‘The protest is a ritual’: How faith found a place in Palestine solidarity encampments

Published

5 months ago

June 17, 2024

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(RNS) — At the University of Rochester’s Palestine solidarity encampment, in the quiet of a spring sunset, a large circle of university staff, faculty and students focused on two professors leading a ritual in English and Hebrew. As prayers were said and small cups of grape juice were passed around, one of the celebrants jokingly assured the Christians in the circle, “This is grape juice, just grape juice, it’s not transforming into anything. There’s no magic happening.”

As a braided candle was lit, the other professor walked around the circle with spices, holding them out to each person to smell, part of an ancient ceremony marking the end of Shabbat called the Havdalah.

Hannah Witkin, a recent Rochester graduate, recalled the ceremony, which occurred in early May: “It felt very powerful. I never had any kind of communal Jewish life (at the school) that aligned with my values until these spaces arose in the last half a year. I was suddenly able to reconnect with this part of myself that I hadn’t tended to for the last three years.”

Over the past nine months, student-led protests at universities across the country became unexpected sites for religious connection for students of often drastically different faiths — and even among a healthy share of those of no faith at all.

Protest organizers anticipated that spirituality would be needed to navigate the physical challenges, as well as criticism that the encampments were religiously divisive. “If we didn’t address spiritual care, we would be missing a crucial part of the reasons why people were there,” said Witkin. The focus on multireligious care, she said, “felt like a rejection of that idea.”

In interviews with students and school leaders in the aftermath of the encampments, many said that in living, working and protesting together for weeks, if not months, on end, mutual spiritual care, multifaith ritual and political organizing became intertwined.

“When you put up tents and you’re a group of students living together 24/7, the depth of friendships grows, along with the beginning of shared knowing across tradition,” said the Rev. Serene Jones, president of Union Theological Seminary of New York, whose students held a Eucharist service, a Passover Seder and other rituals for protesters at nearby Columbia University.

RELATED: Universities close encampments in the name of ‘safety.’ Whose safety?

Jewish students lead a Shabbat at sundown, surrounded by Jewish and non-Jewish students, staff, faculty and community members at Harvard University’s Palestine solidarity encampment in Cambridge, Mass. (Photo courtesy of Shir Lovett-Graff)

Shir Lovett-Graff, a graduate theology student at Harvard Divinity School, helped lead a multifaith service at the Harvard University encampment in April, where Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, Indigenous and Jewish students offered blessings and rituals side by side. “It was a really incredible opportunity to redefine what multifaith gathering could look like,” Lovett-Graff said in a recent interview, “to share ritual traditions with people not from those traditions, and to re-create those traditions within a Palestine justice framework.”

At Harvard, the administration’s efforts to dismantle the camp and threats of suspension or expulsion led to students being effectively cut-off from institutional spiritual resources. Facing a lack of support from university chaplains, students took on chaplaincy roles themselves. For weeks at the entrance to Harvard’s camp, students from the university’s Divinity School took shifts sitting at a table behind a hand painted sign reading “Community Care: we are here to meet mental, physical, and spiritual needs,” offering spiritual counseling for peers.

The encampment rapidly became an alternative spiritual hub, with Friday Jum’ah prayers, Shabbats and Eucharist services interspersed with spontaneous rituals, including recitals of the Jewish mourner’s kaddish and Muslim students offering to apply henna for the North African Jewish ritual of Mimouna. Buddhist monks were on hand to lead guided meditation sessions. A sign held aloft at one protest read, “This protest is a ritual.”

“In Palestine justice work, so often people’s religious identities are being weaponized, targeted, utilized by Zionist forces. Because of that, there is an even deeper need for spiritual support,” Lovett-Graff explained.

Jewish students lead a hand washing ritual during a multifaith service at Harvard University’s Palestine solidarity encampment on April 28, 2024, in Cambridge, Mass. Participants were covered with a prayer shawl and took turns washing one another’s hands, pressing oil into their palms and reciting prayers in Hebrew and English. (Photo courtesy of Shir Lovett-Graff)

Lovett-Graff said that connections were made between faiths, but also within them. Over the three weeks of the Harvard protests, which disbanded May 17, Lovett-Graff said three different types of Shabbat services were held — “One was traditional egalitarian, one more Reconstructionist renewal, a Kabbalat Shabbat.”

