Compassion and Empathy

Now What?
Breaking False Dichotomies, Compassion and Empathy, Hold Dualities Together, Longform, Longform, Uncategorized |
January 14, 2021

Now What?

Donald Trump is mentally ill and needs a constitutional straitjacket. He is hungry for adulation to compensate for a mind-blowing inner lack of self-worth -that even those of us most horrified by his venality have to feel a smidgeon of compassion for. His most violent followers – a minority of the 70+ million people who voted for him – rendered needy, powerless, and stripped of their dignity by serious societal stress – have through their adulating Trump felt powerful. The violence of last Wednesday and the violence of Trump’s administration is a......

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Irwin Kula
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A Riot Runs Through It: Where we have been and where we are going
Compassion and Empathy, Longform, Spirituality & Faith, This Week In Wisdom, Uncategorized |
January 08, 2021

A Riot Runs Through It: Where we have been and where we are going

Rabbi Tarfon taught: “It is not your responsibility to finish the work , but you are not free to desist from it either.” Pirkei Avot 2:16 Aspirational, that has always been the word I have used to describe America — its beauty and its potential — and the framework I have used to see the world. How have the last four years, and more particularly the last few days, impacted that framework of faith? A timeline will help to begin parsing that question. Inauguration Day 2017. A speech is......

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Steven Rotter
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A Doubly Sad Day...
Compassion and Empathy, Grief & Coping, Historic Profiles |
July 30, 2020

A Doubly Sad Day…

Today is a doubly sad day.  Today I mourn as a Jew, and today, I mourn as an American. Today is Tisha b’Av, the ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av, a day that marks the destruction of both the first and second Temples in Jerusalem.  Today is the day on which the Jewish people recall thousands of years of hurt and harm, homelessness and harshness, sometimes of unimaginable measure. Tisha b’Av marks the moments when we have failed to believe — in ourselves and/or in God — when we have......

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Brad Hirschfield
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