in which one group of people steals another group’s natural resources, consumes them, and turns them into waste and pollution. This process is called colonialism. To stop climate change, we need to stop colonialism. Colonialism, I think, involves three big groups of people. To stop it,…

Kanye

Imagine black people didn’t denounce Kanye. Imagine they gradually embraced his Trumpian vision of manly triumph over oppression. Imagine Trump and Kanye started a “Back to Africa” movement aimed at resettling US black people in, say, Uganda. It would let “Black American Pioneers” return to their “Ancestral Homeland,” sort of. And it would get the…

Antisemitism from the left

Antisemitism from the left is real. It starts with overzealous white boys saying that Israel is as big a global threat as Russia, and ends with them talking about “lots of powerful Jews in the United States.” The problem’s not The Jews. It’s the white supremacist capitalist imperialism, stupid.

Good guy

I went to a good school. I’ve been told that I’m a “good guy.” That does not absolve my past– and neither does this or any post. Here are two times that I’ve committed sexually predatory behavior, and one time that I’ve been the victim of it. 1. In my sophomore year of college, my…

Tisha B’Av

Yesterday was Tisha B’Av, the Jewish Day of Mourning for the destruction of the ancient Temples by the Babylonian and Roman Empires. On this day, in the scorching summer heat, we feel the collective pains experienced over thousands of years. Of exile, of more exile, of lynchings, of genocide. And, I would add, of capitalism…

In Praise of Idolatry

The dancers at the bottom of Mount Sinai are our ancestors. Restless, anti-authoritarian, ecstatic. Their spirituality was plural. They didn’t truly need the patriarchy. They knew, perhaps, what we think they didn’t- that the divine wasn’t solely in one graven image. All this is heretical, of course. Even radical Jews call for smashing idols. But…

I want to worship the Sun

I want to worship the Sun. Not the creator of the Sun. Not the master of the Sun. Not the King and Ruler of the Sun. Not even the breath of life of the Sun. I want to worship the Sun. I want to worship the tides, I want to worship the trees, I want…