“I think what surprised me was that there was this deep hunger for creative and spiritually grounded Jewish practice within the encampment space. That hunger spanned tradition, it spanned denomination, it spanned practice,” Lovett-Graff added. “It felt really like we were creating a new Judaism.”

Terms such as “interfaith” and “multifaith” are frequently used interchangeably, but Taya Shere, assistant professor of organic multireligious ritual at Starr King School for the Ministry, a Universalist Unitarian seminary in Oakland, California, differentiates between them.

“Interfaith can often have an ‘encounter’ style approach” — for example, a Jewish community visiting a Muslim community to better understand their practice. On the other hand, Shere said, “in the multifaith ritual community, in my experience, there’s a real priority given to relationship building and deep honoring … more of one shared community.”

A ritual at Rochester, said Witkin, spurred a conversation about the role of religion in political advocacy. In leftist organizing circles, she said, the tone is often “not just secular, but specifically anti-religion,” and organized religion is frequently seen as “bad or corrupt.” Some protesters opposed any form of religious identity, belief or ritual expressed in protest spaces. “But in the encampment, that was definitely not the case,” she said.

The Rev. Serene Jones. (Photo courtesy of Union Theological Seminary)

Jones agreed, saying, “In this movement, the place of religious conviction was there from the beginning.”

Shere pointed to a history of faith leaders and secular progressives joining together in their activism, such as in the U.S. Civil Rights Movement and Black Lives Matter protests. In the current moment, she noted, “there has been a brilliance in the way that the varied movements for cease-fire and (Palestinian) liberation have been incorporating multireligious ritual tools into their actions. It’s a new flavor to the scene, but in no way is it totally new.”

Among the campers, Jones found that “The vast majority of them have well articulated, deeply held convictions that are leading them to the stance that they are taking.”

Jones emphasized that interreligious ritual is one space where that dimension of their actions was acknowledged. “In moments like this, what brings you all together is not that you have the same view of God or not, but actually a shared commitment to a vision of justice, or to ending harm. That’s a really productive way to engage interreligious community.”

RELATED: What we have to learn from students leading the charge for justice

Entertainment

Boy George on the price of fame – and his rocky relationship with Madonna

Published

3 hours ago

November 16, 2024

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Boy George on the price of fame – and his rocky relationship with Madonna

Boy George is contemplating his relationship with fame. Intoxicating, often inescapable, he says he has not always found his decades in the spotlight easy

There has been a cost, he says. Much has been well documented. But in recent years he has been able to enjoy it all much more.

And it’s not real. “Fame is a figment of other people’s imaginations. You’re only famous because other people believe you are.”

Most will know Boy George the avant garde musician, flamboyant frontman of Culture Club, one of the biggest music acts of the 1980s. Big hats, big songs, big personality. He has found new fans more recently through appearances on reality shows such as I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! and as a judge on The Voice.

He is also an artist, and fame is the theme of his latest collection of portraits.

Vivid, bold, punk, they are exactly as you might expect. He has painted his hero David Bowie, fellow music icons Madonna and Prince, as well as a self-portrait.

“I think of Boy George from the ’80s as a sort of cartoon character,” he says. “Because on the one hand, there was this public persona, which was one thing, and it was very recognisable. And then there was me behind it… I used to have a real problem with [fame] and I feel now I’m like, it’s just a job.”

The portrait of his younger self is a reminder of how his relationship with fame has changed.

“I never really took it that seriously,” he says. “There were moments when I lost my mind – we all know what they were. But I always kind of knew who I was.”

‘I was really lucky to have my family’

The star, whose real name is George O’Dowd, has spoken and written about his struggles with addiction in the past. In 2009, he was jailed for four months for false imprisonment.

In his last autobiography, he described it as a “stupid, aggressive and regrettable” incident that was over in “less than 30 seconds”. He disputes some of the details that came out in court, but called himself an “idiot who did too many drugs and made a massive mistake”.

George says his family helped him through the dark times. Despite there being more conversation than ever around mental health and the pressures on young stars today, he is not convinced the support is any better.

“I think in my case, I was really lucky to have my family… particularly my late mother. Whatever was going on, she was always there to kind of try and harness me into reality. And sometimes it took a bit of pulling and shoving, but I feel like my family have been so important to me in terms of, you know, keeping me sane. But it hasn’t always been an easy thing.”

