“TIKKUN” LAUNCHES NEW MAGAZINE: “TSURRIS”

REUTERS April 1, 2006: Cornel West, Rabbi Michael Lerner, and Sister Joan Chittister, National Co-Chairs of the Tikkun Community Network of Spiritual Progressives, have announced the launch of TSURRIS, a new weekly magazine.

The board explained that whereas the phrase “tikkun olam” expresses the need to repair the world through social action, TSURRIS magazine will focus on “the hip, contemporary reader who simply wants this whole tsurris to stop.” Michael Fountain, a Fellow at the Luftmensch Foundation, author, educator, and current editor of "Ormondroyd's Encyclopedia Esoterica", will serve as Managing Editor.

"Tsurris" first appears in the book of Job (1:5; 7:13; 12:9), where it is usually translated as "how did you get into this mess?" The most notable early rabbinic source is found among the Ainu of Northern Japan, where the phrase expresses the hope of meeting the high cost of car insurance in a no-fault society.

TSSURIS will represent a network of people and institutions that:

1) Advocates a New Bottom Line in America. This involves a good many hours on the Stairmaster in such a way as to enhance our capacities to respond to other human beings’ bottoms in a way that honors them as embodiments of the sacred, and our capacity to respond to each toches with awe, wonder and radical amazement. The April cover of TSURRIS features Michelangelo’s painting of God’s fundament from the Sistine Chapel as seen in “The Creation of the Sun and Moon”.

2) Challenges the misuse of religion by the Religious Right, often attributed to poorly worded technical manuals and their inability to smell themselves. Studies have shown that more than 70% of teens exposed to Pat Robertson believe that God squints when he talks. Of those reared using James Dobson’s “Focus on the Family” method, 42% use the wrong orifice for inserting toothbrushes, decongestants, oral contraceptives and inserting their thumbs. “When you give them books, they just chew on the covers,” the new magazine’s editor noted sadly.

3) Challenging the anti-religious and anti-spiritual assumptions and behaviors that have increasingly become part of the liberal culture and replacing them with bumper stickers such as “Next Time You’re in a Foxhole, Call an Atheist” and “What Do Atheists Scream During Sex?”

4) Challenges the extreme individualism and "me-firstism" that permeate all parts of the global market culture. Consumers will be encouraged to purchase extra helpings of luxury items such as automobiles, Italian shoes and Middle Eastern wars. Each “Second Helping” purchase will be distributed to the poor. “It was the only win-win compromise both sides could accept,” said Fountain. “The market culture is happy because we’re buying more, not less, and the poor have bigger cars to sleep in.”

See Also:
Why America Needs a Spiritual Left at TIKKUN magazine