Authentic, Compassionate Judaism For The Thinking Person

Here I tease out the following ideas of bell hooks: 1. Our society valuing power over others as the paramount value, and rooted in the psychology of men. 2. This value playing out in drama as "the protagonist" as the center around which others must revolve, and often the only one whose name counts. 3. Oppositional gaze: the one who owns their justice perspective is the one who has the power to gaze at injustice [like Moses having the privilege to "gaze" at the taskmaster beating a Hebrew slave]. 4. Intersectional identity: our society tries to have our identities of oppression divided up -- say, of black, immigrant, poor, and woman-- because that plays into the system rather than seeing them all at once, at the "intersectionality" of our identites. 5. Finding our voice as loving ourselves enough to feel that we are fully ready to put that full loved identify forward, rather than perpetuating the system by finding ourselves falling short. 6. When we love ourselves, we can love others --meaning holding their ab