Now in his 60s, as well as Boy George, he is plain old “George from Eltham”, southeast London; although plain is not really an adjective you would ascribe to him.

“As I’ve got older, I’ve kind of accepted I created this Boy George person, and I can either have as much fun with it as I can, or I can make it full of anxiety,” he says.

For his Fame collection, he chose Bowie because the artist “shaped my whole career, my whole childhood”. His relationship with Madonna, whom he has captured in her Madame X era from 2019 rather than one of her more famous earlier incarnations, “because artists continue to evolve”, is more complex.

They first met after he saw her in concert in New York, with fellow ’80s star Marilyn and two friends. They went backstage and he asked for a picture.

‘There’s never been warmth… on either side’

“She grabbed the boys and just sat them on her lap, which is kind of major,” he says. “She took control immediately. And I’ve got this great picture of Madonna and this guy that I kind of lost contact with.”

But he and the Queen of Pop never became friends. “Over the years we sort of met each other, but there’s never been any kind of warmth necessarily on either side,” he says. “But I am a fan… with me, if I like the music, I don’t necessarily have to be best friends with the person… I can like things without being petty.”

It was perhaps part and parcel of fame in the 1980s, he says.

“When you’re young, everything’s a competition. As you get older, you get a bit more confident about who you are and more secure and therefore you’re able to enjoy things without feeling threatened. So I think in the ’80s, all of us were in competition with each other… nowadays I’m kind of able to enjoy a lot of bands that I hissed at in the past, you know.”

Earlier this year, George made his Broadway debut, performing in Moulin Rouge. Now, he is getting ready for gigs with Culture Club again, alongside Tony Hadley and Heaven 17.

They will play their first two albums, Kissing To Be Clever and Colour By Numbers, in full. “[It’s] one of the reasons I agreed to this tour,” he says. “I knew we wouldn’t argue about what we were playing.”

There is also a biopic in the works. George has long said he would like Game Of Thrones star Sophie Turner to play him and the campaign continues, he says. “In this day and age, why can’t have a woman playing a man? Why not break the rules? It’s kind of what I was doing 30, 40 years ago.”

And he is still releasing solo music. His latest track, Let The Flowers Grow, is a collaboration with Bauhaus’ Peter Murphy.

“A lot of stuff I release, no one really hears of it unless they’re like a mad hardcore fan,” he says. “I’ve released 54 tracks in the last year, probably more than any other artist. And I will continue to keep putting stuff out and being creative because it feels like breathing, you know, it feels really enjoyable and I feel lucky that I get to do the thing I love.”

He takes a beat. “I mean that. I really enjoy it now in a way that I just didn’t know how to 10 years ago, 20 years ago, because I was so busy worrying about what other people thought about this, that and the other.

“Now I’m like, I want to tell people how I feel more. I mean, I’ve always done that, but I feel like, when you start to understand yourself more and realise what makes you actually happy, then you are able to express yourself in a better way.”

Politics

Sir Keir Starmer vows to defend budget decisions ‘all day long’ as farmers slam ‘disrespectful’ PM

Published

3 hours ago

November 16, 2024

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Sir Keir Starmer vows to defend budget decisions 'all day long' as farmers slam 'disrespectful' PM

Sir Keir Starmer has said he will defend the decisions made in the budget “all day long” amid anger from farmers over inheritance tax changes.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced last month in her key speech that from April 2026, farms worth more than £1m will face an inheritance tax rate of 20%, rather than the standard 40% applied to other land and property.

The announcement has sparked anger among farmers who argue this will mean higher food prices, lower food production and having to sell off land to pay for the tax.

Sir Keir defended the budget as he gave his first speech as prime minister at the Welsh Labour conference in Llandudno, North Wales, where farmers have been holding a tractor protest outside.

Sir Keir admitted: “We’ve taken some extremely tough decisions on tax.”

He said: “I will defend facing up to the harsh light of fiscal reality. I will defend the tough decisions that were necessary to stabilise our economy.

“And I will defend protecting the payslips of working people, fixing the foundations of our economy, and investing in the future of Britain and the future of Wales. Finally, turning the page on austerity once and for all.”

He also said the budget allocation for Wales was a “record figure” – some £21bn for next year – an extra £1.7bn through the Barnett Formula, as he hailed a “path of change” with Labour governments in Wales and Westminster.

And he confirmed a £160m investment zone in Wrexham and Flintshire will be going live in 2025.

‘PM should have addressed the protesters’

Among the hundreds of farmers demonstrating was Gareth Wyn Jones, who told Sky News it was “disrespectful” that the prime minister did not mention farmers in his speech.

He said “so many people have come here to air their frustrations. He (Starmer) had an opportunity to address the crowd. Even if he was booed he should have been man enough to come out and talk to the people”.

He said farmers planned to deliver Sir Keir a letter which begins with “‘don’t bite the hand that feeds you”.

Mr Wyn Jones told Sky News the government was “destroying” an industry that was already struggling.

“They’re destroying an industry that’s already on its knees and struggling, absolutely struggling, mentally, emotionally and physically. We need government support not more hindrance so we can produce food to feed the nation.”

He said inheritance tax changes will result in farmers increasing the price of food: “The poorer people in society aren’t going to be able to afford good, healthy, nutritious British food, so we have to push this to government for them to understand that enough is enough, the farmers can’t take any more of what they’re throwing at us.”

Mr Wyn Jones disputed the government’s estimation that only 500 farming estates in the UK will be affected by the inheritance tax changes.

“Look, a lot of farmers in this country are in their 70s and 80s, they haven’t handed their farms down because that’s the way it’s always been, they’ve always known there was never going to be inheritance tax.”

On Friday, Sir Keir addressed farmers’ concerns, saying: “I know some farmers are anxious about the inheritance tax rules that we brought in two weeks ago.

“What I would say about that is, once you add the £1m for the farmland to the £1m that is exempt for your spouse, for most couples with a farm wanting to hand on to their children, it’s £3m before anybody pays a penny in inheritance tax.”

Ministers said the move will not affect small farms and is aimed at targeting wealthy landowners who buy up farmland to avoid paying inheritance tax.

But analysis this week said a typical family farm would have to put 159% of annual profits into paying the new inheritance tax every year for a decade and could have to sell 20% of their land.

The Country and Land Business Association (CLA), which represents owners of rural land, property and businesses in England and Wales, found a typical 200-acre farm owned by one person with an expected profit of £27,300 would face a £435,000 inheritance tax bill.

The plan says families can spread the inheritance tax payments over 10 years, but the CLA found this would require an average farm to allocate 159% of its profits each year for a decade.

To pay that, successors could be forced to sell 20% of their land, the analysis found.

Environment

China’s 3GW Gobi Desert solar farm can power 2 million households

Published

3 hours ago

November 16, 2024

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China's 3GW Gobi Desert solar farm can power 2 million households

China just connected its largest single-capacity solar farm built on a former coal mining area, which is in the Gobi Desert, to the grid.

The Mengxi Blue Ocean Photovoltaic Power Station, located in Otog Front Banner, Ordos, Inner Mongolia, came online on November 5. With a massive installed capacity of 3 gigawatts (GW) and over 5.9 million solar panels, the plant will generate around 5.7 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity annually – enough to power 2 million households.

This huge project will save about 1.71 million tons of standard coal each year and cut carbon dioxide emissions by roughly 4.7 million tons, which is equivalent to planting 62,700 hectares (around 155,000 acres) of trees.

Built on coal mining subsidence land, Mengxi Blue Ocean is part of China’s national West-East Electricity Transfer Project, which brings investment and development to western China west while supplying the growing need for electricity in the eastern provinces.

The solar farm includes the country’s first large-scale outdoor solar testing base in the Gobi Desert climate, demonstrating the potential for large solar installations in challenging environments.

The power station makes use of new rare earth alloy grounding materials, cutting costs by 40%. It also replaces traditional concrete foundations with steel to minimize impact on the local grassland ecosystem.

Chuang Xihong, deputy director of the Engineering Construction Department of Guodian Power Group, CHN Energy’s parent company, explained that Mengxi Blue Ocean is an agrivoltaic project as well [via PV Tech]:

Fine forage and sand-fixing plants are planted under the PV modules, providing grazing for Australian White Sheep and chickens. A composite ecological development model will be established where PV power generation and breeding will go hand in hand.